Intervoice was formulating a long-term business plan to drive revenue growth in new sectors such as IP Contact Center, while maintaining the loyalty of existing Interactive Voice Response (IVR) customers. The company was also challenged with integrating a recently-purchased acquisition and facing competition from vendors offering broader product sets.

Intervoice asked The Shirman Group’s (TSG’s) Founder and Managing Director, Lilia Shirman, to validate recommendations and projections that had been made internally for the company’s growth strategy, and help the management team deliver the recommendations to the Board of Directors succinctly and with the expected level of analytical rigor.

The Shirman Group reviewed the market analysis and projections and made adjustments in key assumptions, creating a more realistic balance of revenue among Intervoice’s lines of business. TSG then created a framework for analyzing how each proposed initiative would impact the company’s competitive capabilities and market differentiation, and worked with the Intervoice planning team to prioritize growth strategies. The result was a consensus on both the areas in which Intervoice wanted to excel in the market, and on the minimum set of initiatives required to bring the company to parity with key competitors. The executive team also understood what additional investments would need to be made to create a leadership stance.

Once a plan was approved by the Board, Ms. Shirman would guide the Intervoice executive team though the process of translating strategic initiatives into annual functional execution plans. Most initiatives required the collaboration of multiple functional areas, so simply rolling up individual plans was not an option. Instead, Ms. Shirman worked across the organization to help identify interdependencies and create integrated, cross-functional action plans.

The entire process was completed in a matter of weeks, saved time and freed management from to focus more time on running the business, and most importantly, aligned the company to execute on its long-term objectives.