The canvas model has become a well-established methodology for the agile and assertive creation of business models.
Its objective is to provide a broad and holistic vision through a board where several questions, divided into 9 fields, must be answered in order to advance the creation of a business model with an innovative positioning focused on differentiation.
Check out all 9 fields that make up the canvas business model:
- Key partners
- Key activities
- Value offering
- Key features
- Customer relationship
- Channels
- Customer segments
- Costs
- Receipts
Created by Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur, the canvas business model has a website called Strategyer where you can download various free resources to assist you in creating or even redesigning your business.
In this post, we’ll talk more specifically about one of the key fields of the model: the elements of the key activities business model.
Check out: How to Organize a Small Business Using the Canvas Model
The key activities business model: What’s included?
Before we get specifically into defining the key activities business model, it is important to understand a little more about your business.
Divide the board into 4 broad areas based on questions:
- What?
- Who?
- How?
- How much?
Thus, you can distribute the 9 fields in the following way, in relation to each of the questions:
What?
Concerns the value proposition of your business.
Who?
Or for whom. It involves customer relationship fields, audience segmentation, and channels to reach them.
How much?
Here the fields under consideration are the cost structure and revenue sources of your company.
How?
It is at this point that the key activities will be defined, as will the key partnerships and the resources.
Let’s see, below, the 4 questions specifically created to help define the key activities business model.
See also: How to make a business plan: The 4 best tools
The key activities business model: The 4 questions to ask
So, as we said, key activities refer to how you’re going to make your business work.
Thus, you should keep in mind, at this time, activities such as manufacturing, sales, distribution, use of Information Technology, marketing actions and stakeholder engagement.
1- For our value proposition to work properly, what activities should we develop?
So if your value proposition targets a premium product placement, you should consider activities like branding, the search for a quality vendor, sales force training, and quality control, as key.
2- What distribution channels do we need to develop?
So, will your company opt for physical stores? In this case, will they be exclusively your own stores or will there be resales by other brand’s stores? Are you thinking of e-commerce? Will that be proprietary and exclusive or through a Marketplace? And how about the franchise of physical stores (and even online), is this a possibility?
3- What client relations activities should we employ?
In this case, customer service, client support, SAC, websites, blogs, publicity and advertising, vendor training and attendants, and all other activities where there’s a point of contact with the public should be analyzed, to verify what’s exactly included in your key activities business model.
4- What activities refer to sources of revenue?
This encompasses much more than sales per se, but includes product development, pricing, forms of payment, relationship with financial institutions and payment intermediation, among others.
The important thing is to define your key activities and take advantage of the proximity of the other fields of the canvas to therefore have an integrated view of all the other key points of the business and answer each question for a broader picture.
See more: Lean Business Model Canvas: For Every Type of Organization
So, after defining your key activities business model, model the flow of these processes with HEFLO, the free and intuitive BPMN modeling tool, you can access through the cloud.