Lean is the key to Commercial Excellence

Lean principles aren't just for production, manufacturing and operations departments.  Lean is all about efficiency and effectiveness, and utilizing these principles in the commercial side of the business will help to establish and streamline process, reduce waste, increase profitability and ultimately enhance value delivery to customers.

What is Commercial Excellence?

First of all, what do we mean by "commercial" in business? 

Commercial functions of a business generally refer to activities related to buying, selling and generating revenue, including marketing, sales, customer service, product management and business development. Commercial excellence refers to the strategic approach and practices that businesses adopt to optimize those commercial functions with the goal to enhance efficiency, drive revenue growth, and deliver exceptional value to customers.

In the previous article, we explored the 5 Principles of Lean, the 8 common lean manufacturing tools and the benefits of driving continuous improvement and operational excellence.  Here are some examples of how those 5 lean principles can be applied within commercial functions:

Identify Value:  Product management utilizes the Product Launch Process to identify and create products in line with customer value propositions.

Map the Value Stream:  Marketing uses Value Stream Mapping (VSM) to streamline the customer journey, identifying and eliminating bottlenecks and implementing standard work to ensure consistent campaign creation.

Create Flow:  Customer Service implements a Poka-yoke system to prevent errors in ticket handling to ensure smooth flow of support for the customer.

Establish Pull: Business Development holds daily management meetings to align the team and implement customer acquisition strategies.

Continuous Improvement: Sales and Marketing use Kaizen together to optimize their Account Based Experience program  allowing for better cross-functional collaboration to foster long-term key customer relationships.

Conclusion

By applying lean principles to commercial functions, businesses can achieve all the great benefits we all know about lean principles (like greater efficiency & waste reduction) while also driving sustainable growth for the organization. The process implementation and continuous improvement mindset set the stage and foundation for sustainable growth that is essential for long-term returns.

If you're ready to level up your commercial functions by incorporating lean principles to drive growth, Growth Genius can help!  Our Commercial Growth System is a comprehensive framework of 20 different tools across 5 key commercial areas: Brand, Commercial Strategy, Product, Communications and Sales.  These tools are designed to elevate and optimize your commercial team.