Your planning and strategising should lead to the strategic decisions that would put you in the best position for any of the possible developments.
Business Model Canvas is a simple yet very effective framework for analysing company’s business model. It helps examine how an organisation creates, delivers, and captures value in the economic, social, environmental or other contexts. Business model canvas can also be extremely useful when setting up a business strategy or re-evaluating it in the current turbulent times when decisions are made in very unpredictable environment.
The concept of Business Model Canvas was developed by Alexander Osterwalder who identified nine key building blocks of a business model grouped in four segments:
Offering
1. Value proposition that you intend to deliver to your customers.
Customers
2. Segment(s) of clients that are addressed by the value proposition.
3. Communication and distribution channels to reach clients and deliver them value.
4. Relationships established with clients.
Infrastructure
5. Key resources needed for the business model.
6. Key activities necessary to implement the business model.
7. Key partners and their motivation to collaborate with your company.
Finance
8. Revenue streams generated by the business model (constituting the revenue model)
9. Cost structure incurred by the business model.
A graphical illustration of Canvas provided below is very intuitive and helps facilitate the discussion of your business model by suggesting which areas should be considered and which key questions need to be answered:
As much as it is useful in the “normal” times, it can be very helpful also during the Covid19 crisis.
We can expect that once our life will get back to “normal”, it will not be the old normal. This year’s circumstances will change the demand in many ways and it is a good time to start discussing potential directions for the future and actions we could take to influence it. Business Model Canvas is a convenient tool for guiding strategic discussions in the crisis. Key areas to be discussed are the same as above; however, questions to be posed and answered are a bit different. Some suggestions are presented in the following table, however, a wider discussion in the company will for sure identify many more.
It is critical to take as objective view of your company and its strategic options as possible. It is also important not to be in love with your current business model, but explore a variety of possible scenarios. However, changes in the environment may not be as drastic as they seem now. This crisis has greatly shaken the whole economy, however business not only tends to gravitate back to normal after every crises, but to boost. Your planning and strategising should lead to the strategic decisions that would put you in the best position for any of the possible developments.