- Which markets do Isolde and Emanuel target respectively? How do their respective business/revenue models align with their markets?
Isolde is the head of Siiquent and they are targeting the gene-diagnostics market within hospitals and big diagnostic labs. Emmanuel is the head of Teomik and they are targeting the academic market within universities and research labs for gene-based studies. Emmanuel’s business model of selling machines (instead of stuff) aligns with the academic market because customers in those markets are not as budgetarily pressed as customers in the consumer market are. Research labs and academic institutions whose sole “ouput” is research can better justify purchasing expensive machines since there isn’t as stringent of a budgeting process that monitors incoming and outgoing revenue – largely because there is no incoming revenue (no products/services being sold). Teomik’s model of selling stuff (instead of machines) aligns with their market because their customers are profit-generating businesses and need to show profitability at the end of their year. It is much harder for them to justify purchasing an expensive machine than it is to justify purchasing a cheap machine and then resupplying the equipment as demand rises. Both markets have different appetites for risk due to the nature of their work and the business models that Teomik and Siiquent employ, take this into account.
- What are the pros and perils of “imposing the structure of a single revenue model” vs. “letting [the company] continue on its flexible way”?
The pros of a single structure are the costs and processes across the company can be reduced as now, instead of having two sales teams and two sales pipelines, you would only have one. Operationally, you can run a much tighter ship and spend a lot less on “repeated” expenses. However, the con is that a single business model won’t be able to capture customers in both markets as the two markets have very different needs and risk profiles. You risk spending more on operation vs potentially losing some customers.
- Pretend that the CEO has decided the department heads must merge their divisions together. As a star PM assigned to mediate this interaction between department heads, how would you scaffold the discussion to ensure a fair merging process?
I would first sit down with both heads of the department and try and come up with a list of priorities. Are we valuing customer satisfaction above all? Are we valuing operational cost reduction? Are we valuing employee satisfaction and retention? So on and so forth. I imagine the individual heads will have different incentives and goals from the CEO so I would include him in this list-prioritization task as well. I think once the heads, CEO, and I can agree on a list and order of priorities, we can go on and tackle the next few steps. The “building” phase for this merger would include me creating a plan of what the division would look like post-merger – in other words, what employees would stay, what the org chart is, what the business model is, etc. In the building phase, I would conduct extensive interviews with the employees in both divisions across different sub-departments (sales, customer service, etc.) as well as talk to customers of both divisions. I would strive to make an overview plan instead of a detailed plan that way, if iteration is needed, it would not be a waste of time. Once I have this overview, I would reach out again to the heads and the CEO to get feedback. I imagine doing this cycle of feedback-iterate-build many times before a final proposal is made that will get total consensus.
