When you are in business school, many discussions center on two well-known types of business model: consumer and business-to-business. In my work environment, these two models are not generally well understood. To some extent, that makes sense, as the primary goal of my peers in this business is to publish content, not create business models. However, even in this environment, failing to understand these two business model distinct dynamics can lead to misunderstanding or at least over-generalizations.
Most everyone understand the consumer business model. The biggest problems I see are when that model is over-generalized to the business-to-business model.
Understanding the business-to-business (B-to-B) model is just as important as understanding consumer business. In fact, I would say it is more important if only because it is less intuitive.
Here is an example of the B-to-B model: If you make airplane propellers, your customers are a select group of people. The buyers are not consumers at the end of a supply chain; but rather, companies that produce planes. The plane production company then supplies airplanes to companies who, in turn, sell tickets to consumers to travel on those planes that are built using those propellers.
In the B-to-B model, you must be especially careful how you treat the relationships with your customers. In the propellers example, the market for your goods is exceedingly limited. The number of places where you can sell propellers is limited even in the airplane market. Not even all airplanes use propellers. Hence, your relationships with your buyers are very important. .
When you are in a B-to-B industry, you must find a strategic balance between innovation and consistent, on-time delivery. Innovation is less important than, say, in the smartphone applications consumer market. Blue Yonder Airplanes, the propeller buyer in this scenario, is mostly interested in the propellers you contracted to sell them. They don’t need you to innovate as much as they want you to deliver, consistent, reliable propellers. You can innovate internally and make propellers to specification, just at lower cost or more expediently. That is a good business strategy while still meeting the requirements of your customers.
Therefore, your company, Contoso Propellers, the propeller plane supplier in this scenario, must focus on delivering on-time, consistent quality. You should not focus on expanding your market share or innovation if that deprecates the quality of the goods you are delivering. If you mess up a relationship with an existing buyer, your ability to remain a going concern dwarfs any other concern you have in your business.
Contoso Propellers should work creatively as a supplier of propellers, but it’s going to be a tough sell to convince Blue Yonder Airlines that they should switch to jet engines because you are innovating. Or alternative transportation modalities, like jet packs. Why would a supplier try to convince its customer to switch to jet engines or jet packs? If the supplier wants to keep buying the propellers and Contoso Propellers is making money, why bother? Yet it happens all the time. Often, because of a failure to understand that B-to-B is different than the consumer business model.
Presumably, your buyers know what they are doing, and so should you. You want to work with them whenever they design a new prop plane. Mainly, you should be constantly improving on making the propellers you make. It’s okay that you don’t have a propeller smartphone application. Focus on continuous delivery of the goods efficiently and on time as long as you are able to make money, as opposed to being distracted by and distracting your customers with shiny new gimmicks.
Focusing on the right things is equally as important when you create documentation for software. Like the propellers in our example, documentation professionals produce content that meets a type of requirement. Sometimes these are legal requirements. Sometimes they are industry or team requirements. But like the propeller supplier, you should focus on being great at meeting those requirements quickly and efficiently.
Getting distracted by trying to push innovation and gain market share poses the same risk as in the propeller marketplace: you make the buyer unhappy. It might not be someone who is literally buying your content but that doesn’t diminish the importance of meeting the requirements of the downstream consumer.
In a lot of content publishing, you are providing content that is a component of a greater whole. A developer team isn’t a customer in a consumer model. The website where the content will be published is the product. The documentation is just a part of a greater whole in a B-to-B model. That isn’t to say you must avoid looking at new opportunities to expand your business or avoid innovation in developing content. Just strike the same balance in delivering consistent content efficiently with any innovation efforts. Innovate internally by improving your speed and quality in meeting the requirements.
Understanding your business better, you can apply important principles that help improve any of the B-to-B models that you encounter. These business principles are a few basic ones, but finding good principles is not the problem. For example, Deming’s principles, are just as sound today as they were in the 50s. Do some reading and put them to work. But as you start viewing your work as part of a B-to-B model, be sure to apply the common sense principles that you discover.
Use your creativity and that of your co-workers to dynamically improve your processes. You should engage with the “buyers” providing the requirements to see if any streamlining is possible. But you shouldn’t distract your propeller buyers with the documentation of a jet pack while at the same time failing to provide them with what they need.
Eventually, if you persistently miss their expectations, your content consumers (buyers) will conclude that you don’t “get it.” They will lose confidence in your business. Your ability to supply them with what they need is your ticket to remaining in business. Don’t lose sight of this by confusing your business with a consumer model.
Sidebar:
Consumer-oriented business is the business model most people understand. From paper towels to mobile phones, we all understand that marketing, sales, and production are all geared to innovation and garnering market share. You buy lunch as a consumer. We all understand how it works because we are consumers almost every day. You make a cool phone or gadget and hope that the public agrees and buys a ton of them. The consumers of your gadget rely on the continued influx of entrepreneurial innovation. The difference is that in a consumer model, the end of your supply chain is the final consumer, who consumes the value. In the b-to-b model, the end of your supply chain is not the consumer but someone who uses your contribution to add value to something that they in turn deliver downstream.
Note: I republished this to fix a couple of typos and grammar break-downs that were making the article less clear. The use of revision marks (tracking changes) can sometimes bite you in the backside. And it's been a learning experience for me to go to this longer form. Simple, declarative writing is still good writing. Once again, I'm reminded of that.