A Note about our case studies……
Many clients contact us with sensitive business challenges or to validate strategies they intend to execute. As such, the information must be kept in the strictest confidence – our future depends on it. With that, our case studies have been scrubbed for sensitive details and have been fully approved by our customers.
Investor Validation – Pre-Acquisition
One of our Private Equity relationships approached us for support with an impending acquisition.
The firm had a potential acquisition where they sought a deep-dive review with a written report outlining strengths and challenges of the target company. Trinity Partners undertook a review of financial, sales, and operational practices over a period of weeks. Along with the data review we spent time in discussions with various stakeholders to better understand the strengths of the organization.
The resulting report allowed our customer to position themselves for success post-acquisition and the transition plan written by Trinity Partners was tailored to match the strengths of the organization thereby creating a clearly defined roadmap with milestones.
Investor Validation – Post-Acquisition
Our same Private Equity partner engaged us to perform a service with an existing portfolio company.
The firm in question had been in our customer’s portfolio for three years and was embarking on a new strategy for business development and expansion. The plan required additional capital investment and was a departure from the core business deliverable.
Trinity Partners performed a business review of the portfolio company which included a review of three years of financial performance, the performance metrics under which the organization had been operating, and the workflow processes in place for their core business. These findings were mapped against the proposed plan and its projected results. From that effort we developed an execution plan that differed slightly from that which the company had developed.
Our strength in this case came from our diverse background and our ability to analyze the proposed plan in a non-partisan manner. As such we were able to emphasize certain strengths that were being overlooked and modify the investment plan to be more incremental in nature.
As a result, our customer was able to manage the capital infusion process and tie it to specific progress milestones. Doing so allowed all involved the ability to feel secure in their plan and to remain focused on results.
Compensation Modeling
Trinity Partners was approached by an organization seeking to review, modify, and improve their compensation model for a specific sector of their business. Many companies look at their compensation models in separate categories based on job section – operations, support, and sales being viewed differently which was the scenario in this example. This approach is very common and inadvertently creates friction and competing priorities within an organization. Compensation is also a very delicate topic for any company and Trinity Partners was able to provide the leadership team with an impartial third-party approach. In keeping with our total-team vision we reviewed the compensation across all positions within the organization.
With our findings we were able to develop a compensation model for multiple key areas in the organization that provided the executive leadership team with more benefit than they initially expected. Our plan included:
- Inter-related variable compensation that provided incentive toward team alignment and unity
- One change, one time rather than the exhaustive “try it for a while and tweak it” approach
- Future-proofing team member job satisfaction to avoid comp-related attrition
- Creation of a model that is attractive for quality recruiting
- Creation of a model that aligns well with investor priorities
- Overall savings for the company
Our client now has a compensation model that has energized their team and has had an additional benefit in moving some decision-making processes into the hands of team members thereby providing leadership with more time for strategy implementation. With an aligned team the decisions that previously required leadership arbitration have become something that can be solved much more easily.
Organizational Support – Goals and Measurement
We often encounter companies who suffer from a very common dilemma in the area of Goal-Setting and Progress Measurement. One such firm engaged Trinity Partners to help them develop and implement a sustainable solution.
Like most companies the team involved suffered from scope creep on their priorities list and suffered further in the area of measurement and sustainability. They had far more priorities than could be accomplished and they had difficulty sticking to their committed path. They had great reasons for doing so…..
Their customers!
All of their priorities were important and they had the best of intentions until they encountered a heavy workload or until some other factor intruded. Most business owners will agree that staying on track can be incredibly difficult when they are living in the business.
Trinity Partners reviewed the goals the team had identified and performed a ranking exercise with the team to determine the mission-critical items versus the nice-to-have items. Next we reviewed the available resources and the time appreciation for execution. From these two data sets we were able to provide the owner with a more focused and concise priority list. All the original ideas remained on the list, but we agreed that some of the goals were simply not achievable in the next 18 months and accommodations for work-arounds needed to be made. We then worked with the team to assign measurements for each goal including the highly important interim milestones which are critical to determining whether progress is on track or corrections are needed. Last, we committed to facilitating bi-weekly conference calls where all stakeholders present updates and the owner receives a written progress report monthly.
The owner has full confidence that her team is on track and achieving the progress they need and she is able to avoid the challenge of discussing missed-milestones with team members.