The ROI of Endineering. Part 1. The cost of building an endings aware business.

A common question that I get asked is ‘What would the return on investment (ROI) be of ends?’ Investing in better consumer off-boarding cannot be considered in isolation. It needs to be located in the wider context of changing consumer awareness, emerging legislation, marketing trends and other investments. To answer it, I want to break down the question into separate, more specific issues.

• What is the potential cost of creating consumer off-boarding experiences?

• Where is the investment growth from consumer experience coming from?

• How can we put a value on consumer experience at the end of the consumer lifecycle?

In this article I want to answer the first of those issues.
(If you would like to dig in to this further, I go in to detail in the Endineering book)

What is the potential cost of creating consumer off-boarding experiences?

There is a cost to engaging more actively in consumer off-boarding. It will have financial and time consequences for businesses. Teams will need to be trained. Changes to approach, communication, logistics and even culture will need to happen. For some sectors, especially physical product producers, costs may be higher as they implement far-reaching changes to customer engagement alongside sustainability, databases and logistics. For others it will mean simple changes, some empathy, training and extending the company focus.

The five areas of investment and adaption if a business is to purse Endineering and provide better endings in the consumer lifecycle are

1. Business Culture Change
2. Skills.
3. Research and measurement
4. Aligning with legislation
5. Logistics, assets, and communication touch points

The following diagrams provide an overview of these activities for a business building an Endineering capability.

In the diagram below we can see how these roles might change their domain against the customer lifecycle.