Background
Business can only sell so much as their delivery capacity applies, further growth by sales will inevitably require expansion and expansion is a tedious part of the business.
PROBLEM / OPPORTUNITY STATEMENT
Product driven businesses can afford to keep smaller tech teams, but they need to build larger sales footprint and accordingly a robust service delivery capacity. This is expansion is extremely difficult to manage if the sales is doing really well.
CRITICAL CONSTRAINTS
Biggest constraint comes in form of resource recruitment, whilst finding good resources, training and deploying them is in itself a challenge, this also brings a infrastructure expansion, eating into the operating funds and requiring capital investment.
KEY OBSERVATIONS
Willingness to share margin for sake of market growth and assessing key risks in expansion is vital for such partnerships to work.
SOLUTION
Inorganic partnerships often aid in managing the growth. In more than one instant, we formed partnerships with larger established players and parted with revenue but expanded to manage national market coverage without needing further capital investment.
APPROACH TO SOLUTION
Opportunity led partnerships and conversations around complementary nature of the service helps form realistic, performance based partnerships. We had to identify the right partners and manage the growth through the partner network.
KEY SOLUTION METRICS
Growth by region, volume of sales and multi fold increase in revenue were some of the key metrics, however the real solution benefit for the rapid market expansion achieved without expanding operating capital and workforce.
SOLUTION LIMITATIONS
High margin products and services with high value, unique offerings and business process specific expertise tend to carry the maximum success rate for such growth.
PROCESS APPLIED
Developing a partnership ideology is a critical business math driven process. Identifying the tasks and roles and responsibilities expected out of a partner and benefits delivered for the partner are part of the communication design.
REVENUE IMPACT
Revenue increase by 25x-28x was reached within first 18 months of partner based engagement.
AD-HOC CONTRIBUTORS
Brand build up and identify establishment with limited expenditure and increase in brand trust by way of association with larger partner.
KEY BENEFITS OF SOLUTION
Strategic partnerships are key offsets for investment and viable alternative that neither dilutes the equity ownership or increases debt on the books.