Consulting Practice

Our Practice Areas:

 

Corporate Strategy
Business Planning
Business Development
Fundraising
Product Strategy
Partner Strategy
Technology Scouting
Competitive Analysis
Research

 

 

 

 

 

Corporate Strategy
Because of our direct and ongoing hands-on experience in various converging industries, we are often consulted by companies facing complex decisions in turbulent waters. We bring a rapid understanding of our clients’ situations, layer-on the big picture, map out threats, and plot a course through the waves that are moving around them and occasionally pushing back.

Business Planning
Fitting your product or service into the wireless ecosystem is akin to solving the Rubik's Cube - there are many moving pieces, evolving trends and patterns, and you don't always see what's happening on the other side. The Kerton Group can help identify the key patterns, find out where your piece of the value-chain fits, and what moves will put you there.

Business Development
Making deals, alliances, and partnerships is requires a thorough understanding of your company’s situation, and the situation of your potential partners. Our firm's broad and recent experiences help us bring an understanding of what the 'other guy' is thinking, but also bring a fresh perspective on your firm's situation. We will help you position for the deal.

We actively prepare with our clients for meeting with target partners and clients, and can assist greatly with meeting strategy, messaging, communication tools (presentations, etc.), and interpreting the responses of delegates during the meetings. These services have proven invaluable for domestic clients, but particularly useful for international clients where there sometimes is a cultural gap to overcome.

With contract negotiations, our goal is to reach a deal where each party wins, but moreover, they each win by as much a margin as possible – this is not necessarily a zero-sum game! The key is to understand “comparative valuations”, and trade away that which doesn’t relatively matter to your side to gain in what does. Better deals pay dividends for years to come; it’s worth doing it right. With the help of The Kerton Group, our clients have increased sales, distribution, RFP approval rates, and in some cases successfully built new businesses.
  • Pitch development
  • Partnership & alliance development
  • Distribution & channel development
  • Contract negotiation & management
  • RFP writing & response
  • Technology transfer services
  • Fundraising (startup capital)

Fundraising
Finding and choosing investors requires a thorough understanding of your company’s situation, and the mindset of your potential investors. VCs (with all due respect) are a capricious lot. One year, what matters is IP, the next year it’s all about “team”. Because we arrange hundreds of startup/investor presentations each year, and get the feedback from our attending investors, we know intimately what telecom investors are thinking and seeking today. We are uniquely qualified to help telecom startups position and pitch. We often are involved in the front-end of finding and matching investors before meetings are set. And we always actively prepare our clients for investor meetings – from reviewing PowerPoint files and Executive Summaries to pitch training and pre-identifying weaknesses investors will find. We’ll be Cuba Gooding to your Jerry Maguire.

Product Strategy
As geeks, Silicon Valley residents, high-tech executives, telecom analysts, we have firsthand knowledge of the cutting edge products and services coming in the near future…and we’ll do you the immense service of steering you away from this segment! Successful products are those that fill the needs and delight the mass market, not the uber geeks. The Kerton Group has worked on dozens of products, always focusing on reducing features to those that are in demand, fitting the product in with the competition, making the UI intuitive, and the UE painless. We’ll clash with your product managers as we try to streamline their baby, but a fresh set of outside eyes bold enough to question you will only make your products better.

Partner Strategy
Smart partnering is essential to success in the market. Even more so in an era where we have clearly learned that the user experience doesn’t stop with the product. Distribution chains, development partners, content ecosystems, solution vendors…we need to work with many companies because we need to specialize and could never be best at all functions. But what partnerships make sense for your firm, and what paths to market? You can’t spend all your cycles striking deals and training and integrating partners. As part of your Corporate Strategy, we’ll help you identify where the holes are in your solution and where you need support to create a complete supply chain. Then we’ll help you seek out the best fitting partnerships, and the best terms of business.

Technology Scouting
Silicon Valley is famous for its density of innovation. And for that reason, many of the larger telecom firms have outreach offices here in California to get a front-row seat on all the action. As the firm that manages the Telecom Council of Silicon Valley, The Kerton Group is the company that helps these global firms connect directly with the local community. If your firm doesn’t yet have full-time scouts on the ground in the San Francisco Area, then The Kerton Group is a great choice for outsourcing this task. Our experience doing so for major telecom operators, our position in the local ecosystem, our analytical skills, and our exposure to a steady stream of startups means we can offer your company a virtual presence in the area, and can route the best opportunities back to your head office.

Competitive Analysis
It always pays to keep a close watch on the competition. Nothing nefarious about it – it’s just good business to plan your moves around your competitors, to outpace them, to collect best-practices, and to get to the most fertile land first. The Kerton Group can apply our broad view of telecoms to your competitors; but also to YOU and how you appear as a competitor from an outside perspective. Let’s map out your sector, and see where all the players fit. Only then will you be able to plan the best products, and execute the best strategy for the win.

Research
Good information is the foundation for good business decisions. The Kerton Group provides primary and secondary research and analysis across the entire wireless sector. Our publicly available research and reports are available in the On The Record section of this website, though the majority of our reports have been private. Our research clients include global wireless carriers, hardware manufacturers, wireless ISPs, and several industry publications.
  • White papers
  • Custom market analysis
  • Industry analysis
  • Primary research
  • Competitive analysis
  • Due diligence
  • Articles
  • Newsletters
  • Published research (see On The Record)

We offer rapid turnaround of market feedback, by using the Telecom Council of Silicon Valley as a feedback mechanism. Since The Kerton Group fully manages the Telecom Council, we are able to put your questions to the group for crowdsourced answers, survey responses, or testimonial feedback.