CASE STUDY
Specialty benefits management
Vendor acquisition opportunity leads to rethinking of plan's specialty benefits management strategy
A leading multi-regional health plan was considering acquiring one of its specialty benefits management vendors as part of a diversification into selling enabling services to other plans. Prior to developing a bid, the plan needed a point of view on synergies with other businesses in its services portfolio, potential for accelerating several key corporate development and innovation priorities for the services portfolio, and potential to modify the platform for value-based contracting.
Analytical tear downs of the leaders to determine the strategic value of the acquisition target
Our prior work for this client defined its diversified services priorites and made us a natural fit to assess how well the target advanced that strategy. We undertook a detailed review of how key leaders in adjacencies relevant to the target created value and what were their sources of advantage. We also undertook blinded interviews with high priority customers to determine their current purchasing plans, gaps they perceived among existing suppliers and expectations for an additional competitor. This provided a set of metrics against which to measure the target on its ability to advance, match or leapfrog existing competition and define scenarios for customer acquisition.
Back to the drawing board
We determined that the target provided little support for the broader strategic initiatives and had a number of limitations that made it unattractive to potential customers. We were, however, able to identify ways the plan’s current assets could, with limited organic investment, match current market leaders and attract interest from a number of target customers. We were also able to develop alternative “shopping lists” of targets for the client’s corporate development group. The plan’s current asset has secured its first major customer one year after our initial insight.
SECTOR
Payers