Our Services & Case Studies
At Strawberry Consulting we can offer a range of skills & consultancy that can meet your needs. Predominantly aligned to our proficiency in digital telecommunications and mergers & acquisitions. Sometimes delivered with support from partner's, below are some examples of previous programmes of work undertaken. If you have any further interest, please contact us – we will be more than happy to help.
Consulting
You may know where you want to be but not have the skills in house to be able to navigate to that point. A major UK CP needed to transform technologies across their network, but the high transition costs and timelines were inhibiting their traditional model for fulfilment. We identified and oversaw the outsourcing of expensive overheads to a larger operating partner that were better scaled to deliver the transition, years later, after completion those functions were insourced, although with a lower cost base to reflect the NG network.
Advisory
You may know tactically that you need to do something with a particular challenge, but not have the subject matter expertise to know which decision to make. A UK ISP needed such support to assess the market and determine the best technology partner/vendor to replace their core IP network and overarching management platform. Within the operating teams there were clear preferences and bias that needed to be managed and challenged to get to the best decision, which had a lower cost base and better carbon footprint.
Strategy
Setting the business strategy is fraught with many challenges, needing to understand the aspirations of shareholders, market conditions, customer journeys and employee commitment to it. A successful regional Telco operator needed to either expand by diversifying with more value rich products in a market with strong brand awareness, or expand geographically with their current portfolio. Geographic expansion was ultimately preferred as it entailed less risk although cost more capital, which was de-risked to some degree by adopting an interim entry trading model that was more Opex based.
Mergers & Acquisitions or Divestments
Sometimes the Strategy has to be bolder, do you build, partner, buy a business or refocus upon your core competency to succeed. Such analysis takes a lot of time and energy and distracts the core operation. A major SP faced the reality of acquisitions that had failed to realise synergies, a deflated market and a high cost to compete. Various recovery plans were considered but modelling ultimately concluded the return was not worth the investment for the time it would take, and a divestment strategy was progressed, allowing the business to refocus on what it did best.
Optimisation
Everything may be doing okay, but could it be better? They old adage there is always room for improvement is true. An ILEC wanted to simplifying operating processes and exploiting new digital technologies to improve CEX and reduce Opex but the disruption and distraction can result in missed targets. Ultimately outsourcing the work meant the programme was delivered sooner and had the endorsement of an external impartial perspective. Rebranding in tandem with restructure and introducing new digital systems and processes, helped to take the workforce on a journey they would not have originally embraced.
Stakeholder Management
You know your business better than any Consultant and may already know what you need to do. Sometimes that plan needs validating via third parties to convince your investors, partners, customers and employees. A significant LA needed such validation as they wanted to embark upon a digital ftransformation journey into a VoIP arena. After revisiting their plans some subtle improvements were added to the customer facing experience, timescales for deployment improved and a significant cost reduction achieved, and the investors felt vindicated.
Programme Management
Sometimes you just need to get organised and focussed, but the business is busy doing what it does and the disruption is making the programme drift. Bringing in external PM resource is exactly what a global PE house needed to do get a strategic review programme over the line and then push forward with the strategy that was derived, but not necessarily with the same PM resources. Focused external resources that are courteous, professional, but result driven (and not having the baggage of an internal resources) is a well-trodden but well proven delivery tool for SLTs across all sectors.
Solution Design & Innovation
The digital world is evolving at an ever-increasing pace, knowing what is out there to help deliver your business goals better, can be a huge problem. Nobody wants to be a follower. Knowing the market would eventually move beyond the current technologies a regional CP eventually persuaded the board and investors to invest in FTTH rather than lessor cost FTTC architecture. It took some convincing, but now that Operator has one of the best networks and service portfolios for their customers across the world and is an award-winning example of how to innovate.
Glossary of Terms for above
CP - Carrier Provider
ISP - Internet Service Provider
UK - United Kingdom
IP - Internet Protocol
CLEC - Competing Local Exchange Carrier
CEX - Customer Experience
NG - Next Generation
ILEC - Incumbent Local Exchange Carrier
SP - Service Provider
LA - Local Authority
FTTH - Fibre to the Home
FTTC - Fibre to the Cabinet
Opex - Operating Expenditure
PE - Private Equity
PM - Project/Programme Management
SLT - Senior Leadership Team
VoIP - Voice over Internet Protocol
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