The Fit for Purpose Framework (F4P)

The F4P Framework includes guidance on segmenting your market by customer purpose, determining the criteria customers use to make a selection amongst competitors, and a powerful call for action on metrics and KPIs.

The F4P Framework combines both narrative- and data-based approaches to sensing customer segments, their criteria, and assessing fitness. Your company can use these to serve their customers better and to find the right customers to serve. Understanding market segments defined by purpose and understanding customers’ fitness criteria should be among your business’ core strategic capabilities to ensure organizational alignment and the long-term survivability of the business.

About the Course

This course dives into the F4P Framework giving participants a complete overview. It introduces each component of the framework including:

• The three components of a product or service
• Metrics
• Knowing your customers and why they choose your products

The course gives actionable, pragmatic, and evidence-based guidance on how to know your customer through a human and narrative approach as well as through surveys and data. It introduces the A-Z matrix for better decision-making and explains how to segment your market by purpose and satisfy each customer type. The course covers common fitness criteria such as quality, affordability, and optionality. Participants also gain an introduction to classes of service and how they can help businesses become more resilient. 

We know that in the real world, there is no "silver bullet" when it comes to strategic marketing, that is why we included a course conclusion on possible blind spots that can be present using the framework and how to overcome them by integrating the F4P framework with existing methods. 

Course Format

Participants will learn through lecture videos by David Anderson, exercises, reading, and more. Our new self-paced learning portal gives users an interactive experience to enjoy our course material at their own rhythm and time. Participants can connect with other course users and trainers via an online forum. At the end of the course, participants take a final exam. There are two opportunities to pass the exam and earn your course certificate from the David J Anderson School of Management.

What Are the Benefits of Adopting the Fit-for-Purpose Framework?

Understanding fitness-for-purpose will enable you to find, satisfy, and keep customers in a manner that is more robust and more efficient than perhaps you have been achieving until now. Understanding fitness-for-purpose is the first step toward long-term survival for your business in the complex markets of the 21st Century.

Throughout their professional and personal lives, the authors of F4P observed many businesses and spotted several important contrasts. First, they saw such a huge variety of customer needs that one could run a robust business by simply giving customers what fulfills their purpose. But they noticed at the same time that the strategy conversation in many companies focuses not on those customers, but on competitive analysis. Second, fulfilling customer purpose requires attention to several components, yet many companies obsess about just one of them at the expense of others. Third, customers choose products and services by relatively few criteria, yet many companies drown in data and metrics. Fourth, frontline staff are a great source of knowledge about customer purpose, yet the frontline staff in many companies are among the shortest-tenured, lowest-paid, and most disconnected from the decision makers. 

This list could go on. it is clear, though, that these four gaps cause real pain to businesses and their customers. Closing these gaps will create better businesses and satisfied customers. The Fit-for-Purpose Framework gives pragmatic, actionable guidance on how to accomplish that. 

Participants who pass the final exam will earn the Strategic Marketing and Customer Experience certificate from the David J Anderson School of Management. 

Who should attend?

• Product managers
• Service designers
• Service delivery managers
• Those who work in product strategy, strategic planning, market research or marketing
• Product owners
• Business analysts
• People responsible for contact with customers, defining requirements and identifying customer needs
• Those who oversee these functions in senior executive roles

Course Contents

The course includes video  lectures, exercises, reading, and more to help you explore:

• An introduction to fitness for purpose
• Creating fit-for-purpose products
• The 3 components of a product or service
• Fitness criteria
• The 4 types of metrics
• Market segmentation by customer purpose
• Classes os service
• Surveys and data
• The A to Z decision matrix
• Blind spots to the framework and how to overcome them with integrations