Investing in the ‘P’s that actually pay off

In today’s volatile market condition, most businesses – in the act of self-preservation – will likely focus more on sales. This means that among the 4Ps (Price, Place, Promotion, and Product), Price and Promotion are usually the dual weapons businesses fall back on. The pressure to drive prices down to attract customers is significant in a recessionary and competitive market. Yet, when every competitor is running a promotion, the price war will only spiral further and eventually erode brand value.

The above is the observation by Daylon Soh, founder and general manager of career accelerator and coaching practice CuriousCore. Soh was once an e-commerce architect at Razer, an American-Singapore consumer electronics brand, and saw first-hand how the company often slash prices to clear older inventory, especially during year-end promotional periods like 11.11 and Black Friday.

“Over time, some of Razer’s customers were trained to anticipate discounts, and a few turned into scalpers who bought Razer’s products in bulk and resold them later at higher prices, creating a poor customer experience,” Soh points out.

Today, Soh teaches postgraduate students at the Singapore Management University (SMU) and runs development programmes in User Experience (UX) Design and Product Management for clients like Maxis and GIC Singapore. As a knowledge partner for its clients, CuriousCore accelerates business growth through talent-reskilling and process redesign in a company’s digital transformation journey. It aims to bridge the digital skills gaps in the Asia Pacific with a team of practising facilitators from the region familiar with local realities.

So how can leaders build a sustainable business while navigating a knowledge-based and increasingly-digital economy? Soh has the answer: set aside Price and Promotion, rethink Place and Product, and the fifth P – People.

Rethinking ‘Place’: the low-hanging fruit of doubling down on digital sales channels

Most organisations under-invest and underestimate the importance of a key sales channel these days – digital marketplaces like Lazada and Shopee. Businesses that invest time and resources into their digital distribution channels can offer a better customer experience than alternative brands.

In his stint at Unilever as the brand’s digital marketing manager, Soh observed how the FMCG conglomerate invested marketing dollars into driving traffic for its e-shop on platforms like Lazada without realising that these eCommerce platforms are learning about their customer attitudes and behaviours. Unilever experimented with direct-to-consumer go-to-market strategies, using digital influencers and e-commerce mobile checkout to launch new brands like shampoos. The result was a successful commercial product launch that achieved visibility quickly among the under-30 women segment.

Rethinking ‘Product’: learning from Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley’s secret to innovation and constant hits? Their ability to attract some of the best technical talent in the world and an ecosystem that supports the process of starting up. Silicon Valley has consistently produced some of the world’s most inventive multinational enterprises like Tesla, HP, Airbnb, and Instagram in an area half the size of Kuala Lumpur.

“A key part of their success in product marketing and innovation is their mindset of constant testing and learning through qualitative and quantitative data. This is also part of an agile mindset that allows them to adapt to VUCA [Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity] market conditions. Their ability to innovate and optimise products cheaply and efficiently reduces venture risks that traditional businesses usually face over longer launch cycles,” explains Soh.

Rethinking ‘People’: Workforce training to conquer risk of irrelevance

Most companies know that digital transformation efforts require people, processes, and tools (or technology) investments. “However, most organisations over-invest in tools and technology and under-invest in people and processes,” says Soh.

Training your workforce pre-emptively to stay ahead of digital transformation especially makes sense if you consider that:

Your staffs have been with your organisation for many years and have built deep domain expertise; hence firing or replacing them would result in increased expenses and ramp-up time.
Hiring a digital-savvy talent is an expensive and time-consuming endeavour. Once you hire one, knowledge transfer is another challenge. Existing experts within your organisation may not be able to teach or facilitate excellent learning outcomes, which causes frustration and wasted potential among your new hires.
Your competitors or startups are stealing market share from your current business lines. It would help if you had a quick way to defend market share and consumer mindshare without raising large sums of capital to recruit a technologically-savvy team.

Established brands in the region, like GIC Singapore and Smartkarma, have invested in staff’s digital upskilling by working with CuriousCore, which specialises in training subjects like Customer/User Experience, Agile Product Management in physical and digital products and data analytics.

These companies may be captains in different playing fields, but the foresight unites them. The only way to stay in the game is to build internal capabilities in product development and customer experience. This keeps the business adaptable and relevant, which creates a sustainable and competitive advantage that will last for decades.