Client description: Engineering and consulting company

Practice area: Market Research and Analysis; Strategic Positioning and Planning

Geographic scope: Southeastern US

Industries involved: Water and wastewater

Services applied: Market opportunity study; go-to-market strategy; competitive intelligence; mergers & acquisitions

Business challenge: Client needed an understanding of the market opportunity in this new industry vertical for their company, including a go/no-go decision and how to implement and move forward if the decision was to go.

Methodologies: Secondary research combined with more than 100 qualitative IDIs with end-users, thought leaders, suppliers and competitors.

The result: Detailed report that included:

• Market intelligence on the industry verticals of interest, including competitor size and specialization, customer/industry identification and clustering and market size (both near and medium term)
• Market attractiveness model that measured market opportunities against competitive strengths and calculated whether the benefits of market entry outweighed the cost of investment to play effectively in that space
• Feasibility roadmap for entry to targeted markets which included cost of entry, expected profitability, synergy with existing business units
• Go-to-market strategy derived from high level analysis, identification of a unique value proposition for servicing these industry segments

We advised the client that this pubic sector opportunity behaved very differently than the private sector business they currently pursued; longer sales cycles, very relationship driven, different incumbent valve brands. We recommended that if the client decided to go, an acquisition was the preferred market entry tactic to gain the relationships and the valve brand. Ultimately the client decided to delay the market entry for the near term.