How we help
Accelerated has reimagined how expertise and capability can be harnessed to address challenges and seize opportunities. By fluidly forming virtual teams that are customised to our clients’ needs, we break from traditional consulting models to provide fast, and cost effective insights and solutions when clients need.
We can support our clients via a range of modular engagement options that can be deployed within 1-2 days.
What is it:
A team, led by an experienced ex-consultant, that will partner with to address your insight and decision support needs.
How it works:
We work with you to understand your requirements and agree a project scope, approach and team in the first 1-2 days. Once we kick off we can complete expert interviews and supporting secondary research (if required) across 3-5 weeks. Regular check ins and progressive insight sharing take you on the journey and prevent any surprises at the final presentation/Q&A.
What’s the end result?:
Output is tailored to the topic being explored. This might include customised benchmarks, a succinct summary of findings, through to a wider market assessment. You’ll receive supporting evidence (interview notes and if applicable, secondary research) and recommendations in a format that fits your needs.
What is is:
Specialist researchers scan, assemble and classify the most relevant published information
How it works:
You discuss your research requirements with our consultants, who then oversee the work. You are able to progressively review the emerging findings as the project is completed, usually within 3-5 days.
What is the end result?:
Efficient access to detailed information to guide decisions in your organisation. This work is often a first step in our expert interview projects as it can inform which geographies and organisations to focus on.
What it is:
Surveys across business users, typically designed to gather larger, quantitative-based data sets.
How it works:
We work with you to define your insight needs and target survey population. We then orchestrate sourcing and engagement with respondents, analyse and present key findings from the survey.
What’s the end result?:
Highly-specific data sets (qualitative and quantitative) can be gathered about your organisation’s external environment, offering unique insights that can inform better decision making across the board.
EXAMPLES OF OUR WORK
Accelerated have deployed our model across
geographies, industries and use cases.
Strategic Clarity
Keeping across the opportunities and threats from disruptions, new technologies, regulation and competitors is a challenge for all organisations. Strategic research can help cut through the noise and provide you with the insights you need to decide how best to respond to change.
In a disruption filled world your competitors, both current and potential, are a threat. But your teams need to focus on running their own race – which can lead to a dangerous lack of perspective.
Enable important decisions to be made with a comprehensive knowledge of what your competitors are doing by using strategic interviews and customer research that’ll help you stay at the forefront of your sector.
Case study 1:
Our client wanted to understand buyer preferences for the different commercial constructs and propositions for cloud professional and managed services. Twelve in depth interviews were conducted across both buyers and competing providers to understand trends and preferences including key purchasing criteria (pricing, contract structure) and the impact of buyer maturity on product and purchasing preferences. These insights enabled our client to reframe their sales targets and approach to deliver improved outcomes.
Case study 2:
A professional services firm wanted to understand the approaches competitors were using to charge expenses to clients for consulting projects. Accelerated completed a range of interviews across both competing consultancies and buyers or consulting services to understand the range of expense charging approaches and trends in these resulting from the COVID-led shift to more digital consulting project delivery.
Being able to differentiate between real opportunity and the hype will enable you to allocate your time and investment more effectively. Insights from others who are in the trenches can help cut through the spin and provide a more realistic set of perspectives.
Case study:
Our client needed to understand how telcos across the globe were viewing the current and potential financial benefits of network virtualization, especially surrounding core networks. The objective was to assess if the prior predictions of CAPEX and OPEX savings were being realised, and to get rough estimates of savings potential due to SDN/NFV for the years to come.
5 interviews were conducted with executives from tier 1 telecom operators in Europe, Asia, and the US. The interviews revealed they were all taking an organic rollout approach, utilising current assets as long as possible. However, for new parts of the network like 5G deployment of SDN/NFV would then be aggressive. This has resulted in a current level of virtualisation in the range of 10% – 20%. Capex and Opex savings were mostly zero as of 2021, but they were forecast to increase substantially (30-40%) in 5-7 years, or even higher in 10 years with the savings forecast across the areas of operations, maintenance and power spend.
Read the full case study here
Industry disruptions can come from many places. Understanding how others are planning for or dealing with change is a valuable input into scenario planning.
Case study:
Recent changes in market dynamics and new, larger competitors had come about as a result of regulatory change. Our client needed to build a fact base on how their pricing compared to new approaches being taken by the existing and emerging players. Nine in-depth interviews were completed with senior executives to build a segment-specific comparison of how competitors were approaching pricing, winning clients and what buyers were looking for. By moving these insights beyond the “hunches” of the sales team, our client created a common, unbiased rationale for executing these changes that incorporated both standard and custom pricing solutions across their range of products
Read full case study here
Delivering efficiencies, whilst maintaining or improving quality, is an ongoing dilemma that typically involve changes across processes, technology &/or organisational structures.
