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CASE STUDY: Helping
to develop new packaged services
Client
Global
satellite communications’ company
Assignment
Help the VP
Marketing develop new revenue streams from the client’s
forthcoming satellite services.
Situation
The client was
about to launch an expensive new fleet of communications
satellites into geostationary orbit and, given the increasing
competitiveness of global telecommunications markets, needed to
identify additional revenue streams it could develop to offset the
impact of increasing price erosion on the revenues it was going to
realise from its traditional services
Inputs
Liaised with
client employees, existing and potential channel players and
prospective customers. Conducted a comprehensive review of
multiple potential alternative users for its satellite services,
channels to these markets, likely financials and attached risks.
Prepared a prioritised short list of new services options, based
upon market size, likely returns, ease of market access and
associated risks. Devised detailed value propositions for
short-listed new product options and helped prepare product
development plans and associated business cases for development
funding.
Benefits
As the new
satellites came into service the client was able to support
multiple new channel players with sales and marketing support and,
via them, generate new service based revenue streams for the
business.
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CASE STUDY: Getting
a medium sized business to profit by switching strategies
Client
Manufacturer of
prefabricated building components and housing
Assignment
Help it sell
more prefabricated housing to ‘social landlords’ (RSLs)
Situation
Despite
offering a high value, quality product, sales to RSLs were very
slow.
Inputs
Research
revealed that many RSL’s were reluctant to commission new
prefabricated housing because their tenants still associated such
technology with the low-end housing disasters of the 1960s.
Discovered that the Housing Corporation was trying to promote new,
quality prefabrication technologies to RSL’s but was also
realising limited success.
Then identified
that many of the client's prefabricated components were finding
their way into high-end luxury developments and that these same
developers were under increasing pressure to increase the ratio of
social housing units in their developments under a planning
guideline often referred to as Section 106.
Helped the
client to refocus and reposition, so as to sell its prefabricated
housing solutions to high-end residential developers as a solution
to their Section 106 obligations.
Benefits
Sales of both
the client's prefabricated building components and prefabricated
housing solutions increased dramatically
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CASE STUDY: Realising
already identified potential savings
Client
Professional
services firm
Assignment
Close a branch
office and return staff to the main office.
Situation
The client had
determined that one of its branch offices was unnecessary but did
not have anybody available to oversee all that was required to
effect a smooth and cost-efficient closure.
Inputs
Mapped all
necessary issues, packaged these into a closure and staff transfer
program and then managed the program.
Benefits
All costs
associated with the branch office, including, rates, light, heat,
datalink and lease either swiftly reduced to zero, or, with
respect to the lease, mitigated by subletting the premises for the
rest of the lease’s term. Staff morale improved as staff moving
back to the main office from the branch site no longer felt they
were left literally, ‘out on a limb’.
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CASE STUDY: Saving
money by changing how it is spent
Client
Directorate
within a central government department
Assignment
Liaise with
civil servants, scientists, industrialists and other stakeholders
to help ensure that £23 million in government research funding
each year was spent more effectively so as to defend this
allocation from threatened Treasury cuts.
Situation
Public funds
were being allocated to sponsor research in an untargeted and
reactive fashion, raising concerns that poor value was being
realised. The Directorate was looking to devise and then implement
a mechanism which both targeted the money more effectively, so as
to realise best value, and to do this in a way which did not cause
too much upset among the multiple and diverse stakeholder groups
that both felt they had a right of access to these funds and had
the capacity to cause political upset through their lobbying
activities.
Inputs
Devised a
master framework to prioritise and target the allocation of these
public funds in the coming years. Helped set up and run industry
steering groups to inform the research priorities that form part
of the framework. Helped institute the first year’s targeted
bidding framework, to both target funds to where research
priorities were, and then allocate funds to bidders offering the
best value research proposals in return for them.
Benefits
These funds are
still being made available by the Treasury as the public is
realising better value from them.
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CASE STUDY: Driving
through a major IT programme
Client
National
product distributor
Assignment
Advise the
Managing, Finance, Operations, Sales and IT Directors on the
programme management of the installation of a new enterprise
resource planning system (ERP) to replace several disparate and
less powerful legacy systems used by the client, as a consequence
of several businesses merging.
Situation
The targeted
ERP ‘solution’ had already been selected and contracts signed.
Several major sites across the UK are to be data-linked to a
central IT facility to run a core ERP system. Prior to going live,
data on legacy systems needs to be cleansed, adapted to the new
databases, merged, checked and ported. New procedures for the ERP
system have to be developed and staff have to be trained and then
the whole system, along with dummy data, staff and procedures
needs to be tested before transferring final balances and data
across from the legacy systems and going live.
Inputs
Worked with
everybody to draw up the master project plan, allocate staff and
resources, monitor risk and slippage and ensure that the IT
vendors, contractors and all staff contributed to an optimum
outcome. Identified critical shortcomings with the vendor’s ERP
solution and invoked key terms within the contract and their
original proposals forming part of the contract to ensure they
compensated for the identified shortcomings with extensive
additional consultancy input to develop a practical workaround.
Benefits
In spite of
having to find a workaround for critical shortcomings in the
vendor’s original ERP system proposals, all legacy data was
cleansed, merged, tested and migrated appropriately and the client
went live with the new ERP system, after a planned six month
implementation, just two weeks later than originally scheduled.
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CASE STUDY:
Helping
a company raise funds and float on PLUS
Client
Small company
with a highly scalable product and its 1st blue chip client
Assignment
Help get the
company into a position where it could raise cash and float
Situation
With its first
blue chip client and needing a lot of development cash to exploit
its potential the company needed to be able to convey a sense of
its value in an approved document to potential investors, but
lacked the capacity to do this.
Inputs
Researched the
company, market and its product and, based on this information,
prepared a credible and verifiable presentation about the
business, including detailed financial projections, which became
the basis of its approved document.
Benefits
The company was
able to raise substantial funds with the support of its approved
document and later listed on the UK PLUS Markets.
Please note
that since the Credit Crunch, the process of raising funds and
floating successfully on public markets has become harder.
However, so long as a company is well managed and has a compelling
and credible business plan, it should still have no problems in
the raising of funds at the right valuation. Fund raising can be
achieved in many different ways. All, from the receipt of grants
to support from major corporations and VCs, still require a sense
of where the business is going and that it is worth its claimed
value. The building blocks of a good approved document: where a
business has come from; where it is going; its milestone targets
going forwards; the issues it is likely to face and the competence
of the management team to be able to confront and overcome these,
is as important today as it has ever been.
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