Situation
The management of a rapidly growing SaaS company specializing in financial and accounting services contemplated the best approach to sustain growth momentum for the upcoming years. The range of options is extensive, including expansion into new markets, partnership strategies, development of new customer and product verticals, or the expansion of the value chain. The company has a very strong and open culture; from day one, the founders and management emphasized the desire to develop their growth strategy collaboratively with the team.
Our approach
In a first step, we developed a high-level option space along the dimensions of product and market, considering various time horizons ranging from short to very long term. This allowed us to define multiple task forces working on different areas of ‘improvement’ versus ‘radical innovation.’ In total, over 20 team members of the client were involved in the various task forces. We created a comprehensive market model for the client’s core market. Despite a large amount of available data, there was no quantified view of the specific accounting market segment in which the company operated. Based on hypotheses developed in the different task forces, we defined multiple expansion scenarios, evaluated based on the ability to capture growth compared to planned market development, feasibility, and growth potential.
Results
A concrete mid-term growth roadmap with binding action items for all teams was developed. Simultaneously, the management decided on ‘Not-to-do’s’: potentials that are consciously not to be addressed or only at a later point in time. This growth roadmap allowed for very focused actions. All measures were reflected in the long-term business case, clearly outlining the top-line, bottom-line, and investment requirements, serving as the basis for an extensive fundraising effort.
