Commercial energy focused on the firm's international development

We are at a turning point in Wavestone’s history, at the beginning of a strategic plan that will completely change the game! And business is going to be a major lever in the service of this plan, since one of Impact’s key objectives is to bring 5 major non-French clients into our Top 20.

Until now, Wavestone’s client portfolio has not been managed proactively: thus, our Top 20 is the result of an ongoing sales effort on the firm’s major clients, rather than the result of a reflection to strengthen Wavestone on sectors or accounts selected in advance because they serve the firm’s strategy.

As a result, we note that our Top 20 has changed very little over the last 15/20 years. As an illustration, despite an international orientation launched 10 years ago, it still includes many former French public companies and only 2 non-French clients: Legal & General and Allianz.

We would like to take a much more active approach to managing our client portfolio in general to meet this challenge.

We have made a list of “Key Accounts,” priority accounts for the firm on which we want to make a significant move in terms of revenue growth. To date, we have identified 25 Key Accounts, including 19 French accounts and 6 non-French accounts, excluding the United States. As far as the United States is concerned, we have pre-identified 4 candidates, but we are giving ourselves 6 more months to refine this list. We would then have about 30 Key Accounts, including 10 non-French.

The Key Accounts were chosen because they are in line with Impact and therefore with Wavestone’s strategic ambition. The two main criteria are their international dimension and their growth potential given their important transformation challenges. The list was also established by taking into consideration, for French accounts, Wavestone’s current footprint, and for international accounts, the consistency with the development priorities and current commercial capabilities of each office.

Industry and Luxury sectors are strongly represented among the Key Accounts because Wavestone’s current market share in these sectors is low and therefore they hold a significant growth potential.

First, we will deploy a new, simpler, universal “business operating model” that will be applied in all Wavestone offices in France and abroad. Indeed, we realized that the current business model and the associated management methods did not meet the needs of our international offices. The latter had therefore frequently developed their own business management methods to meet their specific needs. In addition, the commercial know-how developed by Wavestone in France was not well known.

This new business model describes the main principles of Wavestone’s business strategy and operations. It allows someone who does not know us, for example a company that joins us, to understand and set up an organization and a commercial management in accordance with our practices.

This will be particularly key in the coming months  in supporting the firm’s international development in particular, replicating Wavestone’s success in France internationally.

Secondly, we are simply going to put business at the heart of Wavestone’s growth strategy! We are going to focus our sales efforts on the development of Key Accounts, and more broadly on the environments in which our current major clients are winning. In accordance with our Impact plan, this is where the development challenges are the greatest. We are therefore going to mobilize  the firm’s energy to move quickly towards these clients, putting all of us in a position to increase revenue rapidly and generate new business on these accounts