Ascent Strategy Consulting
Consulting and advisory services, including, but not limited to:
Strategic Planning
We collaborate with you to envision a transformative state for your organization – one where your team has challenged itself to create a new bright future with well defined measures of success. We challenge you to think big and then work with you to develop a roadmap to successfully ascend to that elevated state.
Operational Planning & Modeling
We develop operating models and plans with your organization using the latest practices and tools in operational planning. It’s a collaborate and iterative process. Our experiences operating within a large range of companies, from big corporations to start-ups, will help guide you through the pitfalls of over or under planning, along with the challenges of scaling resources and infrastructure within your company.
Innovation, Customer Development, and Project Management
If you are a start-up or in an innovation stage of your growth, we will collaborate with you and guide you through developing new ideas, business models, and understanding your customer. We use and adapt start-up methodologies such as Customer Discovery techniques developed by Steve Blank and Lean Start-up principles developed by Eric Ries and Ash Maurya. We encourage you to think big and will work with you to show you how to efficiently validate new ideas. In addition to being advisors and coaches, we can also take a more active role in your projects by acting as a project manager.
Team Accountability and Execution
Most companies have the talent and skills to make a difference in their markets, industries, and the world – what they often lack are the practices to allow them to achieve a higher level of performance. We can work with you to establish new execution frameworks that are appropriate for your team and organization and ensure that good habits are developed and that execution frameworks are serving the team well. Team alignment, integrity, and accountability are critical components of great execution – we can help you overcome the many obstacles that prevent great team dynamics.
Fundraising Advisory Services
Whether its debt, equity, or mezzanine capital, we will leverage our extensive experience with investors all along the capital stack to package your company into an attractive and lucrative asset that investors will be excited to include in their portfolio. Fundraising can be a daunting and, often, unpleasant process without the necessary tools and skills to engage with it; with a solid background in finance and in working with the financial community, we can make fundraising feel like a natural part of your growth cycle.
Market Research, Feasibility Studies, and Competitive Intelligence
Understanding the landscape is critical for any business at any stage of their growth cycle. We draw on multiple resources to give you the latest intelligence on your peer group, market, and industry. We can also complete feasibility studies for new projects in a wide range of industries.
Valuation and Transaction Advisory Services
Using industry standard tools such as discounted cash flow analysis, the comparable transactions approach, and the direct capitalization method, we can help you understand the value that any potential acquisition may have for your business and recommend an approach that is best suited to your growth objectives. Inorganic growth or growth by acquisition is often a great strategy for taking your business to the next level without enduring the time and learning costs associated with organic or internal growth.
Risk Analysis
The challenge that many companies face when tasked with difficult decisions, large and small, is a limited understanding of the risks involved in a decision due to a variety of factors such as lack of information or data, or complexity in the volume of variables or downstream effects that result from a decision. With years of practice with effective risk analysis techniques such as Monte Carlo Analysis and Sensitivity / Scenario Analysis, we can help you shed light on the actual chances that the downside risk of your next decision will manifest.
Financial Planning and Analysis
With well functioning Financial Planning and Analysis or FP&A departments, organizations can gain large competitive advantages because they have an in-depth understanding of the actual levers and drivers of cost, volume, and profit. If you feel that your organization is at the right size and scale to benefit from the FP&A function, we can assist and collaborate with you to effectively implement an efficient and effective full cycle FP&A system.
Accounting and Tax Planning
Whether you desire tax planning advice or you simply want to optimize your bookkeeping system for more efficiency, we can help you increase your tax and accounting efficiency, and minimize your tax liability. Often the simplest updates in an organizational structure or a journal entry can result in massive tax advantages and efficiency, which, in turn, results in better cash flow management.