Services: Strategy

Business Challenge

Anticipating the beginning of a new business cycle, a leading national insurance company needed to explore and gauge the severity and timing of an expected market downturn.  Specifically, it needed to examine appropriate strategies in order to learn how the future business climate would differ from the past and the impact those conditions would have on its market positioning, competitiveness, and performance.

Approach

Outward Insights conducted scenario analysis to assess customer, competitor, and technology variables that could precipitate unfamiliar future conditions.  Working in collaboration with insurance company executives, we identified and analyzed key business drivers and then developed a set of four plausible, yet distinct, scenarios describing future market and competitive conditions.  We also developed early warning indicators to anticipate climate changes.  Together we used the scenarios to develop strategies that would be resilient under a variety of future circumstances.

Results

The company was able to prioritize a range of strategic options based on a rigorous examination of future contingencies.  It could also begin implementing a core strategy to prepare for the pending downturn.  The insurance company further identified a handful of high-priority business investments and used the scenario analysis to justify requesting additional resources from corporate management.  Finally, it launched an internal early warning intelligence effort to ensure it received timely notification of changes to the business environment that could impact its strategy.