Services
OUR SERVICES
Our services framework covers four broad areas:
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Business Advisory: Establishing a clear under​standing of your business goals, and ensuring alignment of your people and road map to achieving them.
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Product and Service Advisory: Assessing and implementing action plans to implement product management disciplines, covering the '4P's' of your product and service offering, and how they are managed
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Commercial Management: Assessing and implementing an action plans to improving commercial governance, negotiation, and ensure better revenue and capacity management
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Operations: Assessing and implementing action plans to improve business operating models, client management, delivery and better success measurement
Business Advisory Services
Virtual non-exec or mentor
Intended for founders. boards and and senior business leaders, AFGP virtual-non exec can provide 1:1 leadership advice and support form leaders who have started, grown and sold businesses.
Unlike a single non-exec, our virtual non-exec service allows you to work with a single AFGP partner or with with different AFGP partners, depending on the area of specialism you'd like to cover.
This service is charged as a monthly retainer, either as a one-off 1 day engagement with a single partner, or a regular 1 day or two half-day sessions a month with a partner of your choice for each session.
Fractional Senior Executives
For businesses that are looking for C-level support but who are not yet ready to hire a full time senior executive. We can offer fractional senior executives who can act as:
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Fractional Chief Financial Officer
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Fractional Chief Strategy Officer
These engagements are typically charged as a monthly day commitment, ranging from 4 days per month, through to full time monthly commitments for a defined period of time.​
Leadership Focus Workshops
If you have a specific business challenge you want to crack, or perhaps you need help with crystallising a business strategy to bring business clarity, an AFGP focus workshop may be right for you. We have help you to bring your key business decision makers together to tackle problems such as:
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Defining or articulating your business vision and strategy
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Undertaking a current state business audit to identify root cause issues
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Defining and agreeing the right business KPIs and metrics
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Designing the right employee incentives and reward structures
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These workshops are usually run as intensive one or two half-day sessions for 6-10 participants. We have a defined methodology for delivering your workshops, which can be adapted to your specific needs. After the workshop you will receive a workshop output document which will summarise the key workshop conclusions and recommended next steps.
Product and Service Advisory
Productisation Strategy
Whether you're an agency or services company considering productisation, or a marketing organisation looking to streamline your marketing operations, AFGP can help you to develop a plan for success.
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Our productisation strategy services can help you to build an action plan and roadmap for productising the key elements of your product and service mix to transform them into scalable, productised offerings. We help you to plan your transition to products and can help you develop framework for reimagining both your high level product propositions as well as the commercial and operational changes that will need to happen to make them a reality​
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Engagements are typically project based and take inputs from the business strategy, internal stakeholders, market and competitor assessments and financial analysis to produce a documented strategy and action plan.
Product and Portfolio Strategy
For businesses that have already made the transformation to a product based approach, or those that want to put their productisation strategy into action, our product and portfolio strategy helps you to define the core elements of your individual product mix, as well as how products can be structured into a portfolio of offers.
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We can help you to define:
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Core product propositions and unique selling points
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Product pricing approaches to support your product and business strategy
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Product portfolio packaging, positioning and bundling
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Product sales and channel management approaches
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Engagements are typically project based and can cover the entire scope of product strategy, or can focus on specific elements e.g. pricing
Product Lifecycle Process Creation
All products require ongoing management throughout a full lifecycle, from innovation, through to testing, launch, continual improvement and eventual withdrawal. This lifecycle requires a set of end-to-end processes that can help you to increase speed to market, improve customer satisfaction, and ensure your products keep pace with evolving customer demand
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AFGP can help you to put in place the key business processes required to deliver an end-to-end product lifecycle, including design of key processes, governance and performance measurement.
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Engagements are typically project based can cover the design of a full process, or can focus on specific areas e.g. Innovation process management.
Fractional Chief Product Officer
For businesses that are looking for a C-Level product leader but who are not yet ready to hire a full time senior executive. We can offer fractional Chief Product Officer who can provide ongoing product strategy, leadership and governance. You will get a product management expert with decades of experience in developing a product organisation and managing a full portfolio of products and product managers. ​
These engagements are typically charged as a monthly day commitment, ranging from 4 days per month, through to full time monthly commitments for a defined period of time.​
Product Management Training
We have decades of experience in product management. Our training courses and coaching for those new to product management or experienced product managers wanting a refresh. We cover the full lifecycle of Product Management from strategy through to product withdrawal. We use our own experience and examples to illustrate and explain how to manage each stage.
You can attend a mixed one day course with attendees from other organisations, or arrange a dedicated course on your premises for up to 10 people. We can also follow up with regular coaching sessions where your team can benefit from ongoing support to put their learnings into action.
Commercial Management Services
Commercial Strategy
Commercial strategy is about designing and building a commercial action plan that covers the key areas of your business commercial operations. It's a deep dive into key areas that affect your commercial performance, including:
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Commercial agreements and contracting
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Discounting, bundling and creation of commercial packages
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Negotiation
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Revenue and capacity management
Developing a commercial action plan will help you to identify and prioritise the key areas for improvement of your commercial governance. This can be done as either a set of focused collaborative workshops, or as a custom project where we undertake a full commercial audit and deliver a set of key recommendations.
