Commercial maturity
Beginner / Intermediate / Expert per playbook workstream, each with its evidence and its roadmap to the next level. A journey with evidence, not a claim of excellence everywhere.
1. Commercial governance & execution discipline
One KPI hierarchy agreed and in force; monthly executive review runs from a single page; decisions and owners recorded. Forum rationalisation is partly done.
Retire the two remaining overlapping forums; pre-reads mandatory for every review; action tracker closed monthly at ExCom.
2. Profitable growth, pricing & margin management
ASP and margin are reviewed monthly. Price approval carries no margin rationale; stickiness of an announced increase cannot be measured; no price waterfall exists.
Dedicated pricing/revenue-management lead; price history extract to make stickiness measurable; deal desk and approval policy with a documented challenge step.
3. Market/customer centricity & value selling
Value-selling language exists in the field but is not a common method. No formal voice-of-customer process; competitive intelligence is anecdotal.
Value-selling curriculum with certification; recurring competitor profiles from field input rather than trade-show impressions.
4. Commercial operating model & organizational clarity
Roles of Global Marketing, Sales, Commercial Excellence and regional GMs overlap in several regions. Account ownership still sits with directors in three regions.
Approved operating model and RACI; account ownership transferred where it prevents directors from leading; spans of control published.
5. Commercial Excellence, data & digital enablement
CRM is in place with partial adoption. The opportunity record breaks before the first invoice, so no cycle-time or true conversion analysis is possible today.
Close the opportunity-to-order data break; publish win rate per rep; one prioritised roadmap for pricing, CRM and analytics under named business owners.
6. Portfolio & product-launch governance
Launch governance works: the last thin-ribbon launch held a measurable lead over the first competitor to match it. Portfolio rationalisation has not started.
Launch-to-revenue tracking per product; portfolio pruning decision on the long tail of references.
7. Strategic accounts, partners & geographic growth platforms
Three-year plans exist for the largest OEM partners with senior governance. Penetration of those accounts is still declared rather than substantiated.
Top-5 penetration probes with customer-side evidence in every region; top-to-top cadence recorded; resource decision on the single-point-of-failure OEM lead.
8. Planning, forecasting & performance management
Budget is built bottom-up. Forecast accuracy is not measured, so no track record of predictive control exists — the single largest gap in the equity story.
Forecast accuracy measured from S&OP history and accumulated over eight rolling quarters; assumptions, risks and opportunities attached to every forecast.
9. Operational reliability, service & risk management
Service level runs near 98% but is not published, so it cannot be used commercially or benchmarked. Overdue exposure in two regions is material.
Publish the service level internally, then benchmark it against competition; DSO ownership per region with a monthly overdue review.
10. Talent, leadership & commercial capabilities
Global talent review is run and critical roles are named. Two critical roles have no successor, one of them without a documented decision.
Named ready successor for every critical role; coaching cadence between director and rep operating from CRM data; onboarding programme for new hires.
Each phase closes before the next opens, so progress is shown against a stable set of measures.
| Phase | Period | What is built | Maturity claim at exit | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 0–3 months | The twelve executive scorecard KPIs from sources rated AVAILABLE. Thresholds agreed with the CEO. Monthly ExCom review on one page. Service level published internally. | Beginner → Intermediate on measurement discipline | In progress |
| 2 | 3–9 months | Customer segmentation and portfolio qualification. Top-5 account penetration probes on the largest accounts per region. Price increase stickiness from price history. Sales cycle length once the CRM data break is fixed. | Intermediate on customer and pricing management | Not assessed |
| 3 | 9–18 months | EBITDA contribution by zone with agreed proxy allocation. Rolling eight-quarter forecast accuracy. Performance tiering published. Full equity-story pack maintained continuously. | Expert on two to three workstreams, with a roadmap on the rest | Not assessed |