This set of terms are related to the concerns of individuals who must create and improve a business model for an enterprise. Many of the terms relevant to this area are shared terms, and appear in that list instead.
Business Partner
A partner to the enterprise, usually another enterprise that benefits from a relationship with the enterprise in question.
Cost and Revenue Models
The cost and revenue models represent both the costs and revenues that are indicated by the business model. This provides an understanding of what costs that the model requires and the revenues that it will generate from various channels.
Customer Type
A customer type is a segment or grouping of customers based on common attributes, useful for the sake of documenting and describing shared demands, interactions, concerns, or assets. Examples: “Large volume distributor,” “Merchant Bank,” “Small office / home office,” “General E-mail user”
Geographies and Locales
The geographies and locales element describes the specific physical locations and contexts in which the products and services will be offered. This is a critical and necessary part of the business model as it is both enabled by, and directly impacted by, the abilities of various business partners as well as the demands of the customers. Many evaluations of a business model will focus on opportunities to extend the business through the consideration of additional geographies.
Partner Type
The business partner type describes the relationship between the enterprise and external entities that that cooperate to provide value. Partner types include: suppliers, vendors, sales partners, agents, service providers, distributors, retailers, and value-added resellers.
Products and Services
This element of the business model contains a description of the specific products and/or services offered by the business. It is important to recognize that the specific products or services developed must derive from customer demands in order to effectively provide value. This relationship, between customers’ demands and the products offered, is the central focus of marketing in many organizations.
Required Competency
An area or group of business capabilities where the business must excel in order for this business model to be successful. This is a general concept, not a specific grouping of business capabilities. This part of the business model drives the need for specific business unit capabilities to perform at higher-than-average levels of effectiveness and efficiency.
Resource / Asset
Part of a business model, a resource can represent anything that the business must employ, possess, or control in order to deliver on a required competency.
Value Proposition
The central notion of a business model, the value proposition describes how the enterprise, through its activities, adds value to the consumer or marketplace. The Value proposition binds together the notions of customer demands, required competencies, revenue models and business partnerships. It is a statement from the viewpoint of the target customers that informs everyone “why” the business’ products and services are valuable.