The Architecture, Engineering and Construction Business Growth Formula
Summary
- Business growth recommendations without supporting data are just somebody's opinion. The Johnny Grow Architecture, Engineering and Construction Business Growth Formula is built on evidence-based best practices backed by industry benchmark data that show what the highest growth firms do differently than their peers, and how they do it.
- The AEC Growth Formula draws on industry research to surface and replicate the most influential revenue growth strategies and best practices proven by the Best-in-Class companies (e.g., the top 15%.)
- Business growth research findings show the right mix of strategy, best practices and technology to create a scalable growth model and eliminate speculation and guesswork.
A Prescriptive Revenue Growth Framework
We work with Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) companies to solve a common challenge – how to achieve significant and sustained revenue growth.
The Johnny Grow AEC Growth Formula is a proprietary 3-step model that brings simplicity and data-driven direction to systemically grow company revenues.
There are dozens of things you can do to grow the business and every one of them delivers a different result. Executives don't want to experiment over extended periods to figure out what works and what doesn't. They want to quickly know the shortest route to revenue maximization.
The AEC Growth Formula models, forecasts and compares best practices and financial levers to quickly prioritize those that maximize growth. It's a precision approach and alternative to pursuing company growth by investing in wishful strategies and best guess explorations.
Here's how it works.
Step 1 applies Predictive Revenue Analytics (PRA), which are pro forma financial models built with company data and industry benchmarks, to identify the best practices that will deliver the desired revenue uplift. These predictive models forecast, compare and rank the financial impact of revenue growth best practices so that the company can select those that deliver the maximum revenue in the least time, cost and risk.
Step 2 is a Revenue Growth Playbook. Plays provide guidance or operational instruction for revenue growth. Many times, they are execution plans with sequenced activities, progress milestones, phase gates, performance metrics and exit criteria. Other times they are brief but pointed recommendations such as next best action.
Step 3 is the Growth Analytics that measure progress and flag variances in need of swift remediation.
Here's a drill down into the three steps.
Prioritize the Best Practices that Maximize Revenue
Research shows that the highest growth AEC companies design an all-of-company revenue model whereby every revenue producing department applies data-driven methods that achieve predicted outcomes.
Revenue goals are broken down by contributing department. For example, the top marketing goals may include growing marketing's contribution to the sales pipeline and earned revenues. Top sales goals may include increasing salesperson productivity or maximizing salesforce close rates. Service goals may include using customer data to deliver differentiated customer experiences or shifting customer service from a cost center to profit center.
The AEC Growth Formula saves time by first reviewing the goals and methods that drove the biggest revenue gains for the highest growth companies. When you repeat the actions that most drive revenue growth for the industry's top performers you can realize similar results.
The goals and their supporting best practices are compared by using predictive revenue analytics to forecast revenue and profit impact.
A recurring pattern among low growth AEC companies is that they don't know what methods deliver the biggest financial returns, so they pursue what they know instead of what is most effective. This results in a best-case scenario of incremental and delayed growth, or a much more likely scenario of preserving the status quo.
A better approach is to apply data and predictive analytics to calculate the least cost route to a targeted revenue goal. This forecast modeling allows us to rank the best practices by revenue contribution, so they can be prioritized, and the company can pursue the biggest revenue uplift opportunities first.
The predictive models also use industry benchmarks so that management can recognize where the company stands relative to peers and apply What-If analysis or compare different improvement scenarios to see how they deliver varying revenues and profits.
This first step is essentially your growth strategy. It defines what to do.
It shifts your strategy from experimenting with unsupported growth initiatives based on good intentions or best guesses to data-driven best practices that calculate outcomes based on research that shows what the industry's top growth firms did; and how they did it.
If you skip this strategy step, your methods become suspect, your execution becomes aimless, and your measure of success is unclear.
Use an Execution Playbook for Predictable Outcomes
Step 2 moves from precision planning to prescriptive execution.
The Growth Formula Playbook is a collection of prescriptive plays that make best practices operational.
In step 1 we define the strategy to make sure we're doing the right things. In this step we define the execution to make sure we're doing those things right. Or put another way, where the prior step quantitatively shows what the company should do to deliver the biggest financial impact, the Playbook defines the best ways to do it.
Best Practice plays deliver clear guidance, instruction and recommendations at exactly the point where they can be applied to achieve a defined business outcome. They are not pie in the sky suggestions, but instead roadmaps that sequence the necessary tasks to achieve a goal in a predictable way.
Playbook Plays orchestrate best practices to deliver the maximum revenue growth in the minimum time.
The above Playbook Blueprint is an example which shows selected best practices to be used by Marketing to increase it’s revenue contribution to the company. Plays support each targeted revenue goal with evidence-based best practices that include sequential process instruction, integrated technology, measurement metrics and forecasted payback.
The metrics are delivered in dashboard and use pre-configured alerts for real-time variance notifications.
Apply Growth Analytics to Measure and Adjust
The thing about revenue growth plans is that they seldom go according to plan. That's why growth analytics are needed.
Performance dashboards display the most important key performance indicators (KPI) in an easy to consume visual interface. They prioritize role-based information to show what should be done first, and then next, and so on. They identify variances and trouble spots in real-time so staff can quickly intervene with timely course corrections.
Most AEC reporting displays historical data. Better reporting shifts from lagging to leading indicators. And the best AEC reporting enables metrics to be interactive, so managers can perform What-If modeling and scenario planning.
An interesting thing about AEC performance dashboards is that staff spend less time finding and assembling information and more time applying the insights to make more frequent changes to operational execution. That's the sign of successful reporting. If the information is causing operational changes to be made, it's working.
Business Intelligence is one of only four sustainable competitive advantages. It's sustainable because making timely and accurate business decisions never loses its value.
See the 3-step Architecture, Engineering and Construction business growth formula
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