Drive Innovation & Change with a Business Use Case

We'll start by defining key terms such as Customers, Customer Success, Value Orchestration, and Social Organic Adoption. We'll then explore the Business Adoption Roadmap and dive deep into a Business Use Case (BUC) concept - planning, executing, measuring, and promoting them.

We'll explore the concept of a "Customer" - anyone who receives value from you, whether it's a product, service, or guidance. We'll focus on roles that serve larger numbers of customers but remember that these principles apply even if you serve just one recipient of value.

Customer Success has become a popular job title, but its meaning varies across different companies and roles. The key to true Customer Success is focusing on your customers' success rather than just your own - this approach will help you build long-lasting relationships and achieve greater success in your role, regardless of the specific tasks or industry.

Value Orchestration is the art and science of creating consistent, repeatable, measurable value for various customers to achieve Customer Success. By discovering data intersections, using a framework and tools, and understanding how to leverage data to motivate people, Value Orchestration can turn a Customer Success function from a cost center to a profit center for your organization.

Social Organic Adoption (SOA) is our approach to transforming and measuring the human experience, with our methodology (SOAP) focusing on executing and measuring Customer Success. Designing and executing reliable, measurable Business Use Cases (BUCs) is a crucial part of an effective SOA program. So let's dive in and make some BUCs!

Business Use Cases (BUCs) are vital building blocks for creating a Business Adoption Roadmap (BAR). With LIFT's experience in designing, executing, and measuring BUCs for various organizations, you'll gain the tools needed to orchestrate value within your organization and your customers' organizations. In this course, we'll focus on BUCs as the foundation for value orchestration.

A Business Use Case (BUC) begins with a plan that includes several key components: 1) a statement of the desired business outcome, 2) identification of impacted people, 3) identification of tools, processes, or initiatives powering the change, 4) a description of how the change will be used to achieve the outcome, 5) an adoption plan for implementing the change, and 6) Key Performance Indexes (KPIs) for measuring the change's effectiveness in achieving the desired outcome. Throughout the course, each of these components will be discussed in detail.

The Business Adoption Roadmap (BAR) is a framework for prioritizing Business Use Cases (BUCs) based on value and innovation. In the context of a BAR, you may have many BUCs or just a few, depending on your role and the complexity of the value orchestration. The BAR is a strategic, long-term roadmap for innovation and value, typically looking out about 18 months, aligned with an organization's strategic initiatives. The purpose of the BAR is to guide the Value Orchestrator in planning and prioritizing BUCs according to their value, impact, and feasibility over time, in relation to the organization's strategic goals.

Utilizing the Business Adoption Roadmap (BAR) as a Value Orchestrator allows you to take a broader perspective and deliver exponentially greater value. This approach is applicable regardless of whether you are a Sales or Customer Success Professional working for a product or service provider or responsible for the widespread adoption of tools within your organization.

By focusing on WHY business users should use a given tool or make a desired change before showing them HOW, you ensure that the tool's extended use and potential for future purposes are considered. Often, providers and consumers of products and services get too caught up in ensuring the tool functions as specified without considering the broader context and potential future uses.

When you, as the Value Orchestrator, step back from the day-to-day tasks and look at the bigger picture, you can plan for the increased use and value of a particular tool or change. This perspective benefits your customers or users and helps you establish your reputation and career growth as a professional who can deliver significant value.

Creating and utilizing a Business Adoption Roadmap (BAR) effectively helps you put all your Business Use Cases (BUCs) into perspective. With a well-planned BAR, you will know the optimal order and timing for executing each BUC.

Using the BAR, you can cascade and create versions of various BUCs for a single tool or change, similar to product releases. This allows you to target different groups of users or the same business users over time, adapting your approach based on their needs and priorities.

When measured properly and considered within the context of the entire BAR, the value of your BUCs multiplies. Quarterly Business Reviews with your customers and Executive Reviews with your leadership teams become more meaningful and insightful. You'll strengthen customer relationships by effectively managing and executing BUCs through a BAR, turning them into lifelong partners.

In the BAR course, you'll learn how to manage all these aspects, enabling you to maximize the value and impact of your BUCs within your organization or for your customers.

Creating an effective Business Use Case (BUC) plan is crucial for multiple reasons:

1. Value validation: A well-structured plan allows you, as the Value Orchestrator, to confirm that the BUC indeed delivers value to your organization or customer.

2. Prioritization: The plan serves as a basis for determining the BUC's priority level within the Business Adoption Roadmap (BAR), ensuring that resources are allocated efficiently.

3. Stakeholder buy-in: A comprehensive plan helps validate the importance of the BUC for key stakeholders, particularly if it's expected to deliver significant value or require considerable effort. This buy-in is essential for successful execution.

