Service Propositions: Bespoke vs Standardised

We cover Service Propositions (i.e. what do you offer your clients) in the fourth live session of the Legal Mini-MBA

We spend some time discussing the trade-offs between offering bespoke vs standardised services drawing from Corporate M&A, FinReg and checks notes fast food…

Rather than pit bespoke vs standardised as a binary either/or choice, we introduce some nuance – illustrating tailored, modular and segmented approaches in between the two extremes

This is a model based upon Lampel and Mintzberg (1996) and is summarised in the image below

Ultimately, it’s a matter of picking your poison. Whilst the ability to customise the service increases towards the left, so too does operational complexity

All well and good if clients are willing to pay. Less so if they’re not

But whilst standardisation reduces operational complexity, it also reduces the ability to customise the service and, potentially, to meet client needs

There’s no one right answer here. The most appropriate course of action is highly dependent upon context and the nuances of individual practices

But as a steer beyond “it depends”, if clients are asking for more choice or customisation you may want to move from right to left

Conversely, if there is pressure on delivery (be that cost, or bottlenecks) you may want to look at moving from left to right

This is probably the session Darren and I geek out on most, not least because both of our MBA dissertations were around modularity, which is the concept shown in the middle

Service Propositions sit at the heart of the outward facing elements of running a successful practice (i.e. what do your clients want!) and the internal, operational elements around how that service is delivered effectively and profitably

And a linchpin for Pricing – which is our next topic!

Spectrum and trade offs of bespoke vs standardised services