The go-to-market strategy of De Rossi Consulting

Absztrakt (kivonat)

Aim: The thesis is about the market entry strategy of the forming family-owned company, run by my mother and I, De Rossi Consulting (abbreviated as DRC) which is an accounting and consulting platform that provides accounting, audit, and advisory services for its SME clients on the Hungarian market. The aim of the thesis is to present a go-to-market strategy that proves its capability and worthiness to make a successful market entry, capture revenue and satisfy consumer needs as well as the owners’ financial needs. Therefore, the research question is: can a platform-based business model deliver significantly better value proposition to both customers and working experts in the Hungarian market? Methodology: The basis methodology applied throughout our market entry strategy formulation is the Build-Measure-Learn feedback loop. (Ries, 2011) This far, three whole loops can be accounted for in the history of our enterprise. The first feedback loop covers the research conducted in the theoretical part, which was secondary research that concentrated on academic literature, primarily on textbooks and academic journal articles. With the use of about two dozen of books and articles the theoretical elements of a market entry strategy have been collected and summarized to serve as a guidance for the practical application. Besides theory, analysis of the practical problem was included in the first loop as well, in form of secondary research concentrated on publicly available data, business journals, and benchmarking the target market in form of desk-research. The result of the first loop was that the company formulated its initial strategy and as an element of it, the minimum viable product was put together that focused on audit and digital bookkeeping services. The second loop concentrated on primary research consisting of personal interviews conducted on potential target customers. Five technical buyers with different demographics and from different industries were asked in form of in-depth interviews. The evaluation of results showed that there must be a shift in focus regarding our product and, in the end, a third loop was completed after having the companies first semester’s data (financial reports, performance and client feedbacks) evaluated, which showed that a change in pricing and promotion is needed. In conclusion, the three build-measure-learn loops conducted so far have proved to be successful and efficient as all resulted in growth in terms of both market size and customer satisfaction, therefore served as strong evidence while constructing the practical part. Structure: The thesis consists of two main parts: the theoretical and the practical part, and in addition the detailed description of the methodological background of the research. The theoretical part has two purposes: first, provide a sufficient overview about business trends overall the globe as well as in the accounting industry, and second, collect academic concepts and frameworks, which are then used to create the market-entry strategy itself- Moving on to the practical part, which covers three major fields: first, the analysis of the environment that involves a PESTEL analysis, Porter’s 5 forces analysis, and the creation of a buyer persona, second, the construction of strategy that covers market segmentation, market targeting and the formulation of a platform-based value proposition, and third, the implementation of strategy through the 7Ps of marketing. Results: In conclusion, I believe that there is sufficient evidence to state that a platform-based business model can provide significantly better value proposition to both customers and working professionals in the Hungarian market of accounting and advisory services. First and foremost, the growth in the financial performance of DRC in the past 7 months, as well as the positive feedbacks of both customers and freelancer experts, support this statement. Based on these, and on the secondary research conducted in the thesis, it is clear that customers can get a high quality and most importantly more complex service at a more affordable price than on the market before DRC, our freelancer experts can work at a higher fee in such business model with higher continuity while they manage their own resources, which grants them more freedom, and in the end, DRC captures value in return out of these relationships.