Business Concepts are used to standardize the terms and definitions of the data objects and attributes stored in the Cloudburo IT Platform . It’s a full and factual representation of the business reality grounded in business concepts relevant for the platform and based on a textual description.
In the area of DDD it is known also as Ubiqitous Language
The vocabulary of the Ubiquitous Language includes the names of classes and prominent operations. The Language includes terms to discuss rules that have been made explicit in the model. It is supplemented with terms from high-level organizing principles imposed on the model (such as Context Maps and large-scale structures,). Finally, this language is enriched with the names of patterns the team commonly applies to the domain model.
A company will offer a set of products each of it will bundle dedicated service items of the company (which are based on the capabilities of its employees). If necessary the product will be complemented by additional physical or electronical good items (e.g. text book) which are complementing the product.
For example: Marie Meyer (product owner/consumer) will order the dog education course “PD11” together with her dog Bebbo (associated consuming thing). Her husband Frank Meyer (personal relationship to Marie as husband) wants also to participate with Bebbo in the same course and will order the PD11 with the same dog. For the dog, the legal registered dog owner (thing relationship) is Marie, which is an important fact which must be printed onto the course certification statement.
The Core Concepts are the foundation of the three core operating processes, which are driving - according to John Hagel - the company performance.
A product is based on a product template, which defines in a generic way the content of the product and its service provisioning features. So the template will contain the collection of services which are included in the product (as well as potentially additional goods). A service has a service description, as well as a service duration (e.g. course lesson of one hour). Within a product template a service occurence can be one to multiple time. In case a service will occur multiple time within a product template, a service occurence periodicity may be defined
For example the company “Universal Language School” has the capability to provide the service of teaching lessons for the English language. One of its courses is offering advanced English language education and is offered to the customers as “English Language Course Advanced”, which consists of eight lessons of 90 minutes.
So the product template for this course would include the service “English Teaching Lessons”, with a duration of 90 minutes and an occurence of eight. Furthermore the product would include an additional good item, the English grammar book.
Furthermore a service may be provided by a employee with the necessary service capability know how and may have a default service price.
In our example A “English teaching lesson” can be provided by any employee with the capability of “English teacher” and may cost 80.-.
Out of a product template a product instance can be created, which is purchasable by a customer. The product instantiation includes the following step:
The product instance is visible to the customer, which can study the product sales descriptions, what kind of services are included, as well as if there are any additional goods delivered. The description includes any terms and conditions, as well as possible sales restrictions on a product or service level.
A customer can buy the product via a product order. The bought product will belong to the product owner and its included services are linked/associated with the product consumer (which could be another person as the product owner). Beside the product consumer the ordered product may include an optional associated consuming thing which will play an important part of the product service delivery .
For example in dog teaching classes, a puppy course is provided for the dog owner (product consumer) together with his dog (associated consuming thing). Or a baby swim course is provided for the mother together with her baby.
As a convention a a product order may have one product consumer and optional one associated consuming thing.
A product may include the following feature types
For a micro company with its limited and constrained resource power, it’s mandatory that the staff can focus on activities which will increase their customer base and market penetration. From the above business types the customer relationship managment backed by an efficient product commercialization process of its capabilities will be key.
Normally product innovation doesn’t really play a significant role in a micro company (well there are few people which have some dedicated capabilities which they want to commercialize), as well as infrastructure operations and the hassle of maintaning and running it should be outsourced.
The following key metrics are relevant in order to track the performance of the micro company in the above key areas
Customer relationship management is all about connecting with a set of customers, getting to know them deeply and delivering more and more value to them. The metric that drives the performance of this core operating process is simple: customer life-time value. Customer life-time value itself is a function of three variables:
[(Profit generated per year) x (years of relationship)] – cost of customer acquisition
Similar to customer relationship management, the metric that drives the Product commericalization core process is simple: product life-time value. This metric can also be decomposed into three variables:
[(Profit generated per year) x (years of market life)] – cost of developing the product