Brave growth strategy for a software company

Challenge

A software company had achieved great growth in the Finnish market, but now its  old pockets of growth had started to dry out. The company needed to find new growth avenues, but it was unclear where, particularly as some previous internationalization efforts had not been successful. To recharge the company’s growth, their new executive team called August.

Brave the future

The leaders of the company had a great number of different value creation possibilities in mind.  However, the options were very different in terms of content and size, making the opportunities difficult to analyze and compare. August jumped in to help the company by bringing structure to the strategy process.  We utilized a scenario-based strategy approach to find growth avenues in Finland and internationally, as well as by  moving to a platform-based strategy. Finally, we helped the team formulate three asymmetric scenarios for growth. In the end, its chosen strategy was a hybrid of two of the scenarios.

In addition, August executive advisor Tero Ojanperä brought hands-on expertise to the client by contributing to planning the platform business opportunities.

Impact

At the end of the process, the software company had in place a strategy for high growth. The strategy allowed the company, for example, to proceed immediately with a suitable M&A project.

Despite being ambitious, the strategy was considered executable by management thanks to clear short- and long-term strategic goals. Employees praised the new strategy for being ambitious, clear, and motivational. In the future, the company plans to  take Finnish software knowledge to new markets.