Talgat, who owns an Almaty analytics reporting service, brings in a three-year plan: SEO, webinars, advertising and a new website. Meanwhile Zhanar is negotiating two jobs. A small retail chain needs one clear report every month. A large company wants its own system with new integrations. The plan has a budget for the website, but no answer to which of these jobs the company wants to repeat for the next three years.
The service is the same as in marketing in the P&L: a standard package at 60,000 ₸ a month, 20,000 ₸ of variable fulfilment and 40,000 ₸ of contribution. In the closed month, 180 companies paid for and received the package. The figures and offers in the example are made up.
A choice the company can repeat
Segment
Small retail chains
A suitable task and data from supported sources
Value
A comparable monthly report
Sales, assortment and shared calculation rules
Delivery
Input format, reconciliation, report and review
Custom integrations are outside the standard package
A choice must change the offer
Strategy links the customer, their task, the value and the activities through which the company creates that value. Harvard Business School describes it as a combination of distinctive value, a system of activities and trade-offs. In practice a simple test is enough: after reading the strategy page, a salesperson knows which request to say yes to and which to take to the owner first.
The service picks small chains whose owners regularly merge exports from several stores and argue with store managers about the totals. The promise is a monthly sales and assortment report that can be compared month to month because the calculation rules are written down. The promise is far more precise than "analytics for any business": the client needs the right task and data from systems the service works with.
The choice has a price. The service does not promise any integration within the standard package. In return it gets a process it can repeat: the same input format, reconciliation, report and review with the client. If every sale turns into a new product, 20,000 ₸ for fulfilment stops being a realistic assumption.
The service's strategy page
| Question | Working choice |
|---|---|
| Who it is for | Small retail chains that regularly need to merge data and use a supported accounting system |
| Which task it solves | A report the owner and store managers read the same way |
| What it promises | A monthly report on an agreed data set with consistent rules |
| How it shows it can deliver | A seven-day pilot on the client's export with their permission; the reconciliation can be repeated |
| How it delivers | Two supported accounting systems, a standard set of tables, an owner for quality |
| How it acquires clients | Explains the task through sample reports; tries direct acquisition and suitable partners |
| What repeats | The next report, a review of changes and support for the agreed sources |
| Where the boundary lies | A new integration, a custom ERP or round-the-clock support needs a different decision and a different price |
In the working document, "two systems" becomes their names and versions. The developer, Bekzat, checks the names and versions, and does so before anyone promises a client compatibility. The seven days of the pilot are counted by the rule in the offer card, and the website and sales explain it the same way.
You refine the segment by talking to clients about how they work now. A chain may be small but already have convenient analytics of its own. Another fits by size but cannot export its data. Store count helps you find the audience; whether a client will pay for the task only comes out in conversation.
How the activities support the economics
Standard sources mean fewer ways to connect. Consistent calculation rules mean fewer arguments about totals. A sample report explains the offer before the meeting. And sales asks about data before the pilot and does not hand Yernar, responsible for delivery, a task that clearly will not fit.
In the closed month, 180 packages at 60,000 ₸ brought 10,800,000 ₸ of revenue. Fulfilment cost 3,600,000 ₸, and contribution came to 7,200,000 ₸. After 200,000 ₸ of advertising and 6,800,000 ₸ of other fixed expenses, 200,000 ₸ was left before tax. The fixed row covers the whole team's payroll, rent and shared services. Advertising and fulfilment are not included in it a second time.
Now suppose new promises push the cost of fulfilling the standard package from 20,000 ₸ to 35,000 ₸. With the same 180 clients, contribution falls to 180 × 25,000 = 4,500,000 ₸. After the same 7,000,000 ₸ of advertising and fixed expenses, the result is minus 2,500,000 ₸. Revenue did not change. What changed is what the service actually sells.
That is a reason to revisit the package contents, the process or the price. New integrations can become an offer of their own if the company knows how to estimate and support them. What will not work is writing "standardisation" in the strategy while agreeing to every wish in sales: the budget will describe one service and the team will deliver another.
What a 3-5 year horizon means
A long horizon is for things you cannot build in one campaign: repeatable onboarding, a library of calculations, a partner channel, a support team. On that horizon the company chooses a direction. Only the nearest stage gets a detailed plan, a budget and a condition for moving on; later stages stay a sketch that can change.
The service's first stage is to confirm the task and the standard delivery. The team reviews pilots, preparation time, rework and whether clients want to continue. The second is to repeat the sale and the service so that manual work does not grow with each new order. Only after that is it worth looking at a neighbouring segment or another data source.
A result opens the next stage; a date on the calendar does not. If in year two onboarding still depends on Bekzat's manual work, it is too early to scale advertising on the old model. If the standard works but one webinar brought the wrong people, sort out the webinar's topic and audience first. You do not change markets over one webinar: that decision needs pilots, payments and client conversations over several months.
Record assumptions and review conditions
Keep a list next to the strategy page: what the team knows, what it assumes and which observation would make it change its mind. For the service, that means how regular the task is, whether data is available, what fulfilment costs and whether clients keep paying. If buyers want only a one-off report, the monthly service will have to be rethought.
Evidence can come from interviews, real pilots, a log of fulfilment costs or closed client cohorts. For each source, write down which question it answers. An approved mock-up says the offer is understood. A repeat payment says the relationship continues. To prove that the new offer itself brought the payments, you need a test with randomised groups, and a small B2B service may not have enough clients for one.
When you review the strategy, look for what contradicts the chosen direction too. Otherwise any result becomes a reason to carry on: sales are low, so there is too little advertising; delivery is expensive, so there are too few clients. An assumption is worth writing down only if you know in advance which result would make you change your mind.
A large deal outside the standard
Suppose a corporation offers 240,000 ₸ a month. Yernar estimates fulfilment for this job at 180,000 ₸ a month, and the new integration costs another 120,000 ₸ once. Monthly contribution is 60,000 ₸. If the client pays for and receives three months, revenue is 720,000 ₸, fulfilment 540,000 ₸, and after the integration work 60,000 ₸ is left before acquisition and shared expenses.
The price is four times the standard one, yet that alone is no reason to take the job. First you need the commitment period, payment terms, the cost of support and a sense of how much time the project will take from other clients. Three months in the calculation is a scenario. Until they have happened, it is future money.
Saying no may protect the standard business. Saying yes may start a new line of business if Talgat gives it people and accepts its economics. The dangerous third option is to call the job standard, leave 20,000 ₸ of fulfilment in the plan and hand the team new commitments without discussion.
Exercise: a page for making decisions
Fill in the eight rows of the strategy page for your own product or a client's. Add three main assumptions, the observations that will test them and one offer the company does not take in its standard form. Write down which resources the nearest stage needs and what is deferred.
One more calculation for the service. What happens to the corporate job if the client leaves after the second paid and delivered month? Does that change the decision?
Over two months, revenue is 480,000 ₸ and variable fulfilment 360,000 ₸. All the contribution, 120,000 ₸, goes on the integration work, and nothing is left before shared expenses and acquisition. The decision now rests on how well-founded it is to expect continuation, whether the job has other benefits and what the busy team costs. The project can be taken on as a deliberate bet, but the third payment does not go into money already earned.
Video: plan and strategy
A Harvard Business Review video. After watching, find the decision on your page that made you give something up.