Client Situation

Our client is a successful international supply chain services company, trusted with delivering essential industrial products to its clients

The CEO had successfully achieved his objectives to date but shareholders were now asking “What’s next?”. With numerous possible strategic directions, the shareholders began to make divergent suggestions – creating friction, hampering the CEO and profoundly impacting the business. To get the business back on track, the CEO needed to quickly separate credible strategic options from the more adventurous suggestions and home in on the optimum route for the business. Having been bitten in the past, the CEO and shareholders were wary of an unrealistic strategy with an unachievable implementation plan. Hence our client engaged us to answer three questions:

  • What is our optimum strategy, balancing growth with risk?
  • What is the concrete implementation plan from our current position?
  • How is it differentiated from the competition and how can it adapt to current and future market changes?

Approach

We fielded a highly experienced team with deep expertise in strategy, supply chain businesses, our client’s industry sector and analytical visualisation techniques. This unique combination, coupled with our proven strategy methodology meant that we were able to undertake the review in the rapid timescales required

Of course we conducted independent market research and analysis but crucially we engaged our client’s whole organisation in the strategic process. Staff from operations through to the board, plus their customers and suppliers participated in the engagement, offering their opinions, experiences and creativity throughout the process. This early engagement was essential in gaining consensus on the strategic options and in creating realistic, achievable implementation plans

We calibrated the Aczel Business Model Engine with client financial data, the strategic options and operating model assumptions.  This enabled our client to interactively vary the business scenarios, visualise the resulting outcomes and demonstrate the impact of strategic options on key business metrics. This was a fundamental component of our eventual success – the ability to visualise outcomes promoted rich debate and achieved consensus among the disparate shareholders

With the strategic direction agreed, and with client operational staff fully engaged from the outset, we developed a phased roadmap covering the substantive changes to our client’s business. Crucially this approach ensured buy-in to the plans and eventual successful implementation

Results

The approach we took to the strategic review enabled the CEO to plot a path through a diverse shareholder landscape. Our visualisation engine illustrated the credible options and allowed us to rapidly secure consensus. Our engagement with client operational staff ensured realistic implementation plans, fully supported by the organisation. The overall result was an ambitious strategy, matched to client capabilities which has secured the client’s future

“Aczel provided me with ambitious strategic options that were relevant to my shareholders. Their visualisation engine gave me the mechanism to gain shareholder consensus and the way they engaged the organisation gave me the momentum to deliver the growth strategy.”

Client CEO

Your contact

Richard Aczel

Director

richard.aczel@aczel.org

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