GrowthCloud Launch Redefines Business Growth Strategy and Innovation Across Industries

SAN FRANSISCO, May 23, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- The Growth Strategy Company, a leading provider of growth-focused research and advisory services, announced the launch of GrowthCloud today at the Chief Strategy Officer Summit in San Francisco. The offering is the first cloud-based enterprise software platform purpose-built for business growth.

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GrowthCloud equips companies to better organize, analyze and act on the information critical to business growth.  This information, such as customer personas, market and competitive analysis and business model components, has historically been paper-based and sitting on the shelf of many organizations today.  With GrowthCloud, corporate strategists, innovators and executives now have an integrated platform to use this valuable information to uncover gaps and patterns that improve the targeting of growth opportunities and maximize growth outcomes.

The new offering has been co-designed and tested extensively with trial users at Fortune 100 technology, pharmaceutical and industrial companies.

"GrowthCloud is a game changer. It allows me to make decisions today that allow me to get where I want to go with confidence," said Henry Pittman*, a trial user, practitioner, and Chief Strategy Officer at Honeywell. "Its collaboration feature enables me to take advantage of emerging opportunities first, before the competition."

"Many companies are using business growth strategies and tools that are ad hoc and decades old," said Wayne Simmons, CEO of The Growth Strategy Co. "With GrowthCloud they now have access to a powerful capability that uses advanced technology, better insights and modern social processes to maximize growth outcomes, improve future growth prospects and making business growth an enduring organizational capability."

An Alternative to Management Consultants; Making Growth Sustainable

In large corporations, as well as medium to large companies, business growth strategy is frequently outsourced to management consultants on an ad-hoc, short-term basis that makes strategy difficult to implement and provides limited enduring value.

By making business growth strategy information and growth analytics more accessible and repeatable via its online platform, GrowthCloud is aiming to provide an alternative to companies that spend $16 billion annually on traditional business growth consulting. With this growth strategy automation approach the company expects to make an impact on corporate strategy, innovation and growth similar to Salesforce's impact on customer relationship management and Eloqua's impact on marketing.

"I've seen the panic in an executive's eyes as they are handed a PowerPoint that cost their company millions of dollars as the consulting team walks out the door," said Wayne Simmons, CEO, The Growth Strategy Company. "As it relates to business growth, GrowthCloud not only provides the insights and knowledge of a consulting firm, but that capability is now in a single, easily-shared and searchable system of record. As a result the software can sustainably improve growth outcomes at a fraction of the cost."

Activating the 71% of Employees Disengaged From Work

A Gallup survey noted only 29 percent of US employees are engaged in their work and that disengaged employees cost the American economy up to $350 billion per year in lost productivity.

GrowthCloud's system of engagement is designed to mobilize stakeholders at all levels of an organization to unlock the ideas and latent organizational knowledge needed for sustainable business growth. Through context-specific rich media content, short case study videos and growth-focused research, GrowthCloud sparks employee conversations around business growth and infuses an entrepreneurial culture throughout the organization.

"Studies have shown that a substantial fraction of the entrepreneurs behind the fastest growing companies in the US got their idea while working at their prior employer," said Keary Crawford, COO and co-founder of The Growth Strategy Company. "GrowthCloud provides the critical business context and social workflow that allows businesses to crowd source growth strategies and empower talent from all levels within the organization so ideas don't walk out the door."

GrowthCloud is the brainchild of Keary Crawford and Wayne Simmons, serial entrepreneurs and consulting industry veterans. Previously, they founded ICOR Partners, labeled "the McKinsey of government consulting," by Consulting Magazine and listed as an Inc. Magazine 500 fastest growing company. That company was acquired in a private equity transaction in 2010.

GrowthCloud is offered on a subscription basis through a secure, cloud-based technology platform powered by Amazon Web Services, TRUSTe, and Verisign. For more information, or to request a demonstration of GrowthCloud, visit http://www.growthstrategy.com/growthcloud/.

About The Growth Strategy Company
The Growth Strategy Company equips companies to achieve sustainable growth through an integrated portfolio of cloud-based software, research-based content and related professional services. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the company provides solutions to help corporate strategy, marketing and innovation practitioners and executives reaccelerate growth or take preemptive action to sustain growth – the key to enterprise value creation.  For more information please visit our website at www.growthstrategy.com.

*The view expressed is solely the perspective of Mr. Pittman and does not represent the views of Honeywell.

Contact: Michael Segner, 703-584-5646, [email protected]

SOURCE The Growth Strategy Company