::Business & Marketing Consulting.
Catalyst are licensed practitioners of the B&ME methodology which an accelerated business performance methodology, modular in nature, holistic in approach and delivered via the following channels:

• Multidisciplinary practice expertise
• Workshop facilitation
• On the job team skills development
• Online services and proprietary software based tools.

Our goal is to help you optimise your product and service offering and the way you go to market by embedding capability permanently into your organisation by developing the skills of your people thus reducing your need for our experienced specialists over time.

Click a step on the right to view a description.

::Step 1 - The Current and Desired State
The B&ME Method always begins with creating a unified and agreed view of the current state of the firm.

This current state view can be holistic covering all of the strengths, concerns and issues of the firm, or can be a current state view specific to one area of the firm.

The current state view is normally developed in the Accelerated Performance Workshop, via structured facilitated brainstorming, exploiting a specific question set that is relevant to the business.

It is essential that the unified & agreed view be reality and not a rosy view of how the team wished things were.

We then look at the Desired State which is 'where would we like to be in the future?' At the beginning of the BME method, it is important to gain the team's current perception of what they believe they and the firm need to be in the future.

Importantly, in most cases, the current perception of the Desired State is tied to a set of assumptions or beliefs that will change as the team and the firm proceeds through the BME Method.

::Step 2 - MarketSpace
Once the single team has a clear view of the current condition of the firm and where they think they wish to be in the future, it becomes time to examine the fundamentals and assumptions behind those views. For our purposes, we define "Marketspace" as a three dimensional space that clearly defines the specific area of trading for a firm or company. This is the area where supply and demand meet for a company's particular products or services.

A firm's "Marketspace" is the defined extent to which a firm's market extends in terms of: Application: Core Human Application Function: Product or Service offering/functionality Sector or Sectors: How many sectors this marketspace intersects

The definition of Marketspace defines firstly, the opportunities available to the firm. Secondly it defines, the degree of differentiation, competitive advantage and market share opportunity owned by the firm. Lastly it defines the criteria for and type of Partners and Channels appropriate to bring your firm to market.

The Marketspace Definition Exercise is a combination of intuitive or research trends analysis, mapping exercises and brainstorming.

::Step 3 - Opportunities
This third step of the BME Method is a robust, testable and analytical framework for identifying and prioritising opportunities in one or more defined marketspaces.

In today's environment, it is essential that an organisation's limited resources are most effectively deployed against the optimum, prioritised set of opportunities. Every firm has more opportunities available to it than it can reasonably exploit and in the selection of opportunities to pursue, there is often a lack of formal method for identification and prioritisation. All too often, anecdotal evidence and gut feel is the decision method. This is not enough.

A further challenge in the decision making process is that the data for this framework is ever changing, by market, or audience segment and by offer. The BME solution addresses these challenges managing the data in a relative tool-based framework that distils great complexity to create simple outputs that can be acted on. The BME team are experienced in tailoring these frameworks to your organisations needs- and in days not months.

::Step 4 - Audiences
An audience is simply a community of individuals who may share certain interests, attributes, attitudes or behaviours. Not all audiences are equal in importance and messages should always vary according to the needs and interests of a specific audience.

In steps1 to 3 the team has determined and agreed marketspace(s) and has prioritised which opportunities to pursue as a firm. It is then possible to accurately identify all of the audiences that the firm needs to communicate with and then group those audiences according to important segments; geodemographics, psychographics, attitude and behaviour, purchase propensity, decision making process, needs and attractiveness to the firm.

Step 4 of the BME Method begins with a structured process of audience identification, then prioritisation. This process covers all internal as well as external audiences.

Once this is complete, the team proceeds to developing up to six different proprietary segmentation models on an intuitive real time basis (to be validated by data later) for priority audience groups.

::Step 5 - Brand
We believe that an external brand perception is directly linked to the internal culture of the firm. We also believe that, in order for firms to build a strong brand essence and positioning, the people in the firm need to be heavily involved as only they will really know how the firm really behaves and what the core offers of the firm really are.

There are many different methods for brand development as well as different models of how brands are built. These processes can be complicated, lengthy and expensive. The brand architecture process developed by BME is designed to develop brand essence candidates, values, core propositions and messages in a workshop environment, in a fraction of the time of other approaches.

