Hosting

Tactical sourcing improvements lead to broader transformation support for a Managed Services Provider

The work that the Inside Consulting team has done in remaking our cost structure and ultimately our business model was remarkable. They are some of the smartest people I have ever worked with.- Art Zeile | CEO

Situation:

  • Hosting, a Managed Services Provider, was nearing the end of the owner’s investment period and looking to drive sustainable earnings growth.  Inside Consulting was engaged to conduct outside spend reduction and assist with revenue growth stimulation. 
  • As the competitive landscape shifted and massive IaaS competitors emerged, Hosting asked Inside Consulting to assist with a restructuring plan to enhance competitiveness.

Insights and actions:

  • Sourcing Diagnostic analysis revealed a set of spend categories with compressible costs, where Hosting had more leverage than was previously understood.  Inside Consulting conducted muti-round tenders and live online reverse auctions where appropriate- focusing on compressible costs in network and data center software.  
  • Revenue growth analysis revealed opportunities to increase leadflow and penetration within an underserved market segment.  Inside Consulting helped design actionable pilots to confirm the opportunities.
  • To address the organizational restructuring challenge, Inside Consulting conducted a zero-based budgeting exercise for overhead functions as well as for Sales & Marketing.  Analysis revealed that customer ticket resolution areas had actually grown more productive over recent years, and that these areas required more investment, not less.  Analysis of Sales revealed a high concentration of bookings in a subset of the team and the need to clarify account support models.

Impact:

  • In the initial engagement, together with the client’s management team, we delivered $7m of improved EBITDA run-rate (+25%) and added 2 points of annual revenue growth over a 16-month period.
  • The subsequent restructuring effort identified $8M of cashflow improvement potential from a mix of organizational productivity improvements and outside spend compression opportunities.