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Strategic planning to overcome operation constraints

December 28, 2016 Case Study 1 min read
Organization achieves all time sales record after implementing five-year strategic business plan supported by a detailed cash flow, warehouse capacity, and staffing model.

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The client

A large, multi-focused organization with interests in entertainment, gaming, and education industries wanted to grow their e-commerce business unit.

The challenge

After several years of significant growth, the organization’s e-commerce business unit was facing operational constraints that began to limit their future growth. These operational constraints included: limited storage and fulfillment capacity, an over-leveraged management team, limited staff resources, and immature business processes. The organization was in need of a consulting partner that could assist them in developing a five-year strategic business plan to address these constraints and build the business case for required investments.

The solution

Our consultants conducted management interviews to understand the client’s business situation and clarify their objectives. We developed a five-year strategic business plan supported by a detailed cash flow, warehouse capacity, and staffing model. Our team performed a detailed analysis of all sales and inventory data, identifying product strategies to support future sales and profit growth. Additionally, our experts benchmarked the organizations’ online e-commerce transactions against others in the market to identify specific opportunities and recommendations for improvement.

The benefit

Our recommendations resulted in several benefits for the organization, including: 

  • Product-focused recommendations realized a year-over-year sales growth of nearly 30 percent. 
  • Shortly after implementation of the five-year strategic plan, the e-commerce business unit broke their all-time monthly sales record, eclipsing the old record by over 50 percent. 
  • Our team worked closely with the organization’s management team reviewing our analysis of the market and incorporating their knowledge and experience into our analysis. The management team was able to use our analysis to drive actionable insights that formed the basis of future product strategies. 
  • The client asked our consulting team to present the strategic plan to its governing body. This presentation helped secure funding proposed in the strategic plan to address certain operational constraints.

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