As such, our proprietary IBB ™ model and exercise is perhaps less complex but more common sense and accessible than some alternatives. The BME Six Level Proposition statement ™ is developed by the team and ensures the alignment of the entire firm in speaking the same message at the right time in the right circumstances.

::Step 6 - Services and Offers
We live in a global service economy and we are witnessing a shift from product to service marketing. Yet whilst customer service offerings continue to be a key target for corporate efficiency exercises, customer satisfaction of service levels continues to plummet. This is because the key measure being sought is efficiency, as opposed to effectiveness.

Step 6 of the BME Method is designed to enable the team to examine the needs of the priority audience segments and determine which services and offers should be delivered to which segments. The team will examine the range of service oriented activities that are or could be provided to the customer and prioritise these possible offerings against audience needs and capacity, as well as the capability of the organisation.

Once the brand architecture is done, then work will be performed in developing service streams, or families, that, firstly, support the brand positioning and proposition, secondly, enable the creation of sub-brand structures and thirdly, enable the creation of alternative or additional revenue streams.

::Step 7 - Organisational and Environment
A common solution at time of organisational change is to retain the services of external change management consultants. However, given that in today's environment the only constant is change itself, the need to ensure that your own people be proficient and ongoing agents of change is self-evident.

There will be both financial and non financial objectives for a change program, with tailored strategies for Financial, Marketing and Sales as well as for people, process & structure. Working with your people we will create an environment to support these objectives whilst delivering on the strategic intent.

As unbiased subject matter experts we coach your people in getting these in aligned.

Much of our work at the end of the initial workshops is focused on an immediate action plan to communicate the new strategic intent to colleagues in other parts of the organisation, underpinned by an emotional commitment from the core team that will create an internal sales force.

::Step 8 - Routes to market
To succeed when planning its routes to market an organisation must do much more than maximising efficiencies: it must maximise opportunities. This will require organisations to stretch, to go beyond what is business as normal. BME's goal is to help you achieve the maximum stretch in the least time with the least RISK.

An organisation need to finds the best channels for each segment for each offering or sub offering. But given changing objectives, for example as pursuit of revenue or market share can quickly change to pursuit of profit and cost reduction, the solution needs to allow the 'route to market' efforts to be dynamically reallocated without major replanning.

::Step 9 - Infrastructure
The ninth step of the method is geared towards understanding, compiling and documenting the implications of the results of the improvements planned in the earlier steps of the method upon the infrastructure of the firm, i.e. Systems, Processes, Support and so forth.

With an assumption that most firms will have an existing IT support department or supplier, the team will utilise proprietary templates to create detailed briefs, Requirements Definition documents, etc. that will enable systems and processes support teams to design, plan and deliver infrastructure improvements to support the delivery of the new desired, improved state for the firm.

::Step 10 - Organisational Delivery
Putting it all together. The tenth step of the Method is entirely about the Performance Improvement Implementation Plan and the governance structure for managing and tracking the improvements and changes to the firm over time.

The team will work together to identify all the key areas where work must occur to enable changes and then identify all the key tasks involved in each work area, along with key attributes of that task. They will then need to understand interdependencies between work areas and examine all resources required. Using our proprietary Improvement Programme Management Model the team will create both a structure for Governance and a method for ongoing team working, planning and communication.

Finally, the team will then spend time examining the two key issues of ‘Resistance’, (who will resist these planned changes and why?) and Communication (who needs to be communicated with and when?).

The 10th step of the method, if adhered to, ensures true delivery of the planned performance improvements within a specific time period with very specific resource and cost allocations.

::Step 11 - Performance, Measurement &Tracking
The last step of the BME Method is simply about "How do we measure success?". How does the firm know when they have achieved the core tasks and furthermore, how do they know which pieces of their performance are on track or not.

The goal of this step is to examine each of the key work areas or work streams underway and in development and agree the key performance indicators (KPI's) that need to be monitored in order to track success.

The second part of this process is to determine:

Are the KPI's actually achievable - where will we get the data? Will it be accurate and timely? How to share and report it across the organisation.

All of this information is then developed over time to help the firm as it continues to develop on an ongoing, cyclical basis.