Beyo Global 2021 Round-Up
Another year passed, it’s time again to reflect, remind myself of what I’ve done and accomplished (in small or big scales) and summarise them in the most succinct way possible.
Following my round-up articles for 2019 and 2020, here goes my 2021 (not in chronological order).
Travelling did not happen this year as the companies I work with have been restricting work-related travel for their employees and anyone who works with them which is a sensible thing to do. In spite of that, I worked across 26 countries virtually (across 18 timezones).
I cherish the relationships I have with my clients and the people I work with. I’m lucky that many of the teams I work with welcomed and treated me as part of their internal teams. That helps as we can then have healthy discussions to deliver the best output and outcome. I take pride in making sure I’m adding and delivering value to my clients.
This year, most of the work involves long-term partnerships than one-off engagements. It is gratifying as it showed that they appreciate the value I offered and can offer them, and they enjoyed working with me!
Defining design and various business strategies
In the first quarter of the year, I was pleased to also work with Arrival (NASDAQ:ARVL), the electric vehicle manufacturer, as they were looking into defining their design, marketing, servicing and business strategy in one of the Asian countries (confidential). At that point, they were right at the start of their strategies setting journey. Therefore, the output played an important role in laying the groundwork, informing many of their business decisions moving forward, including the early stage of their vehicle design, as well as experience and service design. The cultural insights, relevant regional context and laws were crucial to enable Arrival to make the necessary adaptations between this market and other countries.
“Chui Chui was great to work with. The insights we gained from her work was invaluable and the quality of the final output was fantastic. Will absolutely be working with Chui Chui and Beyo again! Thank you for your help on this project.”
Continuous support for further growth
I have been working with the Spotify Growth and Subscription Europe team for the past few years. This year, we continue looking into the potentials and strategies for Romania and the Czech Republic. One of these markets has been performing relatively well and Spotify wanted to explore ways to further grow the market to another level. For the other market that has a relatively low conversion rate in comparison despite it being one of the markets with the greatest potential from a TAM perspective, the team wanted to identify what might cause the low conversion and most importantly, explore the opportunities for improvement (e.g. partnership, marketing, campaigns, editorial content, payment methods, offers, pricing, etc). With the way we shaped the research and put together the gathered insights, for each market, we confidently identified at least five key ways which could impact not only the conversions but also strengthen Spotify’s brand in each market.
Spotify announced its launch in Russia in July 2020. I had the pleasure to be a small part of their thorough and intense preparation and planning before the launch in 2019 and 2020. Early this year, I had the opportunity to work with the Growth and Subscription team again to update insights on the Russian market (from my years of global experience, Russia is one of the few markets that goes through changes in a more drastic way than other countries). The ultimate aim was to examine key factors that would drive the Premium conversion and increase the number of paid subscriptions in Russia.\
Spotify offers various payment methods against three propositions for its Egypt users. The team recognised that the payment setup and infrastructure might have caused an increase in the churn rate in this market. I, therefore, worked with the Spotify MEA Growth team in investigating this aspect.
Product proposition strategies
Netflix introduced a new Free plan in Kenya and Vietnam, launched in September and November this year, respectively. At the beginning of the year, I had the opportunity to work with the teams to explore the design and proposition of this new plan, in preparation for the launch.
Spotify launched in 40 additional African countries in February 2021. In summer 2020 (pre-launch), I worked with the New Market team looking into their two higher potential markets in Sub-Saharan Africa, Kenya and Nigeria, to explore how the business can ensure a successful launch and to have a sustainable business model in selected markets within this region. Just before the launch this year, we were brought in again to work with the Spotify Premium Proposition Strategy team on a large survey (>3,000 in sample size) to further understand Kenyans and Nigerians’ behaviours, mentality and attitude towards paying for premium audio streaming services. The output enables us to identify the different proposition strategies for two top user tiers with their TAM in both markets.
