EY lists 7 drivers of growth to reignite Sri Lanka’s corporates

Ernst and Young Partner and Consulting Leader Arjuna Herath

Ernst and Young Manager, Business Consulting Rodney Fernando

Ernst & Young (EY) has a long history of working alongside many of the world’s most ambitious entrepreneurs to support them accelerate their journey to market leadership. It has significant learnings from its successes and EY has distilled these insights to create the ‘EY 7 Drivers of Growth’. 

The EY 7 Drivers of Growth is a tried, tested and trusted framework that helps enable leaders to assess their business, build resilience and refine or completely re-imagine their growth strategy. This framework has been used extensively by EY to develop strategic plans of leading organisations and family businesses in Sri Lanka. The framework directs the focus on to key issues in the business and help in developing a strategic road map that would help grow and reshape the future of the business based on leading practices that inspires innovation.

EY has studied the growth journeys of thousands of ‘EY Entrepreneur of The Year’ finalists and winners, as well as other market-leading businesses spanning across all industries and geographies, to understand the capabilities they built to drive growth at each stage of their lifecycle. EY has taken that knowledge and created this framework which assess the company across seven critical drivers to help devise growth plans and facilitate strategy discussions to help re-imaging the future of the business.

Ernst and Young in Sri Lanka and Maldives Consulting Leader Arjuna Herath, commenting on the EY 7 Drivers of Growth framework, stated: “It is a framework that helps enable ambitious leaders to think differently about their businesses and help deliver their growth strategy. We have been able to help enable businesses to build and align their capabilities with their growth strategy. In today’s disruptive world, realising ambition and growing the business is an exciting challenge. The EY 7 Drivers of Growth will help enable businesses to unlock the full potential and realise ambition faster.”

Ernst and Young in Sri Lanka Manager – Business Consulting Rodney Fernando, elaborating on the EY 7 Drivers of Growth framework, stated: “When most businesses think about strategy, they think about how to manage people, systems and processes to deliver customer value and growth. However, we’ve learned through our research and work with the world’s leading private enterprises – in different market conditions – that the companies most successful at future-proofing their businesses are those who look at a broad set of capabilities, and balance their investments in time, money and energy, as they adapt, transform and grow. This broader view has helped them to sustain their high growth.” 

Turn strategy into action

The EY 7 Drivers of Growth supports business leaders to think differently about the enablers of growth. EY research shows that the seven critical drivers that help enable sustainable growth in a company are Customer, People, Technology, Operations, Finance, Transactions and Risk. Using EY 7 Drivers of Growth framework, leaders can:

1. Self-assess the maturity of capabilities within the organisation across each of the seven drivers, identifying where the business is today and where it needs to be in the next two to three years to achieve the desired goals

2. Identify gaps across the seven drivers and select actions leaders can take to address them, inspired by the practices of leading businesses around the world

3. Prioritise the actions selected, set deadlines and assign resources to create a plan that will help business execute the strategy

Assess the business using the tried, tested and trusted framework

EY teams have inspired thousands of ambitious leaders to think differently about how to deliver their strategy, by helping enable leaders to self-assess their business using the seven drivers. Behind each of the growth drivers is a built maturity models which mirror the growth journey of successful companies, and that helps enable EY clients to investigate each growth aspect during their self-assessments. Therefore, using the EY 7 Drivers of Growth framework, leaders will assess the current capabilities against the practices and growth journeys of leading businesses, exploring issues such as:

• Increasing the value of the customer base
• Creating a high-performing team and culture
• Exploiting the opportunities created through technology
• Optimising operations
• Building a finance function capable of acting as a strategic advisor
• Achieving powerful strategic alliances, partnerships and acquisitions
• Balancing risk appetite with risk management

Unlock full potential

Conducting an EY 7 Drivers of Growth workshop will give business leaders the opportunity to understand what capabilities are required to take the business to the next level to build resilience, and also to build an actionable blueprint to successfully drive sustainable growth. 

Also, having these workshops with the entire leadership team gives the opportunity to hear different perspectives and innovative ideas from the team, as well as gain full alignment around the plan — a critical step to successfully deliver the business strategy. The EY 7 Drivers of Growth framework will help enable:

• Assess the current capabilities relative to the future aspirations
• Gain insight into the practices of market-leading businesses
• Clarify your strategic priorities, opportunities and challenges
• Build an action plan to help achieve the next level of success
• Achieve consensus among the leadership team about the future of the business and how to get there
• Validate and refine the business strategy

Outcomes

The outcomes at the end of EY 7 Drivers of Growth framework facilitated strategy activity are as follows:

• A current state of assessment of the business capabilities and an identification of aspired future state across the 7 Drivers
• A clear understanding of the growth opportunities and future challenges
• An enhanced growth strategy and a pragmatic action plan, prioritised to strategic needs, to help enable the business to achieve the next level of success

Protect your business and navigate uncertainty

Herath in conclusion stated: “We continue to see that the businesses who struggle most when economies decline are the ones who limit their focus to the short term. The most successful businesses don’t lose sight of their mid- to long-term priorities — they continue to invest in areas they know will be critical for their future. During economic and political uncertainty, business planning has never been more important, and delivering against these plans are critical. The 7 Drivers can support leaders to navigate uncertainty, protect their position and sustain growth.”