After a period of some silence I want to let you know that I am all fine but very busy. I was busy with working in the office in Thailand, having some fun in and around Thailand and travelling to different countries to attend meetings.
From the 23rd of April until 27th of April I attended a very interesting meeting with the Blue Ocean Team of KAEFER in South East Asia. A Blue Ocean Initiative (BOI) is an initiative where a team is trying to create a market where they can grow in, instead of competing in a market that already exists. This meeting was in Vietnam Da Lat, where I arrived at Monday afternoon. I woke up very early to take my flight from BKK to Ho Chi Minh City. This went all fine and without any delay. The flight itself, however, had more than an hour delay. So, when I arrived in the country of Vietnam I had to arrange my Visa to get access into the country. This process took more than an hour too, which eventually made me and my colleague to miss our flight from Ho Chi Minh City to Da Lat. In other words, we were stuck in the city for 6 hours. Therefore, I suggested to go into the city, walk around and do some sightseeing. To be honest, we just went to a big mall, ordered some lunch and relaxed for the time being. After we had waited for 5 hours, we flew to Da Lat airport where the climate was totally different than the climate in Ho Chi Minh or any other place in Vietnam. Da Lat is a place in the mountains, which makes it some colder and more pleasant to stay and walk in. The temperature was around 24 degrees Celsius instead of 35 in the city.
I did not stay in Da Lat to have fun and do some sightseeing, noo. I really was there to do some interesting business with fellow colleagues. These colleagues were all managers, and they flew in to Da Lat, from Rayong, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam itself. During these days we discussed business. We discussed the progress that has been made of the Blue Ocean Initiatives which were set 6 months ago, this week was the 4th meeting, therefore the Regional Sales Meeting 4 (RSM#4). The process of creating these BOI are based on the book Blue Ocean Shift from Chan Kim and Renee Mauborghne. At that moment KAEFER already set up a team and they came up with ideas where the team can invest their time, to find out about the market size and potential customers. In these 4 days of discussing the BOI our team leader started with summarizing everything that they came up with, the last 3 meetings, and the financial state of the company in the region of South East Asia (SEA). After a long morning of listening to the team leader the other members of the meeting could present their findings so far. This was very interesting, because with these presentations I could really see the progress that has been made by my colleagues and how much effort they had to put into these findings.
The second day we started with some teambuilding. We went to the green to play some Crazy Mini Golf between the pine trees. After some cheating from some managers we awarded the winner with a little price and went back into the meeting area. Here we began plotting the TO-BE strategy canvas on the basis of the AS-IS canvas that was made in RSM#3. With this strategy you can easily show the difference between what the company is already providing and in what items you want to be outstanding. After this was done and every team had given a short explanation about their TO-BE canvas, we moved on to the Buyer Utility Map. This is step 3 in the book of Blue Ocean Shift. This map represents the six stages of the buyer experience cycle and the six buyer utility levers. The team needs to fill in this map by looking through the eyes of the buyers of the service or product. With the help of this map you can see the stages in the buyer cycle, where buyers want or need any additional attention or utility. If this map has been filled in, then the team is looking at the options they are currently not offering and why they are not offering it. They also fill the map with points which they currently do offer to the customers, and what could make them more outstanding than a competitor. After the map was completed, we continued with the ERRC-grid. This is a grid where the team focusses on Eliminating, Reducing, Raising or Creating some factors about their services. The team leader explained that this ERRC is something we need to do, to create more value for the customers and also become better than the competition.
On the third day we started with some sightseeing of Da Lat. We had a fun trip with a city tour bus. We all liked to get out of the office and really enjoy the fresh air and the French heritage all around the town and the crazy house. After a couple of hours of fun, we went back to the meeting room again to finalize this RSM#4, by answering 6 important questions. These 6 questions are the main questions for my research report I am making too. The questions are:
1. What is the problem with the current product?
2. Why are the existing solutions unsatisfactory?
3. How can our solution stop/help the problem?
4. What competences/resources are required?
5. Why is the business case attractive?
6. How is the BOI going to be realised?
When these questions were answered for every BOI, we wrapped up and took our taxis back to the airport to fly back to wherever we came from. With the help of these answers I can continue writing my report more easily.
Next blog is about an interesting discussion I had with some colleagues.