Recent Case Stories

The following cases show how our analysis discovers the real issue instead of the assumed one.

Case story: 1

Investor sees falling margins in “Telecoms” product company with a large client base in the hotel and leisure industry. Management view was that additional funds for upgrading the technical features of the products could rescue the situation.
RED found the returns could only be realised by changing the strategy and positioning. This meant considering the following;
Re-positioning. “Re-branding” the company as a service provider instead of product vendor.
Re-structuring. Modifying the organisation to suit
Re-training. Sales staff needed to be service oriented

Following a period of successful growth, this “investment ” company found themselves facing increasingly frequent critical systemsfailures. The client view was that by creating new operational processes that utilized best practice and by providing coaching for key staff, the problems would be corrected.
RED conducted a bottom-up assessment and found the following
Structure: Overlapping of responsibilities and a high number of direct reports made it difficult to enforce accountability
Resources: Disproportionate weighting of people in certain areas
Strategic Management: No time to think about the future
Time management: Meetings occupying in excess of 50% of the working week

A “Commodity Chemicals” manufacturer needed to know if developing a large scale manufacturing facility to produce specialty products using a new method was financially viable.
RED conducted three concurrent streams of analysis:
Potential: In-depth assessment of the future market acceptability
Cost: Determination of the cost of constructing a manufacturing facility and supporting infrastructure
Viability: Determination of the viability of commercialising the new technology
RED’s analysis showed that the break-even point for the new venture was in excess of twenty years. Therefore the client decided that the investment of e250 Million in commercialising the technology could not be justified

Investor, facing request for second-round funding from “Biotech” company that had developed a non-GMO technology and was planning to sell research to fund development, believed that the “cash-burn” was too high for the size of operations and the efficiency of the company was questionable
RED found the business of the company was flawed:
Market value. In-depth assessment of the future market acceptability showed that customers they were targeting rarely bought research and, when they did, the contracts were relatively small
Strategy: Recommendation was to change strategy. Instead of selling research, to obtain bankable contracts from potential customers