A LOOK INSIDE: HOW EMPOWER DESIGNS BUSINESSES FOR LONG-TERM GROWTH
Written by Jessica Murray
At Empower, our tagline is “Business design for long-term growth.” When we unveiled our visual identity and logo, I briefly described what we mean by “business design.” As I mentioned then:
Business design is also an emerging strategic approach that combines business analysis, innovation and design-thinking principles to optimize business models. This concept is key to our work and, consequently, our visual identity.
In short, business design is the process of designing a business — putting the building blocks together to build a viable business model. There are emerging frameworks for business design, and while those are structured, rigorous and academic, at Empower, we’ve applied it slightly differently, through our lens of optimizing business operations to drive greater success.
To give you a peek into our process, I’m going to explain what designing your business for long-term growth means in practice. I could probably write pages on this topic, but you’d stop reading. So, I’ll aim to balance context with brevity 😊
In the end, Empower helps you:
Free up more time to focus on growth and strategy instead of daily business activity.
Improve operational agility.
Align your strategy with execution.
More efficiently manage resources.
Deploy strong business systems, processes and workflows that can handle growth without compromising quality.
Let’s get into it!
Business analysis
At the core, we want to understand how you’ve architected your business.
We view the business as a set of interconnected systems working together to power all activity and deliver your products and services. Changes in one area can impact the whole operation. To ensure we’re designing your business for a long-term future, we examine each piece of the whole and then identify areas for optimization.
If you work with us, business analysis starts before you even sign the proverbial dotted line. It begins with the first conversation. Once you’re officially onboard, we take you through an onboarding survey that enables us to go deeper, test our hypotheses and assumptions, and gather materials to complete a well-rounded assessment.
What do we examine?
A lot of things. Here’s a condensed list to give you an idea:
Strategic alignment
Business model review
Market and customer analysis
Brand and go-to-market approach
Operational reviews of key systems, processes, workflows and bottlenecks
People and resource allocation
Financials
Technology
This paints a balanced picture of your past and present. We must invest the time to know where you’ve been and, importantly, why, so that we can most effectively guide you to where you want to be.
What business analysis isn’t
It’s not a 1-hour call during which we throw out a bunch of poorly crafted ideas and leave you trying to figure out how to take action.
Innovation
Designing a business for long-term success requires innovation and creativity. At Empower, we strive to think differently about how to streamline operations and uncover new opportunities.
Innovation can take many forms:
Process improvements
New business models
Technology adoption
Market expansion
Sometimes, small, consistent improvements to how your business runs can move the needle substantially. Other times, more disruptive approaches may be necessary, requiring bold changes to your market approach.
Coming from the tech startup world, where fast-paced innovation and creativity aren't optional but essential to stay competitive, I've ingrained this mindset into Empower's philosophy. We approach each of our business partners with curiosity, not preconceptions, and use that inquisitiveness to create innovative solutions every time.
What innovation isn’t
It’s not pushing a new software platform that promises to solve all your problems at once.
Design-thinking principles
Design thinking focuses on problem-solving with the user’s (i.e., customer’s) needs at the forefront. This customer-centric approach is something we strongly believe in at Empower — when designing a business, it’s critical to balance profitable business models with customer desirability and overall feasibility.
Whether through building empathy for your customers, developing an awareness of their needs and challenges, studying user behavior, speaking to customers directly or analyzing their journey, we want to be grounded in their mindset when they interact with your brand as much as we understand yours as representing the business.
Making this a key part of our process encourages collaboration and brings together diverse perspectives, helping surface creative solutions that enhance your entire ecosystem. In addition to benefitting your business’s operations, using aspects of design-thinking principles can lead to greater customer satisfaction and loyalty, also crucial to your long-term growth.
What design-thinking principles aren’t
It’s not applying an approach that came directly from a case study just because it worked for another business.
Bringing it all together
By combining these three pillars — business analysis, innovation and design-thinking principles — we’ve crafted a method of working with Empower’s partners to design the next stage of their businesses.
We understand that as a business owner or startup founder, you may be facing growth challenges rooted in operational bottlenecks and resource constraints. Our goal is to help break through those barriers and build a stronger foundation.
If you’re ready to elevate your business and want to learn more about how we can help, let’s start a conversation. Head into 2025 feeling confident your operations can support your goals.