Change is Accelerating
As business and technology leaders, we have been addressing business change for years.
But what we’re seeing now is an acceleration as a result of the pandemic. This is causing businesses to revisit and polish their visions, upgrade operations and change their customer and employee experiences.
A good example of that is in the world of telemedicine which has taken off this year. According to a recent study by the Doximity Physician Network outlined on HealthLeadersMedia.com, the number of physicians reporting telehealth as a skill increased by 38% from 2019 to 2020, and the number of Americans participating in at least one telemedicine visit has increased by 57% over the same period.
The State Fair of Texas announced earlier this year that they could not put on the traditional fair experience, but they offered a Drive-Thru experience for 23,000 vehicles that included all the traditional Fair Foods, especially important for those of us who crave Fletcher’s Corny Dogs at this time of year.
Last week, the Glass Animals held online concerts in three time zones around the world on the same day. Other than the outage about 50 minutes into a 70 minute concert, they managed to make it feel personal and connected even online.
Resources Are Limited
While businesses are changing to meet those new customer needs, at the same time additional (or external) funds and resources are limited in this environment for a number of industries. Leadership is looking to sustain the business and extend the financial runway to be able to take advantage of new opportunities in the future. There are often financing constraints which require achieving certain profitability targets.
However, as business direction shifts, there are stranded costs and assets that have been focused on the previous strategy that can be captured and redeployed. There are new and existing products that can be sold into existing accounts. That is, there are opportunities to find investment dollars within the current financials.
Fund the Future™
Our approach with our clients to unlock those funds and focus investment in the future direction is Fund the Future. We collaborate with client leadership teams throughout the process to balance speed, cost and value capture:
- Identify & Prioritize: The first step is to identify, evaluate and prioritize opportunities, through a combination of interviews, analysis and workshops. The opportunities might include new product cross sell opportunities with existing clients, reducing overtime and contractors, retiring software applications or improving billing and collections. With one of our clients, we completed this first stage within two weeks and outlined opportunities that exceeded next year’s forecast EBITDA.
- Execute & Capture: The second step is to drive those benefits through a regular program and accountability process. With another one of our clients, this included changing the organization and operating model to consolidate operations, provide the right incentives for team leaders, and unlock opportunities to scale.
- Redeploy & Invest: The third step is to use the funds that have been generated to invest in the future vision. This can be in new leadership positions and skills, technology platforms or product capabilities to address market shifts.
In our experience, there are two elements which significantly help with achieving success with Fund the Future.
The first is to have a clear future vision. It enables a faster, cleaner prioritization of opportunities and it gives a positive view of the future that the leadership team and organization can rally around. In a number of cases we have seen that the team has known of the opportunities for a while, but just needed the trigger or catalyst to make them happen.
The second is to complete regular check-ins that foster accountability and momentum.
In our experience, we’ve seen our clients find the opportunities to fund their future vision and increase their bottom line profitability. In some cases, this has been over 40% within the first year of execution.
To learn more about how Concentre can Fund the Future for your organization please reach out to Kevin Bonfield.
