Most Index engagements are supported by fundamental research of relevant industry sectors and firms. Our high-quality, proprietary research enhances our power of anticipation - and ability to "see around the corner" - a privilege that affords our clients better insights and longer time to respond to - and indeed influence and shape - the future of their businesses. Index actively invests in - and leverages the power of - its distinctive research assets, primarily along the following dimensions:
- Comprehensive research methodology that:
- covers key participants across the value-chain encompassing end-users, intermediaries, competitors and suppliers. This provides robust sector insights and foresights by capturing impact of changes in every part of the ecosystem and, in turn, enables the development of innovative (and sometimes "game-changing") plans.
- integrates perspectives of different key stakeholders in a business (e.g. operating managers, investor community, Board of Directors, etc.). For example, Index has demonstrated strength in analysing capital structure, leverage, capital supply issues and long-term sustainability of established economic models in addition to traditional operational review of businesses. This provides early indication of future opportunities, challenges and risks for our clients' businesses.
- Sophisticated analytical tools that capture key relationships, constraints and flexibilities associated with businesses. These include cutting-edge frameworks (e.g. opportunity assessment, competitive intelligence, need-based segmentation, etc.) and analytics (e.g. activity-based costing, real-options analysis, cash-flow modelling, etc.). It is important to note that Index exercises significant care in choice of analytical tools (trade-off between simplicity and level of detail) and the development of input assumptions fed into these tools; the tools are chosen to be consistent with the problem context, required level of detail, information availability, etc. while the assumptions are collectively discussed and debated to ensure their close alignment to reality. Index professionals leverage their extensive business experience, wide international perspective and deep intellectual rigor and independent business judgement to provide an independent reality-check of key assumptions.
- Proprietary and innovative information sources reflect Index’s emphasis on fact-based research. This includes traditional sources (e.g. public information sources, subscription-based databases/ information vendors, etc.) as well non-so-traditional sources (e.g. key suppliers, customers, financiers, recruitment activities, real-estate agents, physical observation, etc.). The non-traditional sources are particularly useful for researching private small-medium sized businesses with notoriously inadequate disclosure norms.
It is important to highlight that we emphasise pragmatism and relevance over conceptual and intellectual elegance in our research, that is singularly geared to inform high-impact problem-solving. We achieve this by fostering a culture and discipline of:
- openly asking thoughtful, probing questions
- attentively seeking out and listening to diverse group of relevant people
- carefully observing and registering facts and figures
- continuously honing our experience-rich, battle-tested business judgement
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