Many B2B companies have few physical assets and building the ‘brand’ is critical to the current and future value of the business.

Using market research and innovative communications techniques,MA has over the years helped various companies develop and build a brand. The key to success is: (a) understanding a company’s current competitive position and (b) knowing how to convert awareness into users and clients into ambassadors. To meet this growing demand for brand valuations,MA has developed BRAVO – a robust and realistic model to allow B2B companies to address the following critical issues:

• Does the business have a brand and if so how strong is the brand in the market?
• To what degree does the market capitalisation or balance sheet reflect the strength of the brand?
• What are the key components and drivers of brand value?
• How can brand value be improved – and what measures will have the greatest impact?

In a world obsessed with results, one would expect there to be a passion for greater precision in evaluating the assumptions behind a business plan.

Yet, when seeking or investing any form of new finance, many boards of directors and investors still indulge in fanciful speculation based on spurious comparisons and accept everything that managers say at face value. Not everything can be measured, but at the outset of the transaction is it advisable to use whatever data and analytical techniques that are available to establish what a business is worth now and, more importantly, its potential. MA’s past involvement in projects provides evidence that an independent market evaluation can help identify and facilitate growth through organic expansion and acquisition.

At the heart of any business is the management but historically selecting and evaluating managers has relied too much on hearsay and spurious tests. In short, management due diligence is often neglected and as newspaper headlines reveal, all too often, this can have serious repercussions for both the company and its backers.

MA has been at the forefront in recognising the limitations of traditional psychometric management evaluation and the need for more in-depth qualitative approach, which not only assesses the abilities and psychological attributes, but explores whether an individual’s values are aligned with those of the stakeholders and whether the individual or group can work as a team and use conflicts positively and constructively. In essence, the MA approach combines both qualitative and quantitative paradigms to ensure that its clients are fully informed not just about the existing situation and the factors influencing it with regards to personnel performance, but the potential for the future not only based on existing strategies and context but indications of what can change and in what direction to help the individual(s) to perform to and beyond expectation.