Business Development

Case Study: The Business Development Director of a US-based chemicals producer is assessing future growth opportunities and is screening a shortlist of strategic opportunities. He needs to gather the information for analysis, assess ‘megatrends’ impacting the market, prioritize the shortlisted opportunities, assess risks and return and make a recommendation as to which opportunities should be further pursued.

Key Challenges

1. Assessment of Megatrends: Identifying and understanding the ‘megatrends’ impacting the market. These are large-scale, transformative global trends such as sustainability, digitalization, demographic shifts, and economic changes.
2. Prioritization of Opportunities: Evaluating and ranking the shortlisted strategic opportunities based on their potential for growth, alignment with the company's strategic goals, and feasibility.
3. Risk Assessment: Identifying and evaluating the risks associated with each strategic opportunity. This includes market risks, operational risks, financial risks, and regulatory risks. Understanding the potential downsides and how they can be mitigated is key to making informed recommendations.
4. Return on Investment (ROI): Analyzing the potential returns of each opportunity. This involves financial modeling, forecasting future revenues and costs, and assessing the overall impact on the company’s profitability and long-term growth.

Solution: Our CSM+ chemicals package helps the business development director:

• Develop a solid view of market fundamentals for the opportunities being screened
• Gain insight into trends driving the markets over the next 10 years
• Understand competitors and where they sit on the cost curve, expected capacity additions, long-term demand and trade flows for feedstocks and chemicals
• Understand CO2 emissions with each opportunity and impact to their portfolio

How our Solution Helps

• Determine realistic targets and budgets
• Identify growth opportunities
• Maximize price setting
• Build value-based commercial strategies
• Understand availability of low-carbon feedstocks for growth opportunities

Workflow Solutions:

• The visual interface of Chemicals Enhanced Analysis & Forecasts helps the user to quickly gain an understanding of market dynamics and download the data he needs for further analysis
• Once he has downloaded the data, he undertakes a deep-dive analysis of supply and demand to screen opportunities based on market size and growth
• He then further analyses the largest producers, potential competitors, potential buyers, cost competitiveness and expected capacity additions
• Integrating feedstocks forecasts from Process Economics Program Yearbook into the model provides transparency on options
• Using the Process Economics Program Yearbook, he is able to view the overall cost structure he may face with his opportunities as well as understand costs his competitors might be facing using competing technologies/processes