Deep strategic and operational expertise supporting startups and vendors in the information services ecosystem.
Strategic Advisory
Strategy, ready for execution.
From Innovation to Distribution
CCAS supports information services firms at all points in their growth journey. As product stacks mature, there is a natural evolution from product strategy (innovation) to sales and marketing (distribution).
Within 12 months of startup, many firms have achieved early product validation, somewhere between product-market fit and minimum viable product. You may have advisory contacts, though they tend to be from within your extended network. The CEO is often considering early fundraising.
Challenges
The CEO at this stage stands for Chief Everything Officer. Processes are ad-hoc and marketing, sales and enablement take a back seat to product validation and early wins.
There are more hours in the day and tasks than bandwidth and support staff.
Strategies tend to be single dimensional, focused on direct revenue channels. These are obviously faster and critical, but a multi-dimensional strategy de-risks execution and in the medium term can dramatically accelerate distribution capabilities and brand recognition.
Moving forward with confidence.
CCAS can help strike the right balance between functions. The best product development comes with customer validation, and client facing activities help drive credibility, important to both potential investors and partner.
Having an independent source of advice and counsel as you develop can improve confidence and reduce stress. CCAS can also join client calls, engaging with the customer and giving you the chance to listen and focus to the client, rather than having to worry about slides, product demos and feedback all at once.
We can also help provide alternative revenue paths beyond direct sales. Every major vendor is looking for differentiated capabilities they can integrate, we have an industry wide rolodex.
Early stage advisory packages start from £15,000 per annum.
Vaiidate your hypothesis through to operational engineering and value creation.
CCAS provides deep industry expertise within the capital markets technology space and is often used for due diligence support. Support projects vary throughout the portfolio lifecycle.
Pre acqusition due diligence
Post acquisition analysis: product fit, executive leadership, GTM capabilities, marketing, commercial policy and partnership opportunities.
Poor sales performance. CCAS can conduct a complete GTM review, assessing all aspects of the GTM process and personnel. See here for more details.
Product or content strategy review. CCAS has worked with products across almost all financial and capital markets front office and can provide independent verification of product-market fit and commercial competitiveness. We can provide equivalent capabilities to assess content quality and differentiation.
Partnership opportunities. Many mature businesses have grown without a dedicated focus on alternative distribution channels. In the age of AI this is a missed opportunity and many firms miss lucrative opportunities to accelerate and diversify their revenue.
From $10M – $50M
Executing on a scale-up is an exciting time to be at a company. You’ve achieved product-market-fit and customer validation. You’re hiring, your brand is recognizable in the market. Yet plenty can still go wrong. The quality of executive leadership is critical during this phase, as is a “healthy paranoia” about the obstacles ahead.
Common challenges during this period tend to focus on GTM quality control, as you hire at breakneck pace. CROs and the Executive Leadership Team lack bandwidth and have aggressive targets. CCAS can provide your ELT with additional bandwidth: providing capabilities to deliver:
High Quality client engagement. Nothing highlights weakness like roleplays, yet most sales leadership rarely feel they have the bandwidth to conduct them. Every sales team benefits from sales training and, critically, the opportunity to practice in a safe space: improving presentation skills, software demos, discovery questions, meeting closure with next steps, etc. A huge percentage of performance variance can be explained through this type of analysis, yet they’re rarely conducted.
Fresh sales and marketing campaigns. Many firms leave the sellers with only brochures, presentations and a client list. Fresh messages are crucial to maintain soft engagement and ensure the sales teams have a reason to maintain close contact with future customers. These can be based on market catalysts (change in yield curve, market events, regulatory events and policy changes, etc. They can, of course, also be tied to new features, new content, product launches, etc.
Thought leadership pieces. Few firms execute on thought leadership effectively. A whitepaper that articulates the customer challenge your firm set out to solve, the tools you provide to solve their pain and why the timing is right. These types of multi-page long form reports are perceived to be difficult in a tiktok age, yet often provide impactful lead gen, as well as improving client understanding of your firm and brand.
Channel Strategy: from checkers to chess. Partnerships can reinvigorate growth, exposing you to new customers and bringing scale beyond your own sales org. They can also bring a halo effect from the partners credibility, as well as allowing you to deliver a more holistic product offering, yet most firms lack a strong partner function. CCAS can support or drive these efforts.
>$100M revenue
Major vendors face a different set of challenges. They possess strong distribution capabilities and global reach, deep customer relationships and strong balance sheets offering strategic flexibility. At the same time, they cannot innovate at the pace they would wish, they sit on legacy infrastructure and incumbency, with the associated large revenue pools, makes them a target for a new generation of disruptors.
CCAS can support a growth renaissance through a number of different projects and channels:
Marketing refresh: assessing website, collateral and marketing campaigns – are you taking advantage of market catalysts and customer trends? We can build new campaigns to give your team the confidence and credibility to get back in front of your customers.
GTM Review: we can conduct a team by team GTM review. Focusing on underperforming teams, we can help sales leadership assess the key challenges: domain expertise, sales process, commercials, product-market-fit, providing prioritized next steps to resolution.
Junior Partnerships. CCAS monitors over 3,000 info services vendors tracking product development and launches, partnerships, funding rounds, etc. We can assist your partners organization with identifying the handful of players that can augment your current product capabilities, provide you with new content, or help you with vertical or geographic expansion. The objective is to identify symbiotic partnerships, delivering growth to both parties.
