Business Strategy and Design, Since 2008
We help telecoms, technology, media and utility companies find where product, deals and cash get stuck, then redesign the models, services and partner channels that free them.
A first conversation with our founder, Lorne Mitchell. Free, and without obligation.
What We Do
Our clients are mostly in telecoms, utilities, technology and media, growing across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. We change how the business works, not just what it sells.
Grow through resellers, managed service providers and systems integrators, with the right partner model for each market.
Redesign the business model or target operating model, and the customer and product journeys behind it.
Turn what you sell once into services, and build the recurring revenue that secures your future.
Market entry across EMEA, from desk research and structured interviews to the first qualified leads.
Post-merger integration, preparing a company for sale, innovation audits, and leaner processes and systems.
Our Method: The Innovation Flower™
Our logo is our method: five functions that must keep flowing, a red hexagon for the issues nobody owns, and purpose at the centre. Where is yours stuck?
Where is the pain?
“Are we using our company’s assets efficiently and reducing waste?”
Issues that cross functions, fit nowhere else and that nobody owns. Most of our projects start here.
Get an Objective ViewFaster time to market
“Are we innovating faster than our competitors?”
Product redesign, platform strategy, and turning products into services.
Get an Objective ViewFaster time to order
“Are we realising the maximum value for our products?”
New channels to market, partner programmes and market entry across EMEA.
Get an Objective ViewFaster time to deliver
“Do we consider enough options before taking a course of action?”
Delivery models, outsourcing, and the hand-off between sales and installation.
Get an Objective ViewFaster time to resolve
“Are we listening deeply enough to our customers’ ideas and concerns?”
Support models, customer insight, and mining every customer conversation for better ideas.
Get an Objective ViewFaster time to revenue
“Are we earning enough recurring revenue to assure our company’s future?”
Lead to cash, recurring revenue models, and less bad debt.
Get an Objective ViewPurpose at the centre
“Take time out to think, so you can focus on what really matters.”
The mission at the heart of the business: where contradictions get resolved and every function lines up.
Get an Objective ViewSelected Work
Client names stay confidential. The work doesn’t have to.
Delivery and Installation
The world’s largest VoIP provider
We assessed the risk in each of its supplier networks, then recommended changes to operating procedures and systems, and a new governance structure. The client put it in place.
Implementeda new governance structure
Marketing and Sales
A Chinese software house
A top-down view of the opportunity across EMEA, built from desk research and structured interviews. Along the way, a coincidence became a qualified lead, and a sale.
6 Monthsfrom that lead to a signed sale
Product and Platform
A large European managed service provider
With software vendors selling direct, we built scenarios for new cloud integration services, market by market, and the industry-specific partners to deliver them.
Delivery and Installation
A smart-city scheme, with our partner CBN
We redesigned the exchange point, where networks meet, for a city’s cluster of digital businesses. Part-funded by the UK Government, the scheme won a NextGen award for technology innovation.
2016NextGen award winner
How We Work
We start where it hurts: the issues that cross functions and that nobody owns.
A clear picture of where you are heading, and a roadmap that bridges vision and reality.
We test the drivers behind each objective before you commit, to deliver faster and with less risk.
Objectives flex as new information arrives, without the disruption of starting again.
Who You Will Work With
Lorne founded Objective Designers in 2008. He has spent more than 30 years creating, designing and implementing new business models, with leadership roles at BT, PwC and IBM, and has guided clients across many industries through their transformation strategies.
We draw on another passion too: the honeybee. A colony of individuals that works as one organism has taught us a great deal about organisations.
“Lorne is a natural. His ability to show complex things in simple ways is unique.”
“This is the closest thing I have seen to Business Design!”
“I never realised that we could combine innovation and transformation in such a creative way!”
Mostly companies in telecoms, utilities, technology and media: national operators and global firms with operations across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. We have worked in other sectors too.
Designing how the whole business works: its model, its services, its channels, and the flow between product, sales, delivery, support and revenue. A brilliant product can still stall if the business around it is blocked.
Our model of any business, and the source of our logo: five functions that must keep flowing, a red hexagon for the issues nobody owns, and a white centre for purpose. It helps a team agree where it is stuck, fast. Download the free workbook (PDF, opens in a new tab).
Yes. Growing through indirect channels is our particular niche: resellers, managed service providers, systems integrators, and the right partner model for each market.
With a conversation about where it hurts. We agree the problem, who is involved and what success looks like, then propose a scope that fits.
Yes. We are based in the UK and focus on clients with operations in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
Share the challenge. Lorne will come back with an outside view of where the blockage is, and how we would approach it.
“This is a truly groundbreaking way to look at any business and how it fits with the Circular Economy.”
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