Commercial Value Management: The New Frontier of Business Success

In an era of economic uncertainty, shifting customer expectations, and relentless competition, Commercial Value Management (CVM) is emerging as a defining strategy for sustainable growth. Yet, too many businesses still operate in silos—marketing drives brand narratives, sales chases revenue, operations executes, and finance optimises margins. This fragmented approach is not cost-effective and leaves untapped value on the table.

CVM is the discipline of identifying, creating, delivering, and capturing value across the entire commercial ecosystem. It demands a cross-functional, customer-centric approach that unites marketing, sales, PR, product development, and operations under a single commercial strategy. The goal? To maximise value for both customers and the business, ensuring long-term profitability and competitive advantage.

How Commercial Value Management Works

Understanding Customer Needs - Some businesses may think they intuitively know what customers want, and, with the righty experience and insight they might be right some of the time, but assumptions are dangerous. CVM requires data-driven and evidence-based customer insights—combining behavioural analytics, direct feedback, and market research to uncover what truly drives purchasing decisions. The ability to align offerings with real-world needs based on evidence is the foundation of sustainable growth.

Mastering Market Dynamics - Value is relative. What was premium yesterday may be commoditised today. Companies must continuously monitor competitor strategies, economic conditions, and industry shifts to position their offerings effectively. The key is agility and adaptability—adjusting strategies, pricing models, value propositions, offers and go-to-market strategies in real-time based on informed insight, or if possible unique insight. This often involves more advances sensory networks, able to access insight before competitors.

Leveraging Operational Capability - Delivering value isn’t just about the offer, product or service—it’s about execution. Operations, supply chain, and service delivery must be integrated into commercial planning. Inefficiencies, delays, or quality gaps can erode perceived value and damage competitive standing. Seamless execution transforms promises into actualised value. This kind of execution is often based on well-informed, fully briefed disciplined teams that understand commercial strategy and operations of the shared values and principles of operation, not functional silos.

Driving Innovation - Incremental improvement is no longer enough. Businesses need an adaptive approach to value creation, leveraging digital transformation, business, operational and technology innovation. CVM integrates R&D, customer insights, and commercial strategy, ensuring innovation is market-driven rather than just product-pushed. Creative effort should prioritise development of core competencies that specific groups of customers appreciate and are difficult, if not impossible for competitiors to replicate.

Breaking Down Silos: The New Commercial Imperative

For CVM to succeed, businesses must eliminate the structural and cultural barriers that separate functions for example:

• Marketing & PR should not only build awareness but also shape value perception, working in tandem with sales to reinforce positioning.

• Sales teams need to shift from transactional mindsets to value-based selling, backed by deep, dynamic customer intelligence.

• Operations must align with commercial priorities, ensuring scalability and consistency in value delivery.

• Finance should support flexible pricing and revenue models rather than enforcing rigid cost structures that stifle innovation.

Decomposition and re-composition of the underlying shared disciplines that drive these functions is one way to restructure operations and drive more effective commerccial strategy, operations, value creation and delivery.

Adaptive Strategies for a Disruptive Market

To thrive in an unpredictable market, businesses must move beyond rigid, function-led models and adopt adaptive, systematic, and modular approaches that prioritise the cumulative flow of value across the entire commercial ecosystem.

Traditional departmental structures—where marketing, sales, operations, and finance operate in isolation—fail to capture the interconnected nature of modern value creation. Instead, organisations must focus on the disciplines that directly drive customer and commercial value, ensuring that every process, decision, and innovation is aligned with both market demand and business growth.

AdaptomyDNA has identified over 70 critical disciplines that support this shift, enabling businesses to design interconnected processes that dynamically respond to customer needs and market shifts. By structuring around value-driving disciplines rather than siloed functions, companies can achieve greater agility, resilience, and sustained competitive advantage.

Commercial Value Management isn’t a function. It’s a mindset. Businesses that embrace it will not only win customers but retain them, grow them, and turn them into long-term value engines. The alternative? A slow, inevitable decline into irrelevance.

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Sources

Commercial Value Management (CVM) and Value-Based Strategy

Lanning, Michael J., & Phillips, Edward G. (1991). "The Value Delivery System." McKinsey & Company.

Anderson, James C., Narus, James A., & Van Rossum, Marc. (2006). "Customer Value Propositions in Business Markets." Harvard Business Review.

Kotler, Philip, & Keller, Kevin Lane. (2015). "Marketing Management" (15th ed.). Pearson

Breaking Down Silos & Integrated Commercial Disciplines

Davenport, Thomas H. (2013). "Process Innovation: Reengineering Work Through Information Technology." Harvard Business School Press.

Rogers, Paul. (2021). "Succeeding in Agile Transformations." McKinsey & Company.

Denning, Steve. (2018). "The Age of Agile: How Smart Companies Are Transforming the Way Work Gets Done." Harper Business.

Adaptive, Systematic, and Modular Approaches

Reeves, Martin, & Deimler, Michael. (2011). "Adaptability: The New Competitive Advantage." Harvard Business Review.

Hamel, Gary, & Zanini, Michele. (2020). "Humanocracy: Creating Organizations as Amazing as the People Inside Them." Harvard Business Review Press.

AdaptomyDNA (2024). "www.adaptomy.com"

Market Dynamics, Customer-Centricity & Innovation

Christensen, Clayton. (1997). "The Innovator’s Dilemma." Harvard Business Review Press.

Teece, David J. (2010). "Business Models, Business Strategy and Innovation." Long Range Planning.

Brown, Tim. (2009). "Change by Design: How Design Thinking Creates New Alternatives for Business and Society." Harper Business.