To determine a Go-To-Market Strategy, RPGC evaluates your platform’s capabilities, company culture, and appetite for risk. Our findings, coupled with key competitive market dynamics and product differentiators, clearly define a strategy with breakpoints that determine success or failure based on your goals and constraints. 

Our consultants have assisted financial institutions, merchants, payment service providers, payment technology companies, and real-time payments providers in qualifying, quantifying product impact, pricing, and launching products in new markets, both geographic and vertical.

Product/Service Conceptualization

When setting out on a new market venture, level-setting and Governing Principles are critical. Our Go-To-Market engagements must begin with a client-defined vision of success set within a specific timeframe. RPGC’s process guides clients to empirically-made decisions through the following framework:

After the initial conversations about entering a new market, or determining a new product-market fit, RPGC and our clients jointly determine the company’s Governing Principles. The Governing Principles are:

• The specific and measurable objectives (e.g. increase revenue by a certain amount or percentage or in a certain timeframe, increase customer base by a certain percentage).
• Identified “no go” areas (e.g. cause damage to relationships with current partners, disrupt existing partnerships, or require unacceptable regulatory compliance).
• Existing product discipline thresholds (e.g. company will not build a certain function without a threshold of ‘X’ demand or for a new customer generating Y revenue).
• The assessed relative appetite for risk and disruption.
• The economic parameters that market entry must comply with in order to merit focused effort (e.g. local offices) or additional fundraising. Any other objective that Company and RPGC jointly agree to define and quantify.

The Governing Principles determine the priority weights for risks and benefits in future analysis. In our experience, we’ve seen Go-To-Market initiatives demand answers to hard questions upfront (rather than deep into a launch).

The Entity-Relationship Model

As a part of Discovery, we interview stakeholders and develop an Entity-Relationship Model. While often perceived as a technical exercise, RPGC uses an Entity-Relationship model to identify how all the actors (e.g. customers, sub-merchants, agencies, etc.) and elements (e.g., invoices, payment instruments, etc.) interact with each other. The Entity-Relationship model is useful to identify friction points and define business rules, finding workable compromises, and implementing best practices. Use cases, regardless of vertical, get exposed, and considered during this exercise.

Product/Service Requirements

At this stage, RPGC helps you determine a product concept’s Unique Selling Proposition and requirements necessary to realizing a minimum viable product for specific markets, whether they be geographic or vertical-specific. We also document the primary use cases that are most relevant or unique to the chosen market. Our documentation includes market messaging indicators to enhance the Unique Selling Proposition. 

The Go-To-Market Heatmaps

RPGC uses Go-To-Market heatmaps to qualify potential Initiatives for further consideration. To make these Heatmaps, we rank and prioritize your company’s needs based on the collaboratively established Governing Principles. Further, we define product gaps and other material considerations that could impede progress. The result of this process is a pool of independently validated ideas which include indicators of their alignment to the Company’s overall objectives and guiding principles relevant to entering the U.S. market. 

Feasibility Analyses

The objective of the Feasibility Analyses is to validate the use cases, customer benefits, risks, and costs of implementing product concepts. When combined, the Commercial Financial and Technical Analyses fully depict an Initiative’s market opportunity to help you decide whether to proceed with market research or a pilot program.

Commercial Analysis

This is an assessment of the Initiative’s desirability in the marketplace. We ask questions such as will consumers adopt the product or service? What is the value proposition? Do competitors offer similar products? What commercial resources will be required to implement it (e.g. legal, sales, support)? What organizational changes would be required to support the Initiative?

Financial Analysis

This is an assessment of the potential financial benefits of the Initiative. We ask questions, like how much can a new product or service charge? What would be a good revenue share scheme with external parties?

Technical Analysis

This is an assessment of how simple or difficult it will be for you to develop the products and services defined by the Initiative. We ask questions such as, must all the underlying technology be developed internally, or are there partners that can provide the desired features and functions? What will be the operational impact on IT to develop and launch these new products?

Market Research

RPGC and the Client jointly agree on the evaluation principles, criteria, and competitors upfront. Then RPGC reviews the marketplace using that evaluation criterion to generate raw findings while using the evaluation principles to contextualize our analysis. From these raw findings, RPGC is able to present market best practices, customer demand for features, and recommendations for a unique value proposition.

Target Operating Model

The Target Operating Model defines the ideal client-managed environment within a two-year roadmap. It consists of the Business Framework, the Architectures, the Gaps Analysis, a two-year roadmap, and recommendations for an ideal working state, as further detailed here. Our recommendations are arranged so that you can begin to implement them in the most effective manner while causing minimum disruption to the business. Using such roadmaps will maintain the balance between payment and fraud costs as established by the  Business Framework, all while enhancing the customer experience.