Beating the competition and hitting or exceeding your growth numbers requires a thorough understanding of the market and your prospects within. You need to know:
- Is your core market big enough to deliver the numbers? If not, how do you expand the pie?
- What new product and new market opportunities should you pursue? In what order of priority?
- What acquisitions should you consider?
Working exclusively with technology companies, Topline knows how difficult it is to answer these questions. Customer needs are always evolving, competitors are moving at lightning speed and technology advances create new opportunities and disrupt existing ones.
Because these questions are so difficult, many tech companies tend to make critical decisions about where to invest their growth dollars with incomplete data. But these are critical decisions, involving significant investment in resources and time- none of which you can spare. With Topline Strategy you can take the guess work out of the process. You can make decisions based on concrete market facts.
Topline’s Growth Strategy Approach
For each engagement, Topline leverages methodologies that have been honed in over years of experience working with technology companies to develop recommendations tailored to the client’s individual situation.
Topline’s methodologies combine quantitative and qualitative approaches to primary data collection and market sizing:
- Develop realistic forecasts for your current markets
- Validate the opportunity for new products and markets
- Identify and qualify acquisition candidates that will deliver on your goals.
Case Study
Background:
The client is a technology company that sells data on traffic patterns gathered from vehicle navigation systems. This information is currently purchased and used by public transportation departments to deliver traffic congestion data and road alerts as well as to plan or prioritize transportation projects.
Prior to Project:
The company was looking for growth investment to go after several new markets. They had initial traction in many of these markets but did not have a good sense of which were most attractive for them. These markets included: retailers, investment banks, insurance companies, and a few others. Investors and management sought validation of the size of each opportunity and overall prioritization.
Findings:
The existing market (public transportation departments) is good fit, but it is a mature market with limited growth potential. Of the other verticals evaluated, retail is the best new vertical to enter based on size and degree of customer interest. Topline found significant prospect interest in the client’s offering. All other verticals showed significant challenges in market readiness. Topline recommended they be pursued opportunistically, until the opportunity is proven and the market is established.
Actions:
Investors funded the retail segment and decided to revisit progress in other segments in 6 months. The retail segment is gaining traction rapidly.