The objective of our strategy practice is to support senior executives in making and implementing a broad range of decisions that will have a direct impact on their firms' success.
The Need
Research shows a fairly high level of dissatisfaction exists among stakeholders with their planning process. Senior executives generally agree that crafting strategy is one of the most important parts of their job, yet few think this time-consuming process pays off. Many CEOs complain that their strategic planning process yields few new ideas and / or is a highly political exercise. In addition, Boards may criticize plans for their lack of long term vision and of rigor in their preparation (e.g. data poor).
Most companies have an annual or periodic cycle of strategic-planning that usually culminates in a presentation to their Board. The annual processes may be mechanical in nature where as the periodic processes may be less structured and undertaken in a situation of change.
Our approach
To avoid those pitfalls we anchor our pratice on linking Strategy to Action.
From Strategy… To Action
Our expertise enables you to carry out an analysis that is adapted to your needs so that you can determine which are the best strategies to enhance your company’s growth and performance
To implement your strategies you will have to design efficient action plans adapted to your business market realities
Within this overall approach, we offer specific services both in terms of strategic planning for the corporation and strategic practices for business unit, corporate growth or new venture strategy.
Strategic Planning
SECOR's approach to strategy is practical. We focus on defining the decisions that need to be made, helping our clients to make hard choices, and linking strategic decisions to implementation.
SECOR helps clients throughout all stages of the strategic planning process:
Planning for Uncertainty
Recognizing that strategic management is partly planned and partly responsive, we use a formalized yet flexible strategic planning process focused on extracting maximum benefit from this crucial process.
Building Consensus Through Participation
Providing structure, analysis, industry insight and expert facilitation to enable broad base participation that cuts through indecisiveness and harnesses the organization's potential.
Realizing the Benefits
Bringing together all the important elements: information, people and new insight, to produce a winning strategy that will ultimately result in real, substantial and lasting value.
Strategy Practice
Business Unit Strategy
Change in today's business environment is driven by a new crop of critical influencers such as fragmented customer bases, global competition, product proliferation, market volatility and technology adoption.
Our main engagements are:
Understanding the Enterprise Context
Identifying the key political, human, organizational and competitive forces that shape the environment in which the enterprise operates, with a fundamental focus on the business unit as a business-within-a-business.
Building a Foundation
Creating insight collaboratively with key internal resources so that the vision remains grounded in operational reality.
Crafting a Winning Strategy
Leveraging foundational insight to build a strategic plan for the business unit that will create shareholder value, propel the organization past competition and mitigate the effects of risk.
Corporate Growth
Continuous corporate earnings growth demands ongoing optimization of a portfolio of businesses. SECOR helps clients leverage talent, assets, ideas and a fact base to find the most profitable ways to grow the business.
Our main engagements are:
Striking the Right Balance
Balancing the organization's strategic priorities by employing a powerful combination of management experience and rigorous valuation models to systematically allocate resources to the most lucrative ideas.
Corporate Level Scrutiny
Identifying redundancies across business functions, evaluating outsourcing opportunities, optimizing for economies of scope, scale or specialization, and assessing technology integration options.
Analyzing Business Units
Applying sophisticated options analysis to evaluate organic versus acquisition-based growth and value-based divestures.
New Venture Strategy
New ventures are exciting, challenging endeavours that require committed ownership and management, a solid strategic foundation, a heightened awareness of risk management, and an action-oriented implementation plan to be successful.
Our main engagements are:
Uncovering Opportunities
Conducting a market opportunity assessment, evaluating competitive pressures, and mapping the competencies of the firm to the required resources and capabilities for the new venture.
Defining the Venture
Creating a business model for the venture that spans functional strategy, financial structure and governance.
Driving Toward Integration
Analyzing the integration of the new venture with existing lines of business to identify opportunities for reducing investment cost, time to market and operational risk.
Ongoing Support
Providing support to client teams to develop action-oriented execution and performance management plans. We also provide executive coaching and leadership development to help managers ensure the new venture delivers the expected results.
