Can One Business Unit Have Two Revenue Models?

Siiquent earns money by the blade, while Teomik earns money by the razor. Hospitals being limited by budgets and bureaucracy, Siiquent focused on earning money off competitively-priced consumables like test kits and compounds, and sold itself off their customer service. Teomik, on the other hand, appealed to researches and institutions who could afford to buy high-priced machines.

Imposing a unified front in terms of business models is often a preferred strategy for companies — it provides stability and structure for which companies can form a strategy for. Constantly shifting models can be seen as opportunistic and confusing for customers.

But trying to force a single business model in this case favors the product instead of the customer. A successful business model is based not on the product but how it fills consumer needs to the best possible fit — in this regard, we are essentially dealing with two different products, and there is no use in trying to make them one. While unifying models often provides stability, I believe Siiquent and Teomik seem to have this stability already through their competitive advantages. I don’t think either is arguing to be so fluid as to bend to every customer’s demand, but simply to allow their strategy to be multi-faceted based on established markets.

It seems like the best place to start a merger is with the things that can be easily merged, such as customer service. From there, unifying the companies starts with unifying a mission statement, and figuring out how their combined market/consumers fit that statement. The conversation continues with laying out each others strategies, ideating new ones, and seeing which aligns with the aforementioned mission best.

Avatar

About the author