Use Cases

Mergers & Acquisitions

Gain an edge in due diligence with Bell & Holmes’ powerful insights

Strategy & Corporate Projects

Strategize with confidence using Bell & Holmes’ relevant insights

Market Sizing & Exploration

Partner with Bell & Holmes to investigate untapped opportunities or markets

Benchmarking

Gain an edge in due diligence with Bell & Holmes’ powerful insights

Innovation & Product Development

Use Bell & Holmes to generate insights to test, develop, and improve products

Voice of Customer

Capture powerful insights to improve your customer experience

Typical Project Requirements of Bell & Holmes Clients

  • Quick project ramp up & fast delivery of results.
  • A scaled N when the calling target is easy to find or in need of any N when it is challenging to find.
  • Clean and ready-to-analyze quantitative results as well as insightful ready-to quote verbatims.
  • Additional rationale behind the quantitative results. 
  • Flexibility in updating the questionnaire, switching focus in the target segments, reduce / increase team size and / or project length.
  • Reach languages and / or geographies that cannot be covered by their own internal teams.

Past Project Examples*

Project type: Commercial Due Diligence
Client: Private Equity & Big 4 Company
Main issue: Time constraint

A Private Equity client integrated us into a Commercial Due Diligence they had commissioned to a Big 4 company. The PE-firm was evaluating a software company that provided software solutions for a particular niche of SME companies.

The interview campaign covered a classical CDD interview guide with questions focusing around the procurement process (e.g. trends, risks, opportunities), as well as a selection of more specific, industry-related questions, hypothesis, and potential red flags.

Over the course of 8 workdays, the interviewing campaign generated >140 interviews in three countries with in-depth qualitative and quantitative information.

Project type: Commercial Due Diligence & Market Sizing
Client: Top Tier Consultancy
Main issue: Required a high and confident N

As part of a CDD interview support, a client evaluated the market size for self-storage facilities to assess market growth, and investment potentials in addition to double-checking the assumed hypothesis.

Over one week, 130 interviews in 2 countries with storage companies’ HQs and storage facilities were conducted. Relevant data relating to, among others, total capacity, available capacity/utilization rate, and additional amenities and services offered was generated.

Combined with the tested and confirmed hypothesis, this allowed for accurate market sizing, evaluation of national utilization rate, and the identification of growth and investment opportunities.

Project type: Red Flag / Pre-Commercial Due Diligence
Client: Private Equity Fund
Main issue: Lack of deep market insights, knowledge of competitors & KPCs

A client considered the acquisition of a provider of software solutions for the leisure industry that would have complimented a company in their existing portfolio, focusing on a different geography.

The client lacked general insights into the target’s customers’ perception, benchmarking of the target and its competitors along with key purchasing criteria and was also interested in the regional market outlook.

Despite Covid, our team provided over 40 interviews with customers and potential customers of the target within five days, supporting the client’s eventual decision not to proceed with the acquisition.

Project type: Strategy / Market Entry
Client: Boutique Consultancy
Main issue: Lack of Language capabilities

A boutique consultancy was evaluating the market potential of a new potential innovation by its client. The invention in question was a newly developed material for which a list of various industry applications were to be evaluated.

The interview campaign took part in two phases. The first phase focused on benchmarking the new material against those that it might substitute. For this, manufacturers that utilize the established materials were interviewed, focusing on KPI & KPC.

In phase two, three industry-product combinations were identified in which the new invention outperformed existing materials. Phase two subsequently covered potential customers in nine European countries and focused on questions evaluating the market potential and questions related to a possible market entry.

*Cases represent real cases covered by our team. The information in the Case section may be slightly adapted to ensure confidentiality and still constitute an accurate and fair picture of our service provided.

Other Typical Use Cases

1 Validate Without Bias

A client needs to understand the market trend of a target product in market X in the target geography Y, e.g. brand awareness, product sales trend. This usually requires large-scale survey results to draw a conclusion. Bell & Holmes is preferred in this type of projects because

  • The survey can be updated any time during the project and the focus of the interviews can be updated instantly.
  • The results can reflect the market insights on a daily basis and the deal team can switch the focus of the survey every day based on the newly learnt insights.
  • The results are clean and almost, if not fully, ready for analysis.
  • Rationale behind the numbers is still captured for meaningful explanations in presentation even though the presentation is highly quantitative.

2 Identify Trends & Capitalize

A client identifies a good deal target but needs to validate the investment hypothesis by proving the growth strategy has the sound basis. This type of project usually requires the interviewers to test the new product/service with the purchasing decision makers in the target market. Bell & Holmes is preferred in this type of projects because

  • Cold call is based on a neutral relationship between the interviewer and the interviewee and there is no prior warm-up or any context.
  • Bell & Holmes consultants conduct the interviews in a conversational form instead of a Q&A form to understand interviewee’s decision-making logic.
  • Most interviewees have difficulties making predictions. Bell & Holmes consultants can help them reach to a range to enable deal teams to conduct an estimated analysis.

3 Driving Deeper Understanding

A client needs to understand the brand awareness and usage of vendor in a target geography, e.g. a brand that takes up 5% of the market and also in other cases up to 50% of the market. Questions include NPS, KPC ranking, vendor’s PC performance, switching likelihood, switching difficulty, RFP or SOW. This usually requires targeted interviews. Bell & Holmes has succeeded in these cases with or without contact list provided. Bell & Holmes is preferred in this type of projects because

  • Consultants are proactive in contact sourcing, e.g. multiple sources applied, direct call to find the right person via internal transfers within the target firm, LinkedIn search and direct call to the right person, sourcing in uncommon channels such as forums, social media;
  • Bell & Holmes has maintained high success rate and fast turnaround when other vendors cannot deliver.