Are you sure about the value your business offers? It’s really important for companies to regularly check their value proposition. This helps make sure they are effectively telling their target audience what makes them unique.

Checking your value proposition can show where you can do better and make sure your message connects with your customers. In this article, we’ll talk about why it’s important to audit your value proposition and give practical tips for doing a good check.

This is an important exercise for any business, whether you’re just starting out or have been around for a while. It’s important for staying competitive in today’s market.

What is Your Value Prop?

An internal audit activity’s value proposition includes assurance, insight, and objectivity. It provides assurance on an organization’s governance, risk management, and control processes, helping them achieve their objectives. It also offers insightful analyses and assessments for improvement, and serves as an objective source of independent advice for governing bodies and senior management, supporting integrity and accountability.

To measure its effectiveness, the internal audit activity’s value proposition should align with the organization’s goals and objectives while impacting their achievement. This value should be demonstrated through constructive recommendations and support, enhancing the organization’s efficiency, credibility, and quality.

To maintain relevance, internal audit activities should continuously reassess their processes and outputs, aligning with the organization’s strategic, operational, financial, and compliance objectives. Remaining informed about industry trends and best practices and adapting to changes in the business environment is critical to ensuring ongoing relevance and value.

Start Your Value Proposition Audit

Good Points of Your Value Prop

The value proposition of internal auditing is strong because it focuses on assurance, insight, and objectivity.

Assurance provides valuable insights into an organization’s governance, risk management, and control processes, helping it achieve various objectives.

Insight acts as a catalyst for improving effectiveness and efficiency by offering recommendations based on data and business process analyses.

Internal auditing serves as an objective source of independent advice for governing bodies and senior management.

These elements set internal auditing apart from competitors and showcase its ability to deliver integrity, accountability, independence, efficiency, credibility, and competence.

These specific benefits and unique selling points highlight the unmatched value that internal auditing offers to stakeholders.

Parts that Might Need Work

Some parts of the value proposition may need work. These include assurance, insight, and objectivity provided by internal auditing. These are important for an organization’s success and should be continuously improved to address evolving governance, risk management, and internal control needs.

Assurance needs refinement to effectively support an organization’s strategic, operational, financial, and compliance objectives. Insight could be enhanced by developing more robust improvement catalysts and refined analyses and assessments to provide valuable recommendations.

Objectivity may require strengthening to maintain integrity and accountability, offering more objective and independent advice to governing bodies and senior management. By continuously addressing these aspects, the value proposition of internal auditing can be strengthened and optimized for better effectiveness to meet the dynamic demands of the business environment.

Key Parts of a Value Proposition

Clear Message

To make sure that a value proposition is clear, focus on the main elements of value delivered. For internal auditing, these include assurance, insight, and objectivity. By emphasizing these three concepts in the value proposition, stakeholders can better understand the value provided by the internal audit activity.

Clear messages in the value proposition involve visual representation and practical sub-values. Using visual tools, like intersecting circles, can help convey the message clearly and memorably. Breaking down the value into sub-values, such as governance, risk, control, catalyst, analyses, and accountability, provides a more detailed understanding for stakeholders.

To measure the effectiveness of the value proposition in communicating a clear message, assess stakeholder understanding and perception. This can be achieved through surveys, interviews, or feedback sessions with primary stakeholders, such as audit committees, boards of directors, and senior management.

Benefits Over Features

When considering a value proposition audit, it’s important to clearly communicate the benefits of a product or service over its features.

For example, instead of just focusing on the technical specifications or attributes of a product, it’s crucial to emphasize the value it brings to the customer. This can be achieved by highlighting how the product or service meets the specific needs and desires of the target audience.

By showcasing how it solves a problem or fulfills a desire, the value proposition becomes more compelling and relevant to the customer. Additionally, providing evidence or proof of the success and effectiveness of the offering is essential in gaining the trust and confidence of stakeholders.

Proof of Success

Internal auditing can show how their value proposition succeeds through measurable outcomes and impact. They can track their value over time by assessing the effectiveness of governance, risk management, and internal control processes. Audits provide data analysis, assessments, and recommendations, demonstrating the value delivered. Customer feedback from various sources can also validate the success of their value proposition.

Using this feedback in communication with stakeholders will help them understand areas for improvement.

Unique Selling Points

A product’s unique selling points are its special features that make it different from others.

For example, it could be long-lasting battery life, easy to use, or great customer service. These features set the product apart from competitors and address specific customer needs. By highlighting these benefits, a business can show the value of its offerings to its audience and stand out in the market. For instance, a product using eco-friendly materials can appeal to environmentally conscious consumers. This sets it apart and connects with a specific group of customers. Understanding and communicating a product’s unique selling points is crucial for creating a strong value proposition that resonates with customers and drives business success.

Ask Your Customers about Your Value

Understanding the main value of your product or service is important. You should compare your product or service to the competition’s value proposition. This will help you see what makes you stand out. Ask your customers for their opinions—they are your most valuable resource. Their perception of your value, and how well they understand your value proposition, can provide insights you may not have considered.

