Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Mike Lachapelle on September 2, 2009 at 11:52pm

Hi Erwin

For the last year or so I have working with a Government department, a central service organization within the federal government, to re-define their business model as part of their procurement modernization. The organization delivers services to other government departments and agencies, and other governments.

Does this fall into the zone of interest? If so, what would you be looking for in information - happy to share.

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Permalink Reply by Erwin Fielt on September 3, 2009 at 1:10am

Hi Mike,

It surely does, the next two months I'll be focusing on shared services in a financial institution, and after that I plan to continue this work with a Government Shared Service Center.

The information I am initially looking for is documentation describing (and evaluating) the current business model and/or studies about possible/future/alternative business models.

Best wishes,
Erwin

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Permalink Reply by Patrick Foran on September 29, 2009 at 11:08am

Hi Erwin,

I'm currently working in Financial Services in Ireland, after coming from a US multinational, its been an experience.

Would be happy to help out and share

Patrick

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Permalink Reply by Mike Lachapelle on September 3, 2009 at 3:28am

Well, the first thing I faced in working with my group was the lack of anything remotely called a substantive business model. It was a very fractured structure, functionally based with years of independent practices and patterns. each of the four operational groups (aka sectors) had their own language and processes.

Taking on the task of building a new business model was how I got entangled with Alex and his ontology. Back then he described the process of development as having three phases - describe, analyze, innovate. This has evolved into the phases of - understand, design, implement, manage.

In either approach, the starting point is to research and document what exits in the business. Does the organization have an extant business model? What is the readiness and education of the organization for a business model approach?

These are very important questions. My organization was unprepared for this discussion and had no detailed analysis of a lot of the components of the business model canvas. I began by doing background research and picking one of the smaller business lines and doing a case study; creating a business model for them to see. I then leveraged that business model, and its relevance, as an orientation for the senior and executive managers, to help build their understanding and to demonstrate how the BM can be used for strategic planning and communicating the business story. How much do you know about the organization as it is?

I built up the picture, researching each of the components of the BM canvas. This produced the as-is BM. We then held a full day innovation session where we walked through a number of critical discussions about our clients (using the client profiler, empathy map), our challenges and finally a brain storming session on possible innovations. From that session we build 5 prototype models. We took the prototypes to the operations level for feedback and then returned all the information to the senior managers to determine the most likely success innovations which formed our new business model.

We are currently at the stage of identifying the strategies to achieve the innovations that will lead to the individual projects to implement the changes.

Wow, that's a mouthful. Plenty to talk about there.

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Permalink Reply by David Edwards on September 11, 2009 at 3:53pm

Hi Erwin
I have done many models for government agancies. The trick is to use the canvas in combination with a perspective that looks at the deliverable of that organization and the processes needed to support it. Take a quick look at www.logicalbusinessprocess.com/products/business-process-matrix. You can start from the canvas and then expand into the matrix or look at the matrix and then express it as a canvas. If you think that it might be applicable let me know and I can expand the theory for you. I have used it in banks (ASB and Foreign exchange within Bank of New Zealand) and in state government for Workforce Development (it took 19 lines of business to generate the model) in the U.S. and in Emergency Services with the Ontario government in Canada.
Regards

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Permalink Reply by Michael Uschold on June 10, 2010 at 6:02pm

I looked at the Business Model Matrix link and noticed something else as well:
"Semantic Business Canvas. Think the current Business Canvas is innovative? Wait till you see what we have done to turn the Canvas and the book into a Semantic Network using L4Frameworks."

Has there been any further work on the "Semantic Business Canvas"? I'm very interested to know more, having been in semantic technology for my whole career. I am interested in leveraging semantic technology for business modeling. See my LinkedIn profile. http://tr.im/limfu

This might be new discussion, or you can email me separately at uschold@gmail.com

Regards

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Permalink Reply by Karl Burrow on September 21, 2009 at 2:17am

Erwin,

I would keenly interested in hearing your views, progress and work on this area as I do some consulting in Tokyo
in this sector which is a growing opportunity.

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Permalink Reply by Erwin Fielt on October 9, 2009 at 5:09am

Hi,

The first thing I have been working on is how to use the BM Canvas for an "internal" business model. I think we need an extra dimension to address the governance and have to pay attention to some specific issues. I added an adapted version of the BM Canvas as a first draft. Feedback is highly appreciated.

Best wishes,
Erwin

Attachments:

• AO-EF BMCanvas Questions (internal).ppt, 1 MB

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Permalink Reply by Patrick Mirwald on June 8, 2010 at 9:41pm

Erwin, thanks for this BM Canvas. So for a utility company or gov't agency offering services without a direct revenue stream does the revenue element go away? What is put in its place?
Mike - fyi: I am also working for government in Canada out on the Left Coast (Vancouver, B.C.).

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Permalink Reply by Mike Lachapelle on June 8, 2010 at 10:20pm

Hi Patrick,

Are you with the feds or the provs?

In the government sector the revenue component of the canvas is very much in play.

When first working on the business models in a government environment I saw the fuding (revenues) linked to the activities of the organization; i.e. the department got its money from Parliament to deliver certain services. In subsequent discussions with Alex, I came to understand, for a department the elected government is a client segment from whom they get their revenues (appropriations). Attached to those appropriations are expectations of delivery of value.

For the central procurement department the value proposition for the government is 'stewardship of the procurement function of the federal government'. For the other departments (clients) served by the central procurement department the value proposition is built around 'delivered goods and services', 'advice' and 'operational support'.

It is for that stewardship value - guiding, providing oversight and developing capabilities - that the central agency received its appropriations. Additionally the central agency charges fees to its clients for a set of specific values (services) it delivers that are considered value-added from its mandated services.

This model isn't only at play in government circles, but also applies to NGO and not-for-profit organizations who receive funding from third parties to deliver sevices to their clients.

I have spoken with some people who like to add a layer underneath the financial component, which I think they call social value. This is a balance of social values delivered against social costs. that gives them a chance to track and report on non-financial ends.

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Permalink Reply by Patrick Mirwald on June 8, 2010 at 10:41pm

Thanks for your quick reply Mike. I am engaged with the province, utilities and healthcare industries working in Web and Mobility.
www.knowledgetech.ca

I think it is a matter of semantics that I was concerned about, I knew it was in play but not sure how to express it to the project team. "Appropriations" or "Budgetary funding requirements" makes more sense than revenue streams.

Ultimately it would be appropiate to look at the department from a revenue generation perspective (for departmental charge-back reasons) but like the Health Care industry in Canada I think they will feel "dirty" talking about what they do in this manner. A reality many gov. agencies and union-driven employees are not quite ready for (even if the funding for performance is hitting the 29 of the hospitals in B.C. )

The social value layer makes sense and will be used in my situation, thanks again for the information.

PM

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