I ended this year with an 8-country research piece for the Spotify Premium Proposition team on one of their unique propositions. The main objective of this piece is to understand if they are achieving product-market fit with this specific proposition among their desired opportunity audience in these markets. Insights would be used to inform the development of the strategies for this proposition to achieve their target in five years so they have to be solid and accurate. It was an intense, yet interesting project. The whole project took about 8 weeks to complete - from having the first conversation with the client about what is needed to achieve to setting it all up with eight different local teams to managing the research focus and moderation to around 6,000 hours of research sessions to analysing a ton of insights to finally wrapping up with clear next steps. It’s a satisfying piece of work and it’s a good way to end the year especially at the end of the project, the client (Senior Premium Propositions Manager) says:
Various projects with the same team on music providers
Since summer 2019, I started working with the Spotify Content Platform teams (Operations, Design and Product Insight) on various engagements. This year, I also worked closely with the team to look into how Indian culture and its context might influence digital users’ views, attitudes and sentimental towards digital audio content moderation (e.g. what do they view as violated, harmful and concerning content and why, their expectations towards reporting, how are they different from Liberal markets such as the US, etc). We wanted to explore the role Spotify aspires to play in this domain, potentially to be an industry leader in the content moderation space.
Spotify Content Platform team is constantly in the mission of defining the best strategies to improve the experience of Indies, label-distributors, artist-distributors and delivery platforms in all regions, for example, when delivering, ingesting, managing their catalogues and releases. One of the key things is to for the team to have a complete view of the world and context of their providers. It’s a complex, yet very interesting industry. I’m constantly learning new terminologies and how the music industry works (including legal, licensing, infringement, etc) since I started working with the Content Platform team 2.5 years ago.
Another engagement I enjoyed working with the Content Platform team was to explore Spotify Preferred Provider Program to help them have a better understanding of the programme in the eyes of the providers and how it fits (or not) into their context, as well as the overall value of the programme to providers as well as areas for improvement. The benefits of having a successful strategy execution are multifold for Spotify. The team to enthusiastic about and eager to serve its providers better to ensure shared success for all parties.
New partnership
A new relationship was established too with SEEK (who also owns many brands such as JobStreet, JobsDB and many more) this summer. We have a series of collaborations (and it’s ongoing). One of the first engagements is to explore the perceptions and experiences APAC job candidates in some of their markets (Australia, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong and the Philippines) have on fair hiring (on discrimination, bias, unfairness) and data trust. This is an interesting topic because it not only touches on the cultural aspects but also each country’s political setup and social norms (although it involved many early mornings).
Another of our recent projects was on one of their emerging markets. They wanted to get a better understanding of this market (especially with the hirers) to better target it with the right product, marketing and sales approach. We were able to unpick and discover potential opportunities for SEEK Asia to explore further, including offering unique strategies for this market.
Appreciating my global experience, I was also being asked to coach and provide guidance to the SEEK research and design team. It includes creating a playbook for doing research with tips and cultural insights of their key Asian regions (Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand) that would be important to consider when planning and conducting (all types of) research in these countries.
As far as establishing a new partnership, I’m also lucky to be brought into the Oomph team supporting them on a high-profile project in one of the Gulf countries.
Coaching and setting up UX capabilities
At the end of 2020, I started to work with the Edenred team as they were going through an intense company reorganisation process. They wanted to make sure that as part of the reorganisation, the UX and Design capabilities and teams are well structured (which then includes hiring and coaching teams and individuals). Part of the efforts also includes making sure the appropriate product design and development practices are in place. All in all, it was a good year of working together with them.
I also had the pleasure to support and coach the team at StatsBomb in various forms. Charlotte, the COO, summarised it better than I could in an unprompted post (shown below) which was a nice surprise to me. We worked together for a year, with my involvement reduced as the team grows bigger and stronger.
Even better, Charlotte and her team have actually coined a new term for me, ‘Chuification’! I love it.