Revenue and Capacity Management
Agencies and consulting businesses often suffer a disconnect between front end revenue generation and back end delivery processes, leading to wide oscillations and 'feast or famine' moments. We can help you to set up better revenue and capacity management processes to help you to forecast future revenue, identify more stable revenue opportunities and better align your capacity.
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Engagements usually range from one to several weeks, where we analyse your business performance and pipeline, as well as your service structure and forecasting and make recommendations on how this can be brought into alignment.
Negotiation Training
Commercial teams are often tasked with managing circumstances that were agreed during a sales process, or during partner or supplier negotiations. This can make it difficult to reset expectations that might have already been set about pricing and commercial terms. Ensuring your sales and business teams are equipped to negotiate from the start of client or supplier contract discussions can ensure better terms and setting of expectations in a way that doesn't lead to later disappointment.
Our negotiation training programme is proven to make a difference by equipping your sales and business teams with the right tools and mindset to enter negotiations with clients confidently.
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These skills can also be useful for non sales teams, such as marketing, product and finance to negotiate better with suppliers and partners. What's more, you don't need to worry about taking people out of their day jobs for a protracted period. Our one day course will give your teams everything they need to negotiate better.
Commercial Frameworks and Governance
Your commercial management is the key to maximising the sale price of your solutions, products and services. There are three key areas for ensuring that Product Thinking has been applied to your commercial approach:
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Creating a structured approach to setting standard pricing, commercial positioning between services, and ensuring that you are setting out your offer in the most attractive way.
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Establishing rules, process and governance of how those standard prices are brought together in a compelling way to encourage the client to buy.
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Setting in place acontractual framework that you use to manage the scope of the work, the risk profile of it, the payment model and the change process.
AFGP can work with you to define and implement a simple, easy to follow commercial approach across these three areas that delivers on the client experience you want to have and streamline your internal processes to make that experience effective and efficient to deliver.
Fractional Chief Commercial Officer
For businesses that are looking for a C-Level head of commercial but who are not yet ready to hire a full time senior executive. We can offer fractional Chief Commercial Officer who can help you to establish consistent commercial operations, negotiate contracts and improve general commercial management. You will get a commercial expert with decades of experience in negotiation, contract management and commercial operations​
These engagements are typically charged as a monthly day commitment, ranging from 4 days per month, through to full time monthly commitments for a defined period of time.​
Operations Management Services
Operations Strategy
If products and services are your source of revenue, then operations are where you make your profit. Operating efficiently and effectively is essential to ensure you can deliver on your promises, and that you can do it profitably.
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Our Operations Strategy service takes a deep dive into your operations process and uncovers areas of improvement. By taking an operational audit we can identify hot spots where you can adapt your operational strategy, operating model, client engagement model and measurement processes to improve operational performance.
Engagements are typically project based and take inputs from the business strategy, internal stakeholders, client feedback and financial analysis to produce a documented operational strategy and action plan.
Operating Model Design
An operating model identifies the key business functions required to deliver value to your clients, as well as profitability to your business. It defines how your business should work to deliver on its strategic priorities. Client needs and commercial and business priorities are constantly evolving. Many businesses fail to adapt their operating models to adapt to this change. A change in commercial model, technology, or client requirements can often necessitate a new way of operating.
We can help you to define and design the optimal ways of working that put your business strategy into action. Increase efficiency, build agility, improve governance, and grow employee satisfaction with the right team structures and processes.
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​Engagements usually range from one to several weeks, where we analyse your business performance and pipeline, as well as your service structure and forecasting and make recommendations on how this can be brought into alignment.​​
Client Engagement Model Design
There are many ways of engaging with your customers and clients. Different clients and segments have differing expectations about how they like to be managed. Often there are significant costs associated with managing different clients, which need to be managed efficiently. Having a clear idea of how you want to manage clients to maximise share of wallet and ensure profitability is critical.
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We have years of experience in managing different sales channels and engagement models - from self service through to face to face client management. We can help you to segment your customer base, apply the right engagement model and define all the resources and tools required to maximise revenue and return.
Engagements are usually highly bespoke and will last several weeks. We take into account feedback from client teams, clients, product management, production and finance data to thoroughly understand client engagement effectiveness and where improvements can be made to deliver on business priorities, whether that be customer loyalty, or improved revenue or profitability.
Success Measurement
Manage what you measure and measure what you manage. Most business reporting measures are retrospective. Sales, revenue and margin are very important metrics, but often provide only limited insight into why you were successful and what you need to do in the future. Understanding which business metrics that really act as lead indicators that predict business success is critical to continually improve your business performance and achieve your business goals. This is especially important if you are making a change to your business strategy, such as implementing productisation, which will demand an entirely new approach to business metrics.
With a thorough understanding of your business goals, we can help you to identify the critical success factors and align your teams around performance metrics that are meaningful, help them make better decisions and drive better results.
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Engagements are typically project based and take inputs from the business strategy, internal stakeholders, clients and financial analysis to produce a refined list of KPIs and metrics.
Fractional Chief Operating Officer
For businesses that are looking for a C-Level head of operations but who are not yet ready to hire a full time senior executive. We can offer fractional Chief Operating Officer who can help you to design your operating model, establish consistent business operations and manage business performance reporting. You will get a commercial expert with decades of experience in business operations.​
These engagements are typically charged as a monthly day commitment, ranging from 4 days per month, through to full time monthly commitments for a defined period of time.​