Case Study – North Star

Condition & Need:

After a series of acquisitions and the resultant integration challenges, this patron to Beacon had the need to better understand where their platform of solutions ranked within the broker-dealer marketplace. In need of an objective, independent, third party perspective, this patron came to Beacon seeking a better understanding of how their platform of solutions stacked up competitively in the broker-dealer and investment professional marketplace. This patron wanted research that pegged their platform of solutions versus: marketplace trends, existing customer needs, and the standard of competitive solutions in their space.

Action Plan:

Beacon’s actions on this body of work, demanded slightly south of 400 hours. Beacon established the “golden rules” that served as the decision-making framework for driving the project forward when bifurcating events occur. Next, in collaborating with the project team, 120 unique pieces of data were determined key to the success of the study. The difference with this study was that those pieces of data were illustrative versus pure quantitative data points. The result was that Beacon balanced qualitative and quantitative research to deliver a study that supplied the patron with explanatory context, plus numerical benchmarks to compare their capabilities to their touchstones.

Results:

Over the course of three months Beacon gathered the data for 98% of the 120 unique pieces of data. In the span of the next thirty days Beacon evolved raw data into over 200 pages of intelligent prose and insightful charting, which communicated where our patron’s platform of solutions plotted versus the established bellwethers. The study supplied the intelligence needed to understand where our patron’s platform matched up versus the needs of the broker-dealer marketplace, their customers, and the standard of the competitive solutions aggregate. The study supplied the foundation from which our patron is in the process of building out a five-year strategic plan. That plan involves budgeting hundreds of millions for the expressed purpose of evolving their platform of solutions to surpass the multi-dimensional functionality demands of their clients and prospects.

This is another example of Beacon Strategies delivering actionable intelligence.