Understanding what peers, or other leading organisations are doing and have learnt along the way can help you make better prioritisation and execution decisions.
Increase efficiency:
Increasing your organisation’s efficiency directly improves profitability. With technology constantly evolving, potential sources of efficiency gains are always changing. But after the ‘low-hanging fruit’ has been picked, it can be hard to invest successfully in substantial and sustainable gains.
Applying relevant benchmark comparisons is a great way to spot opportunities to improve efficiency. We can help you source bespoke benchmark data, insights into which targets to focus on, and pragmatic steps on how to lift performance – all leveraging the lived experience of other organisations.
Case study 1:
Accelerated was engaged by an International Trade Agency to build a deeper understanding of the existing digital capabilities and plans of other trade and investment agencies. The focus of the research was on understanding how digital was supporting exporters, investors and helping employees be more effective in their roles.
Seven interviews were conducted across agencies that were considered leaders in terms of their digital capabilities with participants from roles such as Chief Digital Officer or Head of Digitisation. Key findings included that the majority of agencies had focused on using digital and data technologies to transform their exporter support services, particularly for SMEs. These investments included personalisation of education and connecting the exporters, via self-serve, to the wider agency data, tools and capabilities. The use of digital to improve staff productivity and effectiveness was focused on reducing the need for low value added/ manual activities and leveraging contemporary tools.
Case study 2:
Accelerated were engaged to provide a review of major players’ activities and best practices for FTTH (Fibre-to-the-Home) deployment, with a focus on brownfield build and installation.
The project was led by a Collaboration Partner with 15 years of experience in management consulting including Boston Consulting Group and Kearney. He conducted 7 interviews with experts from Verizon (USA), Bell Canada (CAN), Chorus (NZ), OpenReach (UK),Cityfibre (UK), KT Corp (S. Korea), and KNET (S. Korea).
The interviews provided insights into the range of area prioritisation approaches, build methodologies and service delivery partner commercial models adopted.
Read the full case study here
Managing quality is an important, but often overlooked, area of business optimisation. Understanding what quality outcomes to target and how to achieve them is critical for long term customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Case study:
Accelerated were engaged to gain insights into best practices in quality and safety management from leading global grocery retailers for their private label businesses.
7 experts were interviewed from organisations such as Walmart, Sainsbury’s, Loblaws, Morrisons, Woolworths S.A. and Lidl. They all had deep experience in quality and safety management, working in senior roles in supply chain
management, supplier management, food technology and quality assurance
The work was led by a Collaboration Partner with deep grocery experience who was able to gather insights and make recommendations across the areas of (a) data collection (the channels used and any trends), (b) target setting (metrics, process etc) and, (c) continuous improvement processes, both internally and with suppliers.
Developing appropriate organisational structures, operating models and incentives are important enablers of success and need to evolve with changing environmental and employee expectations.
Case study 1:
Accelerated were engaged to understand how leaders organise and deliver learning, and the role learning plays in an organisation’s differentiation and success.
Accelerated conducted secondary research and conducted eight interviews with senior executives across leading learning organisations including DBS, Microsoft, Home Depp, ING and GE. The research provided insights into how they structured the delivery of learning and the changing role of alternative delivery channels, how learning needs were evolving and the range of funding mechanisms. Insights were collected across both group level learning and the cascade down to business unit and manager level learning approaches.
As supply chains become ever more global, connected and dynamic, the scope for these to create competitive advantage grows. But keeping abreast of the different supply chain opportunities can be challenging.
Case study 1:
Our client wanted to understand how leading grocery chains were managing grocery demand planning, supplier management and integrating vendor replenishment planning.
Interviews with experts across seven leading retailers found that they typically manage their core demand and supply planning centrally and utilising automation to some extent. They also extensively use vendor replenishment planners who provide a valuable service to grocery retailers who require accurate demand planning and good supplier management to maximise stock availability whilst minimising inventory.
Read full case study here
Growth
New products or markets can unlock significant growth opportunities, but come with accompanying investment and risks. Expert insights are a fast and cost effective way of developing a deeper understanding of an opportunity and reducing growth-related risks.
New markets hold enormous potential for top-line growth. However, they also require substantial investment. So choosing the right market and adopting the right market-entry approach is critical.
We’ll assess the attractiveness of new markets and discover the competitive landscape. By conducting interviews with in-market experts from potential competitors and customers, and blending those insights with traditional secondary data sources, you’ll have the confidence needed to expand into the most opportune markets – faster.
