Consulting scales with people; product scales with technology

“True Product” is high degree of customer focus AND high degree of standardisation

“Product” implies BOTH customer-focused AND standard offerings. Customer-focused and fully custom white-glove is a consulting model, not a product model. The consulting model scales with headcount; the product model scales with technology.

Top‑Right: True Product Model

High Customer Focus × High Standardisation “Standardised solutions built for customer needs.”

Why this is the product quadrant

• Deep understanding of customer problems
• Solutions expressed as repeatable, scalable offerings
• Technology, not headcount, drives scale
• Clear roadmap, consistent experience

Examples

• SaaS platforms
• Internal platforms with paved paths
• APIs, reusable capabilities

Top‑Left: Custom Consulting / White‑Glove Delivery

High Customer Focus × Low Standardisation “Every customer gets something different.”

Why this is consulting

• Tailored, bespoke solutions
• High-touch, high-variability delivery
• Revenue and throughput scale with people
• Hard to maintain consistency or roadmap

Examples

• Custom engineering projects
• Bespoke integrations
• One-off automations

Bottom‑Right: Standardised Services

Low Customer Focus × High Standardisation “Standard offerings with limited tailoring.”

Why this matters

• Repeatable playbooks, templates, or modules
• Efficient delivery, but not fully self-serve
• Often a transitional state toward a true product

Examples

• Standard onboarding packages
• Migration accelerators
• Assessment frameworks

Bottom‑Left: Experiments

Low Customer Focus × Low Standardisation “Not yet customer-driven, not yet repeatable.”

Why this quadrant exists

• Early-stage discovery
• Useful for learning, not scaling
• Often where platform teams start before codifying patterns

Examples

• Proofs of concept
• One-off internal tools
• Early platform capabilities