Our team at Sprosty Network has experience as both retailer buyers and at-product companies, large and small, that sell through retail. This experience drives a maniacal focus on the customer experience. And while this seems like a common view across industries, we are constantly surprised at products that fail to win with the customer—and so fail in the market.

Emphasizing customer insights at the outset.

With this view, it’s no surprise our service and product development work starts with forming deep customer insights. It also leverages a retail buyer view that sees each product not just on it’s own but among a wide range of options, all of which compete for consumer adoption. This emphasis leads to and drives a range of support techniques, including more common product development approaches such as MVP (minimum viable product) to less obvious retail testing before scale production. We focus our support on winning with the consumer while reducing product development time and inventory risk.

We bring a wide array of product development tools and processes as needed, for example:

• Business model canvas development
• Customer value proposition development
• Customer journey mapping
• Product roadmap

Team² is Sprosty Network’s approach to project-based, active learning that combines traditional advisory services with team-based working groups supported by consultant coaches who guide the teams and often, key individual employees. The overarching intent of the Team² framework is to accelerate the path to results through an engagement model that builds productivity, teamwork, alignment and professional development. Project success is measured by a client’s individual employee’s role in achieving results plus our success in delivering the additional benefits of accelerated professional development (leadership, business acumen, and team-building skills). Often, driven client employees experience enhanced career progression as a result of the experiences and opportunities that result from this process.

Ultimately, as new businesses and initiatives are developed and launched, the Team² approach fosters knowledge transfer from consulting team members to client employees with the intent of establishing operational readiness throughout the process of building new initiatives.

Strategic partnership are generally a key component of growth initiatives, particularly in the case of new services. Our expertise in developing and negotiating large, and often complex, strategic partnerships accelerates, de-risks and reduces the cost of developing new businesses. Our broad network across the connected-consumer technology ecosystem includes:

• Original design manufacturers and original equipment manufacturers (ODM/OEMs)
• Core technologies
• Platform as a Service (PaaS) providers
• 3rd party service providers
• Design and engineering
• Back-end operations support systems and business support systems (OSS/BSS)
• Distribution channels (retail, distributors and online)

Many businesses find it challenging to staff new business due to the seniority level and functional expertise required to design, plan and build a new business. When needed, we can staff all of your start up team, and then build knowledge transfer to permanent employees as they are onboarded. We bring a team led by operators who have significant senior and mid-level executive experience in large enterprises, as well as a proven ability to consistently develop and scale new business within complex environments. Our project teams are staffed with the cross-functional skills needed for each challenge.

From auto insurance and connected cars to home healthcare, home security and automation, technology is rapidly forcing change in the the way products and services are delivered. Many startups are disrupting how incumbent providers compete, as agile product development and decision making allow startups to get to market faster than larger, more established companies.

Historically, IT departments handled platform or technology decisions, as they had the established budgets and expertise required to bring a value proposition to life. As the products and services have changed with technology, so has the mechanism by which companies choose technology solutions. The expertise required to make decisions now sits, more often than not, with business owners.

Leaders must ultimately assess the need to build and own back-office platforms and solutions while viable 3rd party alternatives now exist. “X-as-a-service” capabilities free up companies to focus on their specific point-of-market differentiation. The trend to rely on third-party partners for mission-critical operating processes and systems is allowing many companies to accelerate time to market while reducing capital and execution risk.

• Shifting cost curves of technology solutions to drive scale in Consumer IoT.
  Many of our clients have a reference point for new initiative development rooted in traditional large capital expenses with competing internal company priorities. Additionally, many new initiatives require the onboarding of new capabilities and know-how to support the types of complex product and service sales that are capturing a large and growing share of connected CE sales. 
• How Sprosty Network can help.
  Sprosty Network has been watching the massive shifts that have taken place all the way from switching (connectivity) and support to hosting and enablement. These shifts have allowed our team to work with companies in various stages of development to shift their focus to the customer and help build a business architecture that allows for an accelerated time to market at a fraction of the cost and risk routinely associated with new product and service launches.

• Deploying the correct business architecture to drive scale ahead of competition.
  Winning business architecture starts with a customer in retail and works backwards into a business model that supports the desired value proposition. Our team of experienced operators have a proven record of leveraging their know how with forward looking insights to work across the value chain to develop a blueprint for success.

Unlike traditional consulting firms, we know that the work is not over when a defined vision exists. It is only done when there is a product or service that has been tested, a customer experience that has been ruthlessly interrogated, and a business model that scales.