Case study:
A European Enterprise Information Management (EIM) system provider was looking to expand its global footprint and was prioritising South East Asia, Australia and New Zealand for expansion. In its traditional markets, the provider had built its reputation on enabling government agencies to be more efficient and effective in delivering services.
Accelerated formed a team that identified and interviewed 22 government influencers and buyers (CIO, Head of Technology Procurement) of EIM systems across 5 markets.
Over three weeks the interviews provided valuable insights including prioritisation of the five countries for sales expansion activities, the government sectors/departments (e.g. justice and family services) with the greatest potential and buyer perspectives on strengths and weaknesses of competing providers from both a system and support model perspective.
Understanding market trends, channels to market and ‘the voice of the customer’ are critical inputs to evaluating new product concepts
Case study 1:
Accelerated supported a bank to understand current and potential Asia Pacific customer needs and interest in a fully digitised trade and supply chain finance solution.
To deliver the required insights Accelerated conducted 51 surveys and 9 in-depth interviews across four markets with senior finance professionals (e.g. CFO, Head of Treasury) working in organisations who were large buyers of supply chain and trade finance services.
The research highlighted the positive volume growth in the product areas and evidence of multiple banking relationships for these products. Digitisation of the supply chain was happening, albeit slower than other finance areas, which is both an opportunity and potential barrier to the uptake of the proposition.
Securing investment funds relies on a quality business plan. Insufficiently evidenced assumptions on investment costs or future revenues exposes you to risks, erodes confidence and delays funding.
We can help you create a robust understanding of your business case drivers. Our consultants specialise in understanding key areas of uncertainty and source first-hand perspectives from the most qualified experts to de-risk assumptions and to help you secure investment.
Case study:
Accelerated’s client, a Venture Fund, was conducting due diligence on a significant investment. A key element of the target company’s growth plans centred on expansion into an international courier market. Our client wasn’t comfortable that it had the depth of international market understanding required to make an informed decision on the viability of the company’s projections, and therefore the risks of the investment. They needed increased confidence in the company’s international growth projections in order to progress the deal
Accelerated established a team to conduct 15 interviews spanning both potential customers and competitors across different regions of the international market. By compiling quantitative and qualitative market insights directly from experts the venture fund moved from having a critical gap in its knowledge to possessing the context, market intelligence and insights on key trends in the market to complete their due diligence, which ultimately led to a successful Series B round investment
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EXECUTION SUCCESS
People often say that defining the strategy is easy, but delivering it is hard. Getting perspectives from others who have gone down a similar path can help ease the pain of execution. This can apply to areas such as creating credible business cases or learning from the hard earned implementation lessons of those who have gone before.
Building the case for change and sourcing internal investment funding is easier when the task is based on the most up to date data and thinking.
Case study:
Accelerated’s client, a service provider, was considering focusing more of their investment in ESG-related offerings, but at the same time they had competing demands for investment from other growth areas. In order to make a well-informed investment allocation, our client needed a better understanding of what corporate clients were focusing on, and challenged by, in terms of ESG. They also needed to understand customers’ views on the relative strengths of service providers across different components of the evolving ESG space, in order to develop innovative and differentiated solutions.
A multi-disciplinary team, supported by a recognised ESG expert delivered the research which included 12 interviews. The engagement took three weeks and included subject matter experts from 5 corporates, 2 investors, 4 service providers and an international council developing ESG standards across it’s industry participants.The research provided insights into ESG focus areas and pain points for both the buyers and providers of ESG related services and supported an increase investment allocation in the space.
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Great decisions won’t make a difference if your organisation doesn’t execute them well. Nearly all projects have been done somewhere else before – so savvy businesses start planning by learning lessons from the experiences and mistakes of others in order to avoid repeating them.
Our consultants can develop detailed road maps to guide the implementation of key initiatives. By interviewing experts who have done something similar, we can detail which steps to take, what the important decision points are, and what other organisations would do differently a second time around.
Case study:
Our client, a rail delivery authority, was managing the challenge of delivering a large portfolio of road/rail crossing removals whilst minimising disruptions to users. In order to deliver the program efficiently and effectively, our client wanted to better understand best practices, from rail or parallel industries, across the testing and commissioning work that takes place before infrastructure can be operated following maintenance or construction works.
The research was led by our Collaboration Partner, UK-based Wood Mackenzie alumnus with experience of delivering 250 projects globally. It comprised both secondary research and niche interviews with subject matter experts across Singapore, Thailand, India, UK, Ireland. Key findings included the need for a Systems rather than a Civil Engineering approach; early pre-testing and validation; inclusivity and integration across all phases including testing and commissioning. and the adoption of digital technology to improve, streamline and sometimes automate project management, testing and commissioning.
