Business Model Analysis Report

10/7

SFCG, San Francisco Consulting Group, is a consulting firm in Austin that offers cloud solutions to various businesses. They are in the global cloud computing services industry, and offer three types of support. On one hand, they have a team of consultants- cloud ninjas- that help clients with how best to adopt and optimize the cloud solution that fits them best. They also provide training to help clients create a program to address their employees’ unique needs. And lastly, the offer support packages for cloud computing practices and strategy. The global industry includes other software as a service companies, like Salesforce.com.  

            My first exposure to SFCG was at the Career Fair earlier this semester. I saw their job posting online and was immediately attracted by the interesting name- “Cloud Ninja.” When I met them at the Fair, they were energetic, fun, and inspiring. The ninjas were from different backgrounds, and had a passion for their company that was contagious. The amount of responsibility even new consultants were trusted with, and the ninja’s commitment to helping their clients really sparked my interest in SFCG. I researched it more online after, attended the information session, and found I really connect with the company. SFCG is committed to taking care of its employees and fostering productivity through unconventional ways. The employees are required to take a vacation every quarter, and the team goes on various activities. They recently went Paddle boarding, for example. They have yoga at their office, and fit right into the Austin culture. I am passionate about this company, and interested in learning more about the cloud computing services industry. Furthermore, consulting allows me to travel and develop knowledge about different industries.

The company has had over 250 clients since 2001. SFCG focuses on several customer segments, but I am most interested in three. SFCG targets Healthcare & Life Sciences companies, High Technology firms, and Media and Advertising firms. They offer CRM on demand as a product. They work with Oracle on this solution. This is a large, respected company and software in the field.

The benefit of being a small firm is that SFCG can tailor its value proposition to each of these segments. However, at the heart of it, they seek to offer the same caliber of personalized solutions for their clients. SFCG can assist all these firms to generate leads, improve sales efficiency and effectiveness, improve customer retention, make informed management decisions, and more.

For Healthcare and Life Sciences companies, SFCG uses expertise with industry regulations, forecasting, and selling on the go to help the clients verify compliance, improve inventory management, and increase revenue. They can use CRM to generate leads for the company, improve sales efficiency and effectiveness, improve customer retention, and more. Unique to this market, they can focus on helping the company with making informed management decision. They can provide custom trend reports to recognize developments and allow the company to react before their competitors. This is important because the Healthcare and Life Sciences industry is seeing many changes today, with the introduction of Obamacare. Private companies may have to communicate their advantages over the government provided healthcare. Thus, SFCG can also help these companies improve customer retention.  

SFCG offers adoption, innovation management, and customer support of cloud solutions to High Technology Firms. Because these clients are more familiar with the offering, SFCG’s value proposition is a broad toolbelt of cloud solutions. It is particularly important that their main product, CRM on demand, comes from Oracle, a trusted source in the industry. Here, SFCG can provide reports on improving customer life time value. They can also help these firms evaluate the return on investment on marketing campaigns. Their campaign ROI analysis will more effectively define what works and what doesn’t. Companies like Groupon are SFCG clients, and these tools can help them significantly.

Media and Advertising Firms also need to see which campaigns are effective. SFCG’s ability to help them generate leads and weed out practices are that inefficient will ultimately help these firms lower cost. Furthermore, as much of this business involves selling their services to clients, SFCG can help Media and Advertising firms improve sales efficiency and effectiveness. Training and analytics help implement sales best practices and see they are followed. Thus, revenue per sales person is increased, and sales people are empowered.

Source: www.sfcg.com