Are you thinking of growing your business ?

Where are the growth opportunities for your business ?

What are the threats to your business.  Competitors, New entrants, declining markets, regulatory.

What are the changing priorities of your customers or what new markets present themselves.

For example the candle business was a thriving business, but they never moved into the electric light business.  They were trapped by their core competences and their mindset.

When is the right time to change or react to a threat.

What are your core competencies and strengths and do you need to change them ?

what is the new new thing that the market is looking for ?

Where do the best opportunities present themselves ?

Some businesses totally transform themselves.

Business is about change, as markets change and new opportunities present themselves companies move into new businesses and markets.  For some the search is proactive, for others its a gradual evolution.

Nokia began as a wood pulp/paper business and then tyres and wood pulp before moving into power and telecommunications and then into mobile.

Grand Metropolitan began as a Hotel business, milk and gambling and then transformed itself into Diageo the Drinks business.

Google is largely known as “the search engine” but is transforming itself into Alphabet to cater for the diverse range of businesses.

I am often asked to advise businesses on growth, value creation and change strategies.

Obviously the key driver of change is the drive and hunger of the management team, sometimes this comes from a crisis and sometimes from a hunger to grow.

Listed below are some of the choices and options that I take my clients through and that you might want to consider to grow, reduce costs, enter new markets and develop products and services.

Value Creation Strategy

You might ask how we can you develop your business.

How can you increase your businesses value and profitability ?

Some of the Strategies and Options we might explore with you (obviously each client is different with different stakeholder goals and objectives and different strengths and market conditions, financial and management issues) but here are strategies we would explore with you and your team.

Options to consider can include

Growth
Cost Reduction
Disposal of Loss making Venture, Lines or Channels
Financial Engineering
Diversification

How can a business pursue a Growth Strategy
Organic options include

–      New Products

eg apple develops ipod, iphone and ipad.  (sometimes companies fail to innovate and stick to core products such as Kodak business model being focused on “film” and digital cameras were seen to cannibalise their existing business model.
–     Markets

•     New Channels
•     International
–    Joint Venture
–    Partnerships
•     New Segments
–    Adjacent Segments
–     Customers
•     Re segment Market
•        Sales Development
–     New Clients
–     Increase Volume
–     Increase Transactions
–     Channel Partners

Sales Development
–     Increase Transaction Size
–     Staff Training
–     Increase lifetime value eg customer service
•        Inorganic
–     Acquisition
•        Product Driven Strategies
–     Extend product Life
–     Reduce Time to Product of new developments & Products
–     Products
•     Licence- JV New products
•     New Products Segmented for market eg Amex
–     Acquire New Products
–     New uses
–     Develop- Invent
•        Marketing Strategies
–     Reduce Price
•     Reduce Costs to maintain margin
–    Reduce Margin but trade off volume for margin
•     Increase Price
–     Increase margin trade off volume
•     Bundling
–     Product Extension
–     Brand Development
•     New Product Lines
•     Brand Extension
–     New uses (eg Viagra)
–     Leverage Distribution Channels

Cost Reduction
•        Short term Cashflow
–     Stop it Bring it forward Do it later Make it smaller Make it bigger Recycle Reuse Repair Extend life Replace
•     Task Focused
•        Short Term Profitability
•        Medium Term
–     Optimisation Reuse Shared Assets Modular Design Load Leveling Increase throughpu Centralisation Consolidation Do it once Leverage Integration Automation
•     Project focused
•        Long Term
–     Specialisation Hybridisation Simplification Trimming Do it once Self Service Restructure Common Mode Arbitrage Time shifting Reduce wait states Value Engineering Y2K
•     Process Focused
•        Tradeoff between risk, flexibility, time, duration and complexity
•        Recycle, Repair, Reuse
•        Procurement Strategy
•        Financial Leverage, Asset Utilisation, Resource Utilisation, Cost of Input or product design focus (eg value engineering)
Disposal of Loss making Venture, Lines or Channels
Financial Engineering
•        Reduce Financing Costs
•        Increase Leverage to increase ROI
Diversification Prevention, Diagnostic, Outsource-Cure
•        New Markets, Segments or Products
•        Vertical Integration
–     Upstream
–     Downstream
•        Organic vs Inorganic

so for example a pharmaceutical company might branch out into

• Prevention,
• Diagnostic,
• Outsource-Cure

–    Finer Segmentation- Specialisation