Innovation sprint in Financial Services
I was also being invited to join a team pulled together by Edenred for an 8-weeks innovation sprint to, exploring the future of payment technology and develop portfolios of new growth ventures. One of the joys of this engagement was that I get to work closely with a group of very talented, bright people.
Growth strategy workshop
Storytel, an audiobook company, acquired UAE-based Arabic audiobook platform Kitab Sawti in 2020. The MENA team wanted to explore how they can tackle and grow their markets in this region. They had some data, hypotheses, assumptions and questions but were not sure how much do they really know about their customers and the markets, and what are strategies should be put in place to grow this region (e.g. increase conversion rate, engagement rate and retention rate). We had a constructive workshop helping them to have a clear idea of their target customers, locals’ awareness and perception about audiobooks, the context and behaviours associated with their consumptions and willingness to pay, use and stay.
Public sharing: Speaking and workshops
I have this love-hate relationship in giving talks mainly as the preparation could sometimes take days, if not weeks, regardless of the length of the talk (30 mins or 60 minutes). But, the preparation is often the best opportunity to dig deeper into the subject and topics I’m presenting, to challenge myself in presenting them from different perspectives and of course, the presenting bit is often fulfilling and rewarding in many ways.
This year, I was grateful to be invited to speak at these great conferences and community events: UX Bristol, Business of Software Conference and Technical Communication UK (TCUK). I’ve also given a few talks for in-house clients’ teams (e.g. design team, growth team).
“Your talk was fantastic! You have an amazing capacity to share your enthusiasm and your knowledge. You are a genuine researcher, interested in details and peculiarities. And your talk is always illustrated with great examples. We had really great feedback from the rest of the team. 👏.”
Giving virtual talks has its perks but I am, like many of you, beginning to itch for being on the physical stage, being able to see the face, expression and body language of the people I’m speaking to, and being able to have more in-depth, meaningful conversations to form real connections.
Public sharing: Podcasts interviews
This year, I was pleased to be invited for podcast interviews with SME Strategy and Leadership and UX Brave. I thoroughly enjoyed them (and I hope you do too if you have a chance to listen to them) especially the latter. In the one hour conversation, we covered a lot of grounds, often from a very different angle (thanks to Brendan being a great host who does a lot of research upfront about his guests and asks interesting questions).
I love doing podcasts as the conversations and discussions I have with the hosts often stimulating and can sometimes inspire new ways of thinking. Of course, I’d like to think what I share would be insightful and helpful to the listeners, or have some levels of positive impacts on them, what they do and their ways of thinking. Look forward to more opportunities in the new year for more podcast interviews.
Shared resources
Early this year, I officially launched our very own Global Design Guide which is a perfect source and best practices capturing all the essential information you would need to make informed design decisions specific to each region.
“These guides are great cultural cheat sheets giving guidance and insights into so many nuances that might affect one’s success or otherwise when working in these markets!”
This year, I’m written several articles which I’ve shared via my website. There’s one article in particular that has been well-received: How to create an adaptable and scalable international markets framework.
“I really enjoyed your article since it summarizes really well the shortcomings of different short-term and even mid-term approaches. Your article can be very helpful for organizations having a difficult time visualizing the benefits of an adaptable framework. At the end of your article, you provided a very simple but insightful example where readers can visualize the benefits of thinking of international products from a “platform” or “modular” perspective. An international product vision where the modularity of product allows companies to adapt their product portfolio based on individual market plans.”
Thank you and looking forward to 2022
I would like to thank everyone I worked with and crossed paths with. I’m grateful for the opportunities as well as the relationships and friendships we curated in 2021.
I look forward to yet another great year in 2022.
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If you’re interested in hearing more about any of the work mentioned, need support in defining your global strategies and proposition to grow in different markets, or would like me to run workshops or speak in conferences (or in your organisation), feel free to get in touch.