The Path to Balanced and Sustainable Growth
Learn how to accelerate growth by prioritizing choices and leveraging data.
By Charles Schreiner, Jeremy McCabe, and Wendy Klare
A successful business growth strategy is still built on a simple foundation: framing the right questions and making the right decisions at the right time, despite the explosion of complex information in today’s marketplace.
The increasing volume, velocity, and variety of available data can make deciding how and where to grow your business an overwhelming challenge. Without enough data up front, your decisions aren’t solid. On the other hand, spend too much time collecting and analyzing data, and the market will have changed by the time you’ve made a move.
Despite the accelerated pace of a data-driven world, the strategic decisions needed for sustainable growth haven’t really changed. Sustainable growth happens when businesses prioritize the right choices and use available data to balance the art and science of smart decision-making.
But this is not easy — common questions we hear are:
- What are the business indicators that allow us to make the right decisions?
- What opportunities should our business prioritize?
- How do we balance short-term operational performance with long-term investments?
- How do we know what information is valuable?
- How do we use data as a strategic asset to understand untapped sources of value?
- Are there new or existing customer segments to grow intentionally? How? What’s the value?
- How do we evolve our product roadmap to match ever-changing customer needs and expectations by leveraging data?
Accelerate your path with a Strategy Stress Test
Ken Blanchard — author of The Heart of a Leader — once said, “Knowing where you are going is the first step to getting there.”
To reach the right solutions to the right problems, you must first assess where you are and understand the opportunities for growth and improvement across your company’s strategy. Slalom’s quick, five-minute Strategy Stress Test asks targeted questions across six dimensions of your business.
- Strategy — What is the enterprise’s goal, and how well are we aligned to it?
- Channels/geography — What countries are we going to operate in? How will we reach our customers?
- Portfolio — What are the goods/services we are providing to our customers? What value does each provide?
- Data Maturity — How well are we able to access and understand data across the organization?
- Experience — How cohesive and effective are our interactions with our customers?
- Customers — Who are our customers, and what needs do they have now and in the future?
Benefits of a growth strategy
Below are a few powerful examples that showcase the value of a growth assessment and strategy:
- A consumer goods company wanted to understand the true financial performance and applicability of its products across its portfolio to help guide future investments. An assessment identified opportunities for the business to potentially improve operating income by over $100M.
- A food and beverage company was strongly aligned to begin a long-term business model with one of its partners and needed a way to validate that option and support ongoing negotiations. Analysts anticipate that this financial model could generate over $19B in value for the company.
- Another retailer experienced exceedingly good financial performance in its consumer retail segment and sought expertise on how to achieve that same performance by growing its B2B segment by $20B within five years while leapfrogging its competition.
Next steps: Take the test
Complete this assessment to receive your personalized stress test heat map with targeted hypotheses on potential areas of improvement. With the results from this assessment, Slalom can talk with you about the opportunities available for your organization so you can be on a path to balanced and sustainable growth.
Slalom is a global consulting firm that helps people and organizations dream bigger, move faster, and build better tomorrows for all. Learn more and reach out today.
