Turn-around Project: Highlighting Significant Growth Potential for B2B Media Services Provider

Client and project overview

A global provider of B2B media services asked us to help them to better understand the benefits of their marketplace platform, which was experiencing significant declines in revenue. The client also asked us to analyze its viability as a standalone business in order to assess whether to turn it around or divest.

Key questions

• Is the client’s marketplace an effective recruitment channel for its in-person events?
• What improvements are required to optimize the client’s marketplace?

Highlights of our methodology

We conducted a comprehensive interview program (spanning the client, sellers, and buyers), created an online survey of the client’s customers, performed desk research and data analysis, and hosted a workshop with client stakeholders.

This enabled us to:

• Determine the benefit from the client’s marketplace to its core business
• Recommend a go-forward strategy for optimizing the client’s marketplace

Results

• Highlighted the significant growth and upside potential for the client’s marketplace (e.g. revenue from digital channel growing at a 20% CAGR, 900k visitors to the digital channel in a year)
• We also recommended that the client significantly increase its investment in its marketplace business
• The product was identified as a core investment opportunity. We recommended that the client alter the marketplace business model from an “e-directory” to a “marketplace”. Therefore, facilitating transactions between buyers and sellers.
• We also recommended that the client invest in functionality improvements beyond transaction capability.