Services and Solutions
How we can help your business …
| The Webb Partnership works across all the main industry sectors and helps senior teams to rapidly improve how they are competing – from strategy to execution. Over the last ten years we have helped many executive teams to refresh their strategic agenda and find fast and high impact solutions to drive growth for corporations.
Some of the typical questions our clients ask us are:
We have a huge depth of experience across the following sectors: Retail, Financial Services, Entertainment and Leisure, Technology and Telecoms, Service Industries and Healthcare and Consumer Goods e.g. food and beverages, electronics, luxury goods, personal care and apparel. We offer workshops for all. |
Corporate Venturing and Brand Diversification
Many global brands see corporate venturing, brand extension and alliances as the only route on offer for high octane growth and genuine innovation – but it can be uncomfortable and some companies get it wrong and manage to destroy value by either sleeping with the devil or applying the dead hand of the traditional parent. Most large companies are poor at starting up new early-stage businesses and brands, so corporate venturing is the proven way to get this job done.
| We have worked in the last three years with some of the largest businesses in the world – finding external funds to accelerate growth plans, extending the footprints of powerful product brands, building a portfolio of successful new ventures which deliver a flow of acquirable businesses.
As an example we have designed and built the largest corporate venture fund in Europe for Unilever (see Case Studies). We are helping reshape the future of over thirty retail, sports, lifestyle, fashion, snacking, media and wellbeing brands. |
We know from hard experience how to use the alchemy of independent private equity models with the scale and access to channels of corporates to build value in dramatic new ways.
We know the problems when floppy corporate lifers are given too much money to waste on a bunch of hopeless internal ideas, and we also understand the problems of destroying value which most ‘traditional’ acquisitions created. Corporate venturing can resolve these issues.
Strategies for Growth
Executive teams in large or complex businesses need occasionally to stand back and review their overall strategy for driving growth. In recent years the pressures in the market have created a greater need for radical alternatives to be explored, but with less ponderous puffing and blowing than the old-fashioned strategic review cycle.
| The exercise cannot take eighteen months and cost $2m any more. Just exhorting people to double value every three years won’t do it in businesses with tired old business models and brands.
We use a set of very pragmatic and effective approaches which help senior teams to develop new paths to growth and to flesh out the practical implications on internal skills, investment, requirements, growth strategies and key customer targets. |
We can tailor our proven approaches for a fraction of the cost of traditional and intellectual consultancy approaches. From the first meeting we bring in our market experience and views of where the big market gaps and opportunities are, so that our clients reach an understanding of how they can drive growth and innovation. Outcomes can be as radical as you choose, but the implications and impact are always clear and quantified.
We can then also help senior teams to engage the execution partners, find additional external funding and shape the overall change agenda to deliver the revised strategy. Even a $60bn business can expect to be hitting the ground running in under six months using our ‘no prisoners’ approach. We can find a future for your brand in new revenue areas which traditional thinking could never achieve. Most global brands are in a box – and if you do nothing the new brand entrants and multi-channel markets will kill you slowly and gracefully.
Everything we do is focused on creating viable strategies and robust operations, which can reach the markets and be appreciated by your customers quickly.
We have used this approach to build the largest corporate venturing business anywhere in the world this year – with a target of creating $2bn of value from a standing start. We will find a path to growth and a future for your brands and business, whatever the obstacles.
Services & Solutions
Brand Growth/Diversification
Taking Brands to New Growth Levels
Mature brands have few places to go if they cannot extend sideways into new product adjacencies, revenue streams or services and yet the skills and understanding required to do this are not there in most businesses.
| In the last few years the focus has started to move within large consumer and retail businesses, to identifying new opportunities for growth. The market is moving from products to services. Few premium branded players can realistically expect to double shareholder value every four years or so through traditional organic growth or acquisition, so they must learn this new game.
There is now a new frontier for unlocking brand value and developing new strategic businesses in emerging opportunity areas. This is the exciting but dangerous world of corporate venturing, alliances and trademark or brand diversification. |
The best businesses in the world are finding new ways to secure their strategic future and to drive growth – We know how to create the next generation of consumer brands.
Speak to us if you want to know how this approach will help you grow or master new brand futures, new channels and new business systems, or arrange a Strategic Workshop.
Building Multi-Channel Operations
All businesses who deal with the consumer are facing an escalation of cost and complexity from the introduction of new access-channels for their customers.
In most retail sectors, customer segments are now starting to demand direct service and access via via mobile and online channels, in addition to traditional high-street or catalogue operations.
| The challenge is to use the emerging direct channels to increase the perception of intimacy and to secure and broaden the relationship and share of wallet with the customer.This has to be achieved without letting the cost-base explode – each new channel can introduce a raft of new cost and service overheads. |  |
“a unique partner to
support your voyage into multi channel business” Jeremy Hollows, VP Carrefour
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We have a wealth of experience of helping businesses to design and implement customer-centric operations, which support brand strategy. We also bring deep experience in the technology infrastructure that is required, so that these new services can build upon existing investments and services (See Webb Insights – Multi-Channel Tools).
We can save companies millions in implementation costs and can typically bring new and exciting routes to customer’s hearts and wallets in less than six months.
“Geoff Webb has written the definitive survial guide to this new war zone for all brand owners who care for their precious assets” John M Sutherland, Chairman, Cadbury Schweppes