Helping a Healthcare Company Unlock Maximum Value

A medical testing company in the in vitro diagnostics space was falling short of its potential when acquired by our client, a private equity firm. We partnered with them on a multiyear, integrated approach designed to enhance critical facets of TestCo’s* operations and boost profitability.

We began by conducting a ProfitCube^℠ analysis—that is, our proprietary method of understanding where a company’s profits come from and what steps can be taken to improve them. We aggregated key financial metrics from multiple sources and then went deeper, augmenting that data with geography-specific interviews, customer analyses, a review of expected ongoing costs, and more.

That revealed that the US market was disproportionately responsible for a large share of TestCo’s profits, yet the company was devoting significant resources to a long list of countries that posed operational complexities but yielded little profit. ProfitCube analysis also uncovered a distinct inflection point for profitability—namely, an installed base of 200 or more clients—further enhancing TestCo’s ability to invest in its most promising markets.

Guided by these insights, we worked with our client to create a global value creation plan for TestCo, and we designed it to achieve above-market growth within the US (boosting revenue, with corresponding improvements to EBITDA) as well as key regions outside the US—most notably China, where our recommendations enabled TestCo to significantly improve its performance. These gains were the product of both near-term wins, stemming from a number of go-to-market improvements (outlined below), as well as longer-term strategic moves to TestCo’s core and adjacent products. The value creation plan addressed pricing strategies, win-rate improvements, churn-rate reductions, cross-selling opportunities, and more.

An enhanced go-to-market strategy

As mentioned above, we worked closely with TestCo to revamp its US go-to-market strategy, with a broad approach that spanned service and technical support as well as sales enablement. As a result, TestCo was able to:

• remap its commercial model based on clear rules of engagement;
• resource more effectively based on a detailed view of activities and coverage;
• refocus its salesforce on core accounts;
• revise its lead generation process to improve prioritization and optimize its use of customer relationship management tools;
• simplify contracts based on level of risk; and
• deploy new tools and training to its sales teams.

This enhanced go-to-market strategy for TestCo’s US operations established a commercial model that was more efficient for the company and clearer for its customers. The new model improved customer interactions and feedback mechanisms, enhanced the identification of cross-selling opportunities, created new sales roles to free up selling time, and fostered stronger connections between sales support and service/technical support.

As a result of this integrated value creation approach—which began with a strong US focus and then extended to TestCo’s operations in Asia-Pacific as well as Europe, the Middle East, and Africa—we were able to help our private equity client elevate the company’s performance across multiple key performance indicators and maximize TestCo’s full potential.

TRADEMARK NOTE: ProfitCube^℠ is a service mark of Bain & Company, Inc.

*We take our clients' confidentiality seriously. While we've changed their names, the results are real.