Taming complexity to boost growth
Operating Model Simplification
Metisens is the French consulting firm specializing in the transformation of mid-caps into efficient growth platforms. It defines and implements plans to reduce and make manageable the complexity in Operating Models.
Most mid-size companies have gradually let complexity develop in them. This can hinder their expansion and weigh heavily on their profitability. Not only do they give up a significant potential for additional EBITDA, which can amount to 15 or even 30% on a like-for-like basis, but they no longer know how to grow profitably. Their development initiatives, and especially their external growth operations, are disappointing because they fail in delivering the expected value.
We have developed to relieve this type of conundrum a systemic approach to Complexity that applies to any mid-cap that either changes scope or sees its profitability run out of steam and become unpredictable.
Our methods align the Operating Model with the Growth Strategy, taking into account Complexity. The company can then operate on a structurally streamlined, more agile and much more profitable basis. This transformation is based on rationalizing the supply of products and services, and simplifying the operation and organization of the company in order to make it a strong foundation for its future development.
Symptoms
If You, as a CEO, recognize one or more of the following symptoms in your company:
- Your sales increase but results do not follow
- You observe uncorrelated revenues and costs evolutions
- Direct and indirect costs are volatile and their variation is difficult to explain
- Your teams struggle to ensure accurate tracking and tight control of margins
- You have lost customers but your costs haven’t decreased
- Despite all your efforts, performance is hard to predict
- You see very slow progress in realizing the effects of your decisions
- Timeliness and performance at the operational level are not satisfactory and under control
- Your staff is overloaded but not productive enough
Then, it is highly likely that your company is already experiencing the impact of an excess of poorly controlled complexity.
Our methods will allow you to identify very quickly where this complexity is nesting, what pitfalls are lurking and what a shortfall this might represent for you. We will help you to gain the upper hand on the situation, secure your growth plans and quickly generate very substantial EBITDA gains.
Complexity
In any business, growth in sales is generally considered a positive sign of good health. But in cases where growth is driven by the expansion of the offering, there is a real risk that this growth undermines the firm’s agility as well as its financial performance.
Often inherited, the profusion in the Offering of Products and Services is the result of an accumulation over time. It offers a fertile ground for a deceitful complexity, which sets in, clogging processes, monopolizing manpower and eroding efficiency.
In reality, the excessive variety of the Offering is allowing less performing products to flourish at the expense of more competitive ones. The former consume a disproportionate share of resources and capacities at the expense of the latter, thereby affecting their profitability. They entail the ramification of operational processes with their associated ad hoc processes and exceptions. A nonlinear progression of costs lurks, accompanied by a volatility escaping any rational explanation. Visibility on the evolution of financial results diminishes and the company deviates permanently from its economic optimum.
An mid-size company suffering from these syndromes will need a preventive treatment in order to become an adequate platform for a “buy and build” growth strategy.
An in-depth examination of the situation is then necessary to link the evolutions of revenues to real costs brought about by the complexity. This factual and quantified approach raises awareness of Complexity impacts and helps to better identify where to act on the Offering and the underlying processes. It is indeed a two-pronged combination of measures on the Offering + Process fronts, with the active participation of the key people in the company, which makes it possible to obtain substantial and lasting benefits.
Our hands-on involvement
Metisens works alongside the CEO of the mid-size company to reduce the impact of Complexity that overwhelms his company’s processes. Our team is focused on building profitable growth capabilities. Thus refocused, the company becomes significantly more profitable. It is also better positioned to reap the benefits of a digital transformation.
Metisens relies on the expertise of its partners and their experience of former executives and entrepreneurs who have led transformations in many sectors. It also draws on recent research on enterprise complexity.
Faced with the difficult problem of complexity, our method designed and built for mid-market companies makes it possible to quickly identify the achievable gains, then to define and bring within the teams the decisive actions to make them concrete and durable.
Metisens always abides by the following principles in the conduct of its assignments:
- Avoid any preconceived schema or representation
- Observe a strict and unbiased neutrality
- Deliver a high quality service, always in the interest of the client company
- Respect the commitment made and the word given
Our team
Metisens is led by its founding partner. He is in charge of defining its overall vision, and its strategic direction.
In order to respond as closely as possible to the needs of its customers, Metisens has developed its qualified network of partners linked by a close and long-term relationship.
Samer Roumieh has led European subsidiaries and divisions of leading US groups in the Information Technology sector.
After a career at the head of innovative start-ups in the Internet and in artificial intelligence, he has been working since 2010 to support entrepreneurs and investment funds in steering major transformation projects.
Samer is an engineer graduated from Ecole Polytechnique Paris and Ponts et Chaussées, and a statistician-economist graduated from ENSAE.
Samer brings his personal touch to our clients in making sure that the strategy, the Operating Model and the key people are fully aligned and that no energy is wasted in non added-value activities.