Why 6 Degrees

While businesses may not be able to predict the future, successful businesses should be able to clarify their purpose, strategic positioning, and vision. They should understand the value they provide and what their customer experience should deliver.

At 6 Degrees Consulting we enable businesses to focus on their strategic positioning to determine which core activities are superior to those carried out by their competitors. Value creation emerges from doing this well and creating a close alignment with what customers expect and appreciate.

A business with a strong focus on aligning strategy and customer experience can also use competitor analysis to further strengthen its strategic position and reap long-term success.

Customer loyalty is more valuable than satisfaction or revenue, and for that reason 6 Degrees Consulting encourages our clients to think long-term and invest in relationships.

There are enormous potential rewards for organisations that understand and create complete and outstanding customer journeys. When the focus on customers starts deep within the business, it brings the customer experience culture and way of being to the foreground – enabling greater market differentiation – relegating the transactional activities to the background.

Think beyond digital and work to understand your customers holistically. The ‘smaller’ data you gather through conversations with customers will always provide key insights for you to act upon.

A well implemented, process automation can result in a significant competitive advantage. This is especially true for businesses who understand that the value of process automation is highest when you target high-value customer journeys and expectations.

Collecting the right data and understanding your organisation’s ideal future processes are critical for effective process automation. Along with understanding your customer data and expectations, this information is an asset to any organisation determining which processes to automate to deliver the most value.

Technology, while a significant enabler, does not guarantee you are automating the right process in the right way. Genuine competitive advantage lies with your understanding of your business, and your customer.

An organisation focused on processes and capabilities, along with an agile, flexible and collaborative workforce is highly desirable. The challenge is making this paradigm a reality.

Changing traditional operating models, cultures and behaviour is difficult, and it’s made even more so when multiple operating models co-exist. Structures are important, but we believe a clear focus on culture and organisation behaviour provides the foundation for business transformation efforts and success.

Knowing your customer experience enables a vision of the future to be created, which leads to an understanding of what your organisation and culture needs to be. This in turn informs what needs to be done, and ultimately what needs to be measured.

We advise all our clients to not lead with technology. Whilst still an enabler, technology alone will not make you a higher performing enterprise. Instead, think of technology as a contributor, but to be incorporated with the other building blocks to ensure an effective transformation.

This allows an organisation to focus on customer-facing experiences in the short-term, improving competitive advantage while growing and retaining its customers. Core business systems then evolve at a more considered pace; one controlled by – and suiting – the organisation.

Data and analytics are important; however, many organisations risk being distracted from the valuable data already in their possession. In our work with clients across a range of sectors, we consistently find organisations have untapped value in their existing data.

Resist the temptation to follow data trends without a rock-solid business case. Instead, understand customer needs and preferences through conversation and observation – this is the ‘smaller’ data we mentioned above. You can add to it by leveraging the experience of middle and senior managers.

Our experience has shown a human-centred approach enables organisations to unlock value and develop profound insights.

The successful transformation of an enterprise requires smart integration of all six of these building blocks.

6 Degrees Consulting starts each client engagement with a conversation, with the fundamental focus on the whole of the business, the transformational goals, and all integration points in between.

We seek to understand the interconnections within the business, those created by the markets in which they operate, and the clients and customers they service. We explore the strategy, vision, direction and culture, and from here we can see where there is potential for growth of the consumer base or new revenue streams.

We enable you to utilise business intelligence to make sound decisions, while we look at the business as a fully operational and evolving, interrelated series of cogs in the machine.

When clients engage with us, we take a long-term transformation view which requires us to work in partnership with our clients, digging deep to reveal unique insights about the business, customers, employees, and wider communities.

At the heart of it all, we work with people, and a strong desire to partner with our clients to enable holistic, integrated business solutions ready for the future.