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Mid-market companies have unique issues and growth objectives—different from large enterprise, different from SMB companies. They are often overlooked and misunderstood, yet they represent over $15 Trillion in annual business revenue in the U.S alone. In order to address this void in the marketplace, a team of specialists, effectively a C-level S.W.A.T. team—from finance and operations to sales and marketing—have formed a consulting company called Upward.
“We understand the nuances and pain points that exist in the mid-market space and have purposefully created a consulting company that works to solve for these pain points in all areas of doing business,” said Chris Faust, Founder & CEO of Upward.
The new C-level consultancy offers a range of best practice business services to solve complex business problems and accelerate growth for mid-market and private equity (PE) companies in select industries.
Issues like:
• Preparing for a sale, merger or acquisition
• Getting a traditionally analog company into the digital era
• Legacy and succession planning
• Aligning sales and marketing with pricing and promotion
Upward’s S.W.A.T. team of business change agents and research-based decision support advisors, brand and sales marketers, process engineers and revenue generators offer an integrated approach that enables mid-market and PE portfolio companies to meet and exceed Board-level and executive management expectations and key performance indicators (KPIs).
Upward has also formed a strategic Partner Ecosystem to deepen its peer-to-peer network of “go to” experts and extend its highly-specialized class of offerings. The first two hand-picked ecosystem partners, with other partnerships in the works, include:
Midsize Business Institute – the largest information portal of midmarket-specific content on the web – curated content, original research, insights and interviews.
The CEOs Right Hand – a leading finance and operational excellence service firm for early to mid-stage companies.
“No two of our engagements are alike. They are tailor-made to address specific short- and long-term business goals,” said Kit Lisle, Partner of Upward. “For example, we’re tapped to help our clients accelerate growth, initiate a business turnaround, align operations with corporate goals, integrate merging companies, leverage a differentiated brand, assess an acquisition target, uncover hard facts to support a strategic decision, institute business process excellence and more.”
Upward defines its mid-market and PE focus as those businesses that generate $30M to over $300M in annual revenue in the following industries where the firm has depth of experience, including:
• Industrials & Manufacturing
• Business & Consumer Technology
• CPG (especially Food and Beverage)
• Biotech, Life Sciences & Healthcare
• Financial Services & Fintech