Considering how your customers view your value proposition can lead to important insights. This approach can help make sure that your internal audit activities effectively communicate the value of their work to important stakeholders like audit committees, boards of directors, management, and audit clients. Internal audits help improve an organization’s effectiveness and efficiency by providing insight and recommendations based on analyses and assessments of data and business processes.

Look at What Your Competitors Do

Analyzing your competitors’ positioning in the market can help improve your own value proposition. By observing competitors, you can gain insight into the strategies they use to communicate their value proposition. Understanding your competitors’ approach can provide valuable lessons for refining your own messaging.

For example, observing how competitors address customers’ needs and preferences can identify unique selling points for your business.

Additionally, seeing how competitors emphasize their strengths can inspire new ideas for your own value proposition. Analyzing your competitors can ultimately help you sharpen your value proposition, setting your business apart in the marketplace.

Make Changes to Your Value Prop

Small Tweaks First

An effective value proposition is important for an organization’s internal audit activities. It helps stakeholders understand the value the internal audit activity provides by offering assurance, insight, and objectivity.

Small tweaks can enhance the value proposition. For example, are the sub-values of assurance, insight, and objectivity clearly communicated to stakeholders? Can they understand how internal auditing provides assurance on the organization’s governance, risk management, and control processes, and how it delivers insights based on analyses and assessments of data and business processes?

To assess the clarity and effectiveness of the value proposition, internal auditing teams can consider testing new communication ideas and methods of explanation. Additionally, internal auditors should periodically review and update their value proposition to reflect changes in the organization or industry, to remain relevant.

By making small tweaks to their value proposition, internal audit activities can ensure that stakeholders continue to recognize the value they provide and remain engaged with their work.

Test New Ideas

One way to test new ideas is by piloting them in a small, controlled setting first. This helps identify potential issues and areas for improvement before implementing them on a larger scale. Market research and customer surveys can provide insights into how the new ideas are received and whether they align with the target audience’s needs.

Tracking and measuring the impact of the new ideas over time can be done through metrics like customer satisfaction scores, sales data, and customer retention rates. By regularly monitoring these metrics, organizations can assess the success of the new ideas and make adjustments as needed to continuously enhance their value proposition.

Do People Understand Your Value?

Explain It to a Friend

When explaining the value of internal auditing, it’s important to communicate the key parts clearly. These include assurance, insight, and objectivity. These are the three core elements of the value delivered by internal auditing.

To make small tweaks and test new ideas, one can focus on expanding the explanation with sub-values such as governance, risk, control, catalyst, analyses, assessments, integrity, accountability, and independence.

By doing so, one can effectively explain the value proposition and receive feedback. They can make adjustments to ensure the value proposition is effectively communicated and understood. This may involve considering alternate values for language translation.

Listen to Customer Feedback

Organizations should listen to customer feedback to drive improvements. Methods include regular surveys, feedback forms on websites, social media engagement, and direct channels like live chat or feedback hotlines. Analyzing customer feedback is essential for the value proposition audit process. It can lead to necessary changes, such as adding features, improving user interface, or adjusting customer service, which enhances the overall value proposition.

Specific customer comments or suggestions often drive changes, highlighting the importance of listening to customer feedback.

Check Your Value Proposition Audit Results

Measure Before and After

Before making any changes to the value proposition audit, it’s important to first measure the current state. This helps to understand exactly what needs improvement. The value proposition audit should assess how effective internal auditing is in providing assurance, insight, and objectivity. This includes analyzing governance, risk management, and control processes. It also involves making recommendations based on data analysis and assessments, as well as offering independent advice.

After implementing changes, internal auditors should evaluate how well they are achieving their objectives in these areas. To measure the effectiveness of the value proposition before and after changes, specific metrics or indicators can be used. These include the level of implementation of recommendations, the impact on the organization’s governance, risk management, and control processes, and the level of confidence from governing bodies and senior management in the internal auditing process.

Regularly measuring before and after the value proposition has been altered can provide insights into the success of the changes and identify any areas that may need further improvement.

Track Changes over Time

Monitoring and measuring your value proposition regularly is important for your organization’s growth and success. Analyzing customer feedback, market trends, and competitive shifts helps determine if your value proposition is effective or needs adjustment. You can track the effectiveness of changes using methods like customer surveys, A/B testing, and analyzing sales data to gain insights into how your audience perceives and responds to the changes.

Updating your value proposition to reflect market and customer needs is crucial for remaining relevant and competitive. By staying attuned to your customers’ evolving preferences, you can continue delivering value that resonates with them, leading to sustained success.

Do It Again: Stay Up to Date with Your Value Prop

The main parts of a value proposition are assurance, insight, and objectivity.

Internal auditing provides assurance and insight on governance, risk management, and internal control processes to governing bodies and senior management.

To change a value proposition, organizations can adapt the three core elements of value delivered by internal auditing and focus on those when communicating with stakeholders.

Internal audit activities can also define sub-values, such as governance, risk management, and control processes for assurance; a catalyst for improvement for insight; and commitment to integrity and accountability for objectivity.

Visual communication of these values through intersecting circles can help ensure understanding of the value proposition.

It’s important for internal audit activities to effectively communicate the core value they provide to primary stakeholders. Using a memorable and adaptable message tool can help achieve this.