4. Collaboration and coordination: A clear and detailed plan serves as a script for the key players involved in the BUC, ensuring that everyone understands their roles and responsibilities in achieving the desired outcome.

5. Measuring success: The plan helps define what success looks like upon completion, allowing you to evaluate the results, celebrate the achievement, and promote the success to relevant stakeholders.

By developing a thorough and effective BUC plan, you set the stage for a successful execution that maximizes value for your organization or customers.

A Business Use Case (BUC) is a strategic tool that outlines how a specific change or initiative can contribute to an organization's desired outcomes. By defining the goals, impacted stakeholders, and necessary tools or processes, BUCs help Value Orchestrators prioritize and execute projects effectively, maximizing their impact on the organization's success.

"Measure Twice, Cut Once" is an important principle in Value Orchestration, emphasizing the need for proper planning and metrics before executing an initiative. By using SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time Bound) Key Performance Indexes (KPIs), Value Orchestrators can accurately measure the success of a project and ensure the desired outcomes align with the organization's goals. This approach reduces wasted resources and ensures that initiatives bring maximum value to the organization.

Identifying stakeholders is crucial when building a Business Use Case plan, which usually involves sponsors, beneficiaries, and users. Utilizing personas can help create engaging descriptions of stakeholders, bringing the use case to life and providing a guide for successful execution.

When a virtual meeting tool provider faces churn as employees return to physical offices, they research their customer's plans for a new facility expected to drive 10% additional annual revenue. They develop a Business Use Case plan that demonstrates how the tool can facilitate relocation, maintain productivity during the transition, and generate customer enthusiasm for the new facility. The plan aims to recapture 30 days of potential lost revenue and improve customer experience, gaining stakeholder support for increased tool usage throughout the process.

Having a solid plan in place, it's crucial to execute it with patience and meticulous attention to detail. Think of your Business Use Case as a production, where the final performance should be flawless. Behind the scenes, months of hard work ensure that the plan is performed well, ultimately gaining the audience's buy-in and achieving the desired results.

The Execution and Adoption Plan is a critical part of successfully implementing a Business Use Case. It involves identifying roles, engaging with a pilot group, ensuring flawless operation, designing workflows, creating user guides, and reviewing metrics to measure success in an isolated, smaller environment. LIFT offers templates for designing workflows and quick reference guides, and the Customer Success Foundations courses can help you master these tools.

After completing the script and staging for your Business Use Case, it's time to run a rehearsal by getting the persona representatives together and going through the use case with access to their quick reference guides. Be prepared to answer any questions and run through the rehearsal multiple times. It's important to keep the metrics in mind during the rehearsal so that you can measure the success during the pilot run.

Once the specific dates for your Business Use Case have been identified, it's showtime! Although some personas may not be possible during rehearsals, it's important to ensure everything runs smoothly and the desired outcome is achieved. However, any bugs or negative impacts that were not discovered during planning, design, and rehearsals may appear, potentially affecting customers in the wrong way. If something goes wrong during the pilot run, it's important to regroup, rehearse again, and run the pilot in a real scenario multiple times if necessary. Remember, this is essentially a pilot, and mistakes can be corrected before implementing the Business Use Case at a larger scale.

Collecting metrics against KPIs is a critical step after a successful pilot of a Business Use Case. Measuring in real-time is important for some metrics, while others can be measured before, during, and after the pilot period. Documenting everything is essential, creating a report for the sponsor, and gathering user feedback to ensure the use case's success.

After completing a Business Use Case pilot, it's essential to reflect on the results, regardless of whether they were better or worse than expected or predicted. Even small improvements should be documented and used to tell a story of achievement. It's important to be proud of the achievement, as even small beginnings can lead to significant growth and success.

The example highlights the importance of identifying the right user group and persona for a Business Use Case pilot. Even small beginnings can lead to significant growth and success, and it's essential to document every slight improvement to tell a story of achievement. Extrapolation can be a powerful tool to create a model on a small scale and showcase what could be achieved when it grows, allowing for a solid business case to be developed and sponsored for scaling across the enterprise.

Telling the pilot group's success story and showcasing the pilot are essential after a successful pilot. Communication planning is crucial for scaling the initiative, and LIFTU offers templates and a course on Communication Planning. It's important to maintain relevancy with the original Business Use Case's spirit, keep the sponsor engaged, and create a compelling video to launch the initiative and update key stakeholders.

In summary, this course has equipped you with the necessary knowledge and skills to create valuable Business Use Cases. By following the steps of Value Orchestration, you can plan, execute, and scale your use cases for maximum impact. Remember to practice patience, take your time, and measure your success to achieve bigger and bigger wins.