Define your customer’s hassle maps

Chris_Wynder

Three simple steps to supercharge your Go To Market strategy

Over the last decade, I have consulted with IT teams, Information management consultants and Developers. I have found that the best way to create Solutions that are widely attractive is to develop a hassle map.

What is a hassle map?

Very simply is a way to triangulate:

1. Value to user
2. Priority to the organization
3. Define technical requirements

Whether you are an IT leader looking to rationalize your Application strategy, a VAR looking to help your customers prioritize or a ISV/App developer looking to get started with value based product management. The steps are the same for both internal and external use cases….the outputs and next steps are different.

Why is this different and more useful that other methods?

It actually takes advantage of several techniques but takes the deep expertise out of it. I was an IT analyst with Info-Tech Research Group for many years-our customers were cost-conscious with high security demands. This made them very pragmatic and it also meant that many of the management consulting tropes were simply not accurate.

I learned that processes and tools for creating a strategy were almost always given to the most junior staff members. So we created tools that led a junior staffer through a strategic process.

The hassle map is one of those tools that came out of that logic; a tool that can be owned by a junior staffer but will provide unique insight for leadership. It became my go to tool for implementations of ECM and records management systems- as it allowed us to define the actual needs in a way that included both the business owners, users and the IT team.

I have re-built it as a teaching tool that has provides real world useful insight as part of the learning process.

The outputs generate:

1. Clear requirements for IT to build
2. Create a prioritized list for business owners to define budget
3. Allow users to input their needs to ensure a valuable solution.

The steps:

1. User Concerns: At the base level; why are users unhappy/unproductive. What are the key processes that impact their ability to “Get @#$% done”? In their words what is the problems?
2. Persona definition: Who works with whom? and what does each user care about?
3. User priorities: how does the users concerns and their personal needs align with the key processes?
4. The Hassle map: Flip from person to process. For each process what steps are “a hassle” for multiple users? Can we pinpoint a common issue/need for a specific steps?

What’s the catch?

There are two major parts that I have glossed over:

1. Who your target is: You have an identified industry and some high level idea of who your buyer is….this is a whole different can of worms; one that I’ll address as part of the up-coming “OCP academy” webinar that I am doing for OpenText Developer Showcase
2. What comes next: as I hinted at the outputs really depend on your next steps. Sometimes it is a “simple” as a statement of requirements, sometimes it is a implementation plan….both of which there are lot of really good examples out there. However, if you are looking for a GTM plan that is more difficult. (I’ll also include this in OCP academy)

I have created a Excel template that takes you through the first four steps plus includes step 5 which is consolidating it into an GTM prioritization list.

Customer Journey Tool_V1.xlsx

Want to learn more?

OpenText 2023 Patient Experience hackathon (video tutorials) and our Hackathon community are good places to start. Join our 2024 hackathon on Sustainable Medtech

Resources and citations

Developer Tools and Technology updates:

Tech and Gadgets | @ChrisWynder | Flipboard: Tech and Gadgets

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