Situation

Pre-revenue technology start-up, with an unsuccessful model of selling technology licenses to third party processors

Symptoms

No profits for eight years and consuming large amounts of investor cash.
Of the small number of sales none resulted in significant recurring revenue and most existing customers were extremely unhappy.
The company owned global production assets that were less that 20% occupied on a single shift

Solution

Immediately took cost out to stabilize the P&L.
‘Red Flag’ reviewed the global operations and decided to leave all open and energetically fill them.
Marketed technical support and development and turned it in to a major revenue stream.
Doubled the sales team and took the technology directly to end users with a flexible deployment model.

Successes

Sales grew by over 70% in year 2 with over 90% of these sales recurring in subsequent years. Sales more than doubled the following year.
Profits grew faster than sales.
The internal production sites were all filled with profitable work
Customers included some of the largest global corporations.

Situation

Large corporate speciality products business serving global customers in a range of sectors

Symptoms

A multi-million pound capital program had been started to address a market that never materialised, burdening the business with millions of pounds of depreciation.
The additional capacity had been filled partially with low value low margin business; choking the supply chain and leading to working capital 5 times plan.
The existing management team had very traditional views and highly change resistant and were largely in denial that there was a problem at all.

Solution

Short-term focus on prioritising high value orders ‘stuck’ in the system, to deliver an immediate benefit to working capital.
Negotiated long term supply contracts with high value customers, offering better prices in exchange for better visibility of demand, creating stability in the supply chain.
Exited the low value agreements, which did reduce revenue but increase profits and reduced working capital.
Redesigned the manufacturing flow to provide ‘fast track’ routes without disrupting other production.
Re-energised several speciality product lines to provide low input, high margin revenues.

Successes

Working capital reduced by almost 1/3^rd during the first year and continued to reduce year on year.
Substantially reduced costs with a structured downsizing program.
Revenues stabilised and eventually new revenues replaced the lost low value contracts. In doing this profits grew by millions of pounds

Situation

An established speciality and bulk materials supplier, with a large number of UK facilities and several in Europe. A large domestic and European customer base with some limited penetration in USA and Asia

Symptoms

With the domestic and European market for their product collapsing the business had suffered more than 5 years of declining sales.
Previous cost reduction programs had taken out low level workers leaving a very top heavy management structure.
Management had lost touch with key customers with little or no senior contact for a number of years.

Solution

Conducted a ‘Voice of the Customer’ exercise to establish what the market needed.
Energetically developed new markets in the Far East, Middle East and South America.
Reconnected at board level with major customer and aligned the business strategy with these players, providing a portfolio product and service offer, in some cases taking assets from customers and running them on their behalf.
Massively downsized the UK cost base, rationalised the footprint and sold the European assets
Invested in the Far East, buying businesses and increasing presence in key territories.
Established markets in the Middle East and South America.

Successes

Reversed the decline in sales and began delivering positive profits, which then rose rapidly.
The downsizing of the UK facilities and associated relocation of the remaining facilities was fully cash neutral.
Rebalanced the management structure and increased capability by limited external recruitment.