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Charting a company’s course for the near-term future, outlining the steps to its goals, is critical for success. Overtly and correctly making strategic decisions, deciding what markets to pursue, what advantage over competition to exploit, how to extract value from the market once captured, creates success. Yet, squeezed by the demands of operations, this critical function often gets ignored by management, or lacks a process that fosters the innovation, or insight needed to succeed. A budgeting cycle is too often the only process that considers strategic challenges. Inadequate in its scope or approach, a budget centric approach misses key opportunities for creating value.
The Mountain Group advocates a planning process that goes far beyond the typical amassment of analysis into policy and option books ending with senior executives pooling ideas in a conference room: Using a company approach, distinct from the budgeting cycle, new insights and answers are found to common strategic decisions
- Market selection is focused on customer patterns, their needs, trends and size.
- Competitive positioning is enhanced through an examination of industry dynamics, competitors strengths and weaknesses, potential for new entrants or substitutes and alternative options and risks.
- Execution blocks are identified by assessing the strategic options with the company’s cultural and operational issues.
- Financial modeling of options and risks allows for insight on key business drivers and selection of performance metrics, as well as five-year rolling financial models.
- Joint ventures, mergers, or acquisition options are evaluated in the context of markets , competitive advantage, culture, and businessl practices.
- Development of exit strategies and/or business unit disposal are evaluated similarly.
Our Approach
We encourage management to draw strategic understanding and opportunities from the outer boundaries of the organization. Using a variety of mechanisms depending on the client, we strive to engage salesmen, purchasing agents, customer service representatives and others in the strategic planning process. Through a process designed to instill and diffuse innovation, we guide management through the key decisions:
- What markets are we going to serve: what types of customers, filling what need, and in what locales.
- How do we establish and preserve a competitive advantage?
- How do we extract value from the markets once captured?
- In what ways does our culture or operational practices need to change to accomplish our strategy?
When we finish we leave behind:
- A strategic plan, decisions of what markets are going to be pursued, what competitive advantage will be developed to win the markets, and how value will be maximized once the market is captured.
- A set of action items, and plan for implementation.
- A financial model. This is a sophisticated forecasting tool projecdting financial results after manipulation of various inputs. The model allows testing of sensitivities under different scenarios.
- A system for revising and updating strategy as opportunities arise.
- A common focus among management, a more cohesive management team with a common purpose.
Why choose The Mountain Group?
Recognizing a company’s challenges rarely requires great insight. Developing answers that work within the confines of the company’s circumstances, this truely creates value. The Mountain Group uniquely combines operating experience, consulting expertise, and academically validated solutions to derive these answers. The Mountain Group’s professionals have enviable track records as operators, creating successes for organizations ranging from start-ups to major publicly held companies. Our teams have implemented proven tools and techniques in a wide diversity of organizations, industries and markets. Committed to enhancing value through collaboration, as consultants, they have practiced skills at leaving behind working solutions.
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