Helping commercial organisations in a wide range of industries develop strategy to gain a sustainable competitive advantage, turn around under-performing businesses, increase profit, leverage innovation to penetrate international markets, manage and respond to industry evolution and disruption, and ensure organisational effectiveness.
Leveraging deep expertise in economics to help government and commercial organisations understand how to increase productivity and innovation, develop strategy for overcoming growth bottlenecks, respond to changes in regulation, measure and manage performance, and capture opportunities in pricing.
Engaging with Government, SOEs and NGOs to develop strategy that addresses social issues, identify the economic and wider benefits and costs of social interventions, improve organisational effectiveness, develop responses to high-level opportunities and threats, and facilitate long-term planning.
Guiding leaders to manage the tension between short-term growth and long-term risks, plan for and influence future scenarios, assess the future impact of environmental trends, measure the economic and other effects of environmental policy options, and understand the interactions among environmental, social and economic issues.
Our work with a leading consumer services company resulted in a doubling of EBITDA and an increase in net promoter score of 20% over 2 years.
We diagnosed the challenges facing the company, identified opportunities for improvement, developed a portfolio of initiatives and upskilled the client team to deliver them effectively. Outcomes included strengthening competitive advantage, restoring profitability and renewing growth, while maintaining morale through the transition.
“Working with the Stakeholder Strategies team was an absolute game changer for the organisation. In particular their discipline to remain focused on the diagnostic, before jumping to solutions, was incredibly refreshing. Rick’s promise that a thorough diagnostic would deliver obvious solutions proved correct. The diagnostic was compelling and, communicated well, the wider organisation embraced the need for change and rallied to deliver the solutions. Rick was a true partner throughout the journey and I believe this is largely why he and I were able to unify our teams to add significant value.”
–Managing Director, Leading NZ Consumer Services Company
“Stakeholder Strategies recently completed a piece of strategy work for our team. We were impressed with the level of thinking, the balanced opinions provided and the ability to provide clarity on an ambiguous topic. Their considered approach and efficient turn around under time pressure is something we strongly valued and due to this high level of service we hope to continue working alongside Rick and his team.”
Major Corporate Ventures Team
A leading consumer services company was experiencing intensifying competition and deteriorating profitability. Over the course of 12 months, we worked with the client to strengthen competitive advantage, restore profitability and renew growth.
We started with a thorough diagnostic of the situation to determine where the focus of effort should go and to build the case for change. Our investigations revealed that the falling profitability was driven by rising costs and flattening revenues, despite investment in added capacity. The reduction in revenue growth was due in part to increased competition from new entrants, and exacerbated by insufficient customer orientation.
Competitor analysis revealed that new entrants were creating a direct threat, and also increasing price competition from existing players who were caught in the middle.
We identified and qualified a range of opportunities to address this competitive challenge, including improving customer orientation, new product offers, pricing changes, reducing costs, , and streamlining the organisation. Once future profitability was assured an outlet growth strategy was launched.
Our client offered a high quality product and good customer service, but we identified that they were not customer-oriented. Opportunities for improvement included more user-friendly sales processes and terms, and enhanced focus on the customer experience.
We found opportunities for cost reduction in branch operations and central support. At the branch level, we increased transparency and effectiveness of performance incentives by initiating improved metrics. By de-averaging costs, we were able to assess each outlet, identify best practice, and adopt it across the organisation. At the centre, we identified opportunities for overhead reduction and more effective, centralised and systematic purchasing processes.
Although the competition was increasing, our analysis demonstrated that there were opportunities to profitably increase our geographic footprint. By focusing expansion efforts tightly on target customers, we were able to identify where best to locate branches to serve untapped markets.
Competitor and market analysis also revealed opportunities to initiate new outlet formats, varying outlet size, fit-out and offerings.
A legacy organisation structure had led to considerable inconsistency across the company. We worked with the client to harmonise job roles, titles and remuneration; initiate a new organisation structure; develop metrics linking operational and financial outcomes; and identify, agree and adopt best practice.
We worked closely with the client to co-develop a suite of projects to capture these opportunities. This entailed:
- Approving the overall programme
- Identifying and agreeing high-level goals
- Confirm programme branding, performance metrics, values and style
- Establish programme reporting and monitoring, including Steering Group
- Identify and recruit module leaders (mostly client staff) and team members
- Schedule and plan module launch meetings
- Develop launch material to mobilise and train team members
- Establish project modules, develop module plans
- Appoint team leaders and teams, providing appropriate training
- Launch projects
As part of our collaboration with the client, we provided a range of tools and training in how to use them. These included: project management disciplines, such as rules of engagement and work planning; strategic frameworks, such as pricing strategies and process re-design; analytical tools, such as competitive benchmarking, process analysis, conjoint analysis, and cost analysis; performance metrics, such as Key Performance Indicators and plumbing charts; and research methods, such as surveys, focus groups, and shop-alongs.
Our collaborative and pragmatic approach delivered immediate and sustained improvements to the client’s performance, and maintained morale through the transformation.
In the words of the client’s Managing Director:
The positive commercial impact of the Stakeholder Strategies programme of work was significant. More importantly, 24 months on the organisation continues to leverage it and the confidence in the ability of the business to deliver increasing sustainable profits has put us firmly back into expansion mode.
