4 P of Service Strategy

Perspective, Position, Plans and Patterns: 4Ps of Strategy

In my earlier Posts, we had discussed about the ITIL lifecycle and understood that Service Strategy lies at the core of Lifecycle.

Remember, all those efforts we put in the service is only intended to provide value to customer. Service Strategy at the core actually defines a unique approach to ensure better value to customer which “Better Fit for the Purpose” and “Better Fit for the Use”. We’ll come to this word Better which is the key to success.

The value you provide to customer consistently becomes normal over a period of time. Also, the business environment keeps changing and the value you provide today may not be useful in changed scenario. Customer always want improvement with no or very low increase in cost. Market is competitive and you need to be innovative to deal with such situations. To keep yourself relevant, you need to have some distinct capabilities that can offer better value to customer. The keyword is “Better”.

There are some problems that you always need to consider while preparing the Service Strategy. One is the rapid changes in the condition in which business is operating. If you cannot cope up with changing demands, you cannot survive. Second problem is need of focus on Operational Efficiency. Even the best plan is bound to fail if it doesn't focus on efficiency. Third problem is value capture. Suppose you developed a unique service that helps your customer a lot in its business hence you captured the value. Later, observing this many other Service Providers worked in that area and offered similar of better solution. Now, you lost your distinctiveness and hence wouldn't be able to capture value.

Let’s take a closure look to Service strategy.

While making Service strategy, you need to have a clear Vision and Direction. This is the First “P” called Perspective. It describes how to interact with Customer and How to Provide the Services. A good Perspective narrows the competing alternatives and shows the distinctiveness.

Providing Value depends on Utility and Warranty. You always need to balance between these two to Position your Services. While strategizing, you need to have clarity if your services will be inclined towards Utility or Warranty. This is going to be you highlight in competition. You may choose to provide higher value services or low cost services. This part of strategy is the 2^nd “P” known as Position. Position is expressed as distinctiveness to the customer.

Now you need to plan how you are going to offer your services. For example, how we are going to ensure higher value services. This is the 3^rd “P” of Service Strategy known as Plan. Plan is the course of action within changing scenarios. This is the plan on how to achieve the Perspective and Position.

Requirements are always dynamic. Suppose you decided to provide low cost Service to you customer. With changing market conditions, you may need to keep taking decision and implement changes to your service plans to ensure that you still provide Low cost services. This is the 4^th “P” know as Pattern. This is the Fundamental way the Organization does things. This is also consistent set of activities to be performed in a defined period of time.

All these four “P”s considered together helps to make a good Service Strategy which can help the service to be relevant and be able to take care of the problems.