--- title: The Advantage of the Outside Lens | Experience & Commercial Strategy description: An Experience & Commercial Strategy case study on how working across customers, suppliers and operators can reveal patterns, opportunities and commercial blind spots from the outside. --- ![The Advantage of the Outside Lens Experience & Commercial Strategy Studio](https://gemmaheath.com/hubfs/The%20Advantage%20of%20the%20Outside%20Lens%20%20Experience%20%26%20Commercial%20Strategy%20Studio.png "The Advantage of the Outside Lens Experience & Commercial Strategy Studio") # The Advantage of the Outside Lens | Project Type: | Embedded Experience & Commercial Strategy | | --- | --- | | Organisation: | Thames Cruises London | | Role: | Supplier Partnerships · Commercial Insight · Market Perspective · Proposition Development | | Status: | Ongoing |   ## Sometimes the clearest view of a business comes from just outside it. Thames Cruises London operates as an independent agent. We do not own the boats we sell. Instead, we work across a broad network of river operators, vessels and suppliers, matching customers with the right solution for their event. Over time, that position has given me a very particular kind of perspective. Not the perspective of one operator looking at one product. But the perspective of someone sitting between: **customers, suppliers, competitors, pricing, demand and changing behaviour.** That outside position has often made patterns easier to see. ## Learning the market horizontally When you work across multiple suppliers rather than one fixed product, you start to notice differences very quickly. Which experiences customers respond to. Which products repeatedly convert. Which offers feel difficult to explain. Where pricing starts to become a barrier. Where supplier processes create friction. Which vessels work brilliantly for one type of event but poorly for another. What customers are asking for that suppliers are not yet offering. And where one operator appears to be adapting faster than another. That comparison becomes incredibly valuable. Because you are not only learning how one business works. You are watching how an entire small ecosystem behaves. ## Building trust without owning the asset A large part of the work has been building long-term relationships with suppliers. The goal has never been simply to take a product, add a margin and sell it. The stronger relationships came from becoming useful. Understanding how each operator works. Knowing their constraints. Knowing what they do particularly well. Sending them the right kind of business. Managing customers properly. Presenting their products accurately. And building enough trust that we could work together repeatedly. Over time, that moved some relationships beyond straightforward supplier-and-agent transactions. We became a trusted route to market. And, in some cases, a useful outside perspective. ## When suppliers start borrowing from you One of the more interesting signs of influence has been seeing suppliers adopt elements of the ideas, language or propositions we had developed ourselves. That could easily be viewed defensively. They copied us. But commercially, I learned to see it differently. If a supplier adopts an idea and makes the underlying product stronger, that can also make the product easier for us to sell. We can benefit from the improved offer without taking on the cost, staffing, operational burden or capital risk of owning the vessel ourselves. That taught me an important lesson: **You do not always need to own the asset to create value from it.** And you do not always need to protect every idea as territory. Sometimes allowing the wider ecosystem to improve creates more value for everyone. ## Being asked what we could see There have also been occasions where larger suppliers have come to us because something was not working as well as it once had. Sales were slowing. A product was not converting in the same way. The question became: **What are you seeing from your side?** Because we were speaking directly to customers and comparing multiple products across the river, we could often see issues that were harder to notice from inside one organisation. That might include: - pricing - proposition - presentation - product format - customer expectations - changing behaviour - sales friction - the way the product was being communicated Sometimes that advice was acted on. Sometimes it wasn't. Sometimes the same conversations happened more than once. And sometimes elements of the advice appeared later in the way a supplier repositioned or resold the product. That experience reinforced something I still believe strongly: > ## Distance can create perspective.   When you are immersed inside one business every day, some assumptions become invisible. An external partner can sometimes see them because they are constantly comparing what customers want with what multiple suppliers are offering. ## The intermediary has its own intelligence Agents are sometimes treated as though they simply sit between buyer and supplier. But a good intermediary can hold something neither side has on its own: **pattern recognition.** The supplier knows its own operation deeply. The customer knows what they want. The intermediary sees hundreds of versions of both. That creates a different type of intelligence. You learn: what customers ask for before suppliers adapt, which objections keep appearing, which propositions feel easy to buy, where service breaks down, how competitors are changing, and what customers are increasingly willing, or unwilling, to pay for. The value is not simply in connecting two sides. It's in understanding what is happening between them. ## Working within the constraints Another important part of this work has been recognising that seeing an opportunity does not mean you control the solution. As an agent, we can recommend. We can reframe. We can package differently. We can change how we sell. We can create new propositions around existing products. But ultimately, we do not own the vessels or control every element of the customer experience. That means learning to ask: **What can we improve from our position?** If the supplier will not change the product, can we change the way it is presented? If a feature creates friction, can we manage expectations better? If one product stops working commercially, can we redirect demand elsewhere? If another supplier has solved the problem better, should we recommend them instead? That has made me much less precious about individual solutions. The objective is not to prove that my original idea was right. It is to find the best workable answer for the customer and the business. ## The commercial advantage of not owning everything Over time, I came to see that not owning the assets was not necessarily a weakness. It created flexibility. We could work across different operators. Use different vessel types. Adapt to different budgets. Respond to changing demand. Move customers towards the product that best suited their need. And learn from the whole market rather than from one fixed operating model. It also meant that when suppliers developed stronger products, we could benefit from them without carrying the full commercial burden ourselves. That is a very different way of thinking about value creation. Sometimes the strongest position is not: **own everything.** It is: **understand the ecosystem well enough to connect, improve and commercialise what already exists.** ## What this work demonstrates **Market Perspective** Seeing patterns across multiple suppliers, customer types and propositions rather than from inside one product. **Supplier & Partnership Management** Building long-term relationships based on trust, usefulness and mutual commercial value. **Commercial Strategy** Understanding where value can be created without owning the underlying asset. **Customer Insight** Using repeated customer conversations to identify changing expectations, objections and demand. **Proposition Development** Reframing and repackaging supplier products to make them easier to understand and buy. **Advisory Thinking** Giving suppliers an external perspective on what customers appear to be responding to, and where friction may be occurring. **Ecosystem Thinking** Understanding that customers, agents, suppliers and partners create value together rather than in isolation. **Adaptability** Working effectively even when the business does not control every part of the experience. ## The lesson I carry forward **Being outside the organisation can sometimes reveal what is difficult to see from inside it.** Distance creates comparison. Comparison creates perspective. And perspective can reveal opportunities, problems and changes before they become obvious internally. That is one of the reasons I value the role of an external strategist. Not because outsiders automatically know better. But because sometimes they can see differently. ### Interested in Working Together? ![ACE - Logo (400 x 400 px) (400 x 250 px) (2)](https://gemmaheath.com/hubfs/ACE%20-%20Logo%20(400%20x%20400%20px)%20(400%20x%20250%20px)%20(2).png "ACE - Logo (400 x 400 px) (400 x 250 px) (2)") - [Home](https://gemmaheath.com?hsLang=en) - [Experience & Commercial Strategy Studio](https://gemmaheath.com/experience-commercial-strategy-studio?hsLang=en) - [About](https://gemmaheath.com/about?hsLang=en) © 2026. All rights reserved.