Customer value

Decision

Build every service value proposition in this order:

1. Use Jobs to Be Done to define the progress the buyer needs.
2. Use the Value Proposition Canvas to connect that job’s pains and gains to a bounded service.
3. Use the owner value questions to choose the economic or risk consequence that should lead.
4. Attach measures and evidence before writing the message.

These are not separate workshops. They are one chain from customer situation to a testable offer.

How the methods work together

Step	Method	Question answered	Output used by the next step
1	Jobs to Be Done	What progress is the buyer trying to make in a specific situation?	Job, trigger, desired progress, constraints, and current alternatives
2	Value Proposition Canvas	What makes that job difficult, what outcome matters, and how does the service address it?	Ranked pains and gains mapped to service controls and boundaries
3	Owner value questions	Which consequence is important enough to fund?	Lead value, supporting value, and the responsible owner
4	Measurement and evidence	What would show that the promised change occurred, and what can FZF support today?	Baseline, direct measure, contextual measure, claim status, and next experiment
5	Positioning and qualification	Why act with FZF, and is this account a fit?	Buyer-specific message for Positioning and the Sales playbook

1. Define the job

A job is not “automate billing” or “improve visibility.” It describes progress under a real condition.

Use this form:

When [trigger or operating situation], help [primary buyer or team] make progress from [current struggle] to [desired operational state], so that [business consequence], while [constraints and retained decisions].

Example:

When approved staffing time must become client-ready invoices across different document and portal rules, help the billing team keep complete records moving and isolate exceptions, so that avoidable pre-invoice delay can fall, while Finance retains approval over revisions, resends, credits, and disputes.

Capture four parts before discussing features:

• Trigger: What changed or recurs now?
• Progress: What must move from one state to another?
• Struggle: Where do waits, failures, workarounds, or uncertainty appear?
• Constraints: Which systems stay, which evidence is authoritative, and which decisions remain human?

2. Map the value proposition

The Value Proposition Canvas forces a direct fit between the customer profile and the service. Rank each item; do not create an exhaustive feature inventory.

Customer side	Service side	Fit test
Job — progress the buyer needs	Service boundary — workflow FZF will control	Does the scope cover the complete high-consequence path without becoming broad transformation work?
Pain — delay, rework, exposure, uncertainty, or coordination cost	Pain reliever — rule, gate, owner, alert, exception path, or integration	Does the control change the cause, or merely display it?
Gain — faster movement, lower effort, greater capacity, safer compliance, or protected revenue	Gain creator — observable operational change	Can the buyer accept a measure and baseline for it?

Apply three filters:

1. Consequence before inconvenience. “Aged invoice value” is stronger than “too many spreadsheets.”
2. Cause before feature. “Unsupported packages stop before delivery” is stronger than “document dashboard.”
3. Controlled outcome before broad outcome. “Approved-time-to-delivery” is more attributable than total DSO.

3. Choose the owner value

Every service must answer these four questions before describing Workflow Control:

1. Does it lower avoidable cost?
2. Does it protect or increase revenue?
3. Does it let the existing team handle more work?
4. Does it reduce a material compliance, legal, safety, or client risk?

Choose one lead. The others may support it. If no answer is concrete enough for a buyer to baseline or fund, the workflow is not ready to become a service.

Service	Current lead value	Supporting value	Important limit
Staffing Billing Control	Reduce avoidable delay before a clean invoice reaches client AP, targeting working-capital pressure	Lower rework and increase billing capacity	FZF cannot guarantee payment timing, DSO, factoring acceptance, or cash released
Staffing Workers’ Compensation Control	Prevent internal missed actions or evidence from adding avoidable claim cost or exposure	Improve handling capacity and support safe return-to-work coordination	FZF does not control injury severity, medical care, legal outcomes, carrier behavior, premiums, or claim decisions

Both lead values remain hypotheses until measured at the level defined in Validation and evidence.

4. Create a measurement contract

A value proposition becomes actionable when the client and FZF agree on:

• Workflow boundary: first event, completion event, excluded paths, and retained authority.
• Direct measure: a condition FZF can materially affect, such as elapsed time, exception age, completeness, duplicate rate, or manual touches.
• Contextual measure: a broader result influenced by other parties, such as DSO, claim cost, days away, or throughput per FTE.
• Baseline: source, definition, period, quality, and owner.
• Observation window: when and for how long the result will be assessed.
• Decision threshold: what change would support Build, Run, expansion, or stop.
• Evidence permission: private operating use, anonymized reference, or public proof.

Do not substitute a projected ROI for a baseline. Use the canonical evidence ladder to label the resulting claim.

Reusable service value template

Copy this structure into a working note before proposing a new service:

# [Service name or candidate working label]

## Decision
- Portfolio state: [candidate / validated concept / lead]
- Primary buyer: [one role]
- Trigger: [event or recurring condition]

## Job to Be Done
When [situation], help [buyer/team] move from [struggle] to [desired state],
so that [business consequence], while [systems and decisions that stay].

## Customer profile
- Job:
- Top three pains, ranked:
- Top two gains, ranked:
- Current alternatives:

## Value map
- Workflow boundary:
- Controls that relieve each pain:
- Observable changes that create each gain:
- Explicit exclusions and retained authority:

## Owner value
- Lead: [cost / revenue / capacity / risk]
- Supporting value:
- Budget owner:
- Why now:

## Measurement contract
- Direct measure and baseline:
- Contextual measure and outside factors:
- Observation window:
- Decision threshold:

## Evidence
- Strongest current evidence:
- Allowed wording:
- Unsupported wording:
- Next experiment:

After completing the template, test distinctiveness with Positioning, claim strength with Validation, and portfolio fit with Prioritization.