Developing a strategy for long-term growth

Client need

A global social media management company was in the process of developing a three-year growth strategy, and needed a partner to help align its leadership along the best path forward. Though they had already developed several growth strategies, none of them were bold enough for the highly competitive and commoditized social-media market.

"The strategic insight was immense. I really value the amount of thought and care that the team put into it." - Board member

The organization partnered with BTS to pressure-test different growth strategies, align its top leaders with the best-fitting one, and identify the key organization-wide changes needed to successfully execute the plan.

The solution

BTS developed four distinct working sessions for the company’s top 40 leaders, including the CEO and executive team. During each session, the leaders analyzed key strategic decisions from the past, investigated the social media trends of the future, and tested new growth strategies against these patterns and projections.

“There was no distinction between the BTS team and our team, which is what you want for this type of work. The flexibility, preparation, and the ease of facilitation was truly extraordinary.” - CEO

To start, BTS interviewed executive team members and used the resulting financial data to identify assess several paths for growth. Next, BTS put together summaries that drove working-session discussions on strategy, future planning, and hypotheses. Lastly, BTS created a custom simulation, or an interactive software program that models the discrete tradeoffs of proposed growth strategy. This prompted executives to debate each strategy’s effects on the customer mix, product suite, and go-to-market approach. These tangible outcomes, presented in a risk-free environment, informed decisions that led to successful execution.

Each working session built upon the previous one. From understanding how the business runs today (Session 1), to exploring future growth trends (Session 2), to using the customized simulation to both compare strategies and identify the baseline conditions for success (Sessions 3 and 4), all content contiguous and contingent on live data.

Results

Following the working-session experience, the top 40 leaders were able to both identify and align themselves to a growth strategy that was feasible (given existing execution capabilities), inspiring to the broader group, and, most importantly, would reach the aggressive three-year ARR growth target.