If you want to see 2X the growth across your portfolio of companies, hire a management consultancy to enhance operations. Want 3X the growth? Hire a design and delivery firm to make more profitable products. But if you want 50X the growth across your entire portfolio of business, focus on the end-user experience.

Management consultancies, design, and development firms limit their scope to either internal organizational fixes or present such infeasible solutions that can’t be adopted or acted on.

And yet, modern private equity firms need to understand how to craft and build a vision for growth, combine important assets that already exist throughout your portfolio, and design experiences that deliver the outcomes you need – and end-users demand.

Now, this may seem obvious. And frankly, most organizations assume that if all departments are meeting their targets, that the end-user experience will instinctively follow. Your portfolio companies may be delivering good stats:  web traffic, improved supply chain targets, and enhanced product profitability. But they are not increasing overall sales, then that’s an indicator that your user experience is not capturing unmet demand.

Management consultancies focus on your business in the abstract and just look internally

Traditionally, large consulting firms have charged a fortune compiling and validating what your internal team already knows. Cut costs to boost efficiency. Fix structural issues to increase profits.

But to see exponential growth potential, private equity firms need to look beyond the spreadsheets and focus on end-customer outcomes. How can the entire experience be enhanced to boost sales?

Design thinking is often not feasible as a stand-alone solve

While management consulting firms look inward, design firms set their sights outward – toward technological innovation to solve big problems. But while they’re inspired by promises of a new ideal world future-state, they struggle to understand how, in the real world, internal shifts can profoundly affect other areas of the business that influence end-user outcomes.

It’s extremely hard to adapt and operationalize pie-in-the-sky products. But since they don’t typically deal with operational or structural teams, design firms often dismiss the ongoing need to sell a program internally as simply being “office politics”.

But investing a huge sum on cutting-edge technology does not automatically equal a huge return and, in the end, you’ve simply invested an outsized amount for a big idea.

Delivery firms need their handheld and take you away from your core responsibilities

Often the temptation is to have someone from the teamwork directly with a delivery firm to improve outcomes in a specific department. Delivery firms are a good hammer, but not every problem is a nail.

Internal program owners rarely have enough time to manage such a program in addition to their day jobs – and, especially when left on their own, delivery firms are good for putting butts in seats. But delivery firms aren’t equipped to make choices while having accountability for outcomes. They require too much time and support and laid out direction far in advance.

What to do

Private equity firms need to build exponential value quickly, and this is where experience design thinking becomes a powerful tool for driving innovation. Experience designers view outcomes through a lens that combines business design, product design, service design, and technology design. This expertise is critical for ensuring that the vision is clearly defined and the entire team is aligned on what matters most to your end-users.

Don’t short-sell the need to always be selling internally

Exponential growth requires the entire team to take risks. So your experience design strategy needs to be continually selling to internal stakeholders and reporting back to investors. Remember that a design or delivery firm is never going to be able to take this on – and this is very tough to do from within – so having a dedicated party that can compel all your team leads is critical.

Help the team let go of what’s worked in the past

If you want to see real future growth, teams need to be willing to let go of what’s got them here. If your CMO is getting good traffic on the site they built – they may not be willing to see those numbers dip while they recalibrate their metrics to actual sales.

Your experience design strategy needs to not only guide but in some cases mentor or coach current members of the team to ensure that everyone sees the value in the whole, and not just their part.

Lengthen the journey of value

When we’ve worked with private equity firms through market-shifting mergers, the greatest return has been delivered from taking existing portfolio products, unifying their experiences, and then strategically growing into new and complementary market segments. The more you can lengthen the customers’ journey touchpoints across your brands, the greater value you’ll harness.

An integrated perspective

Private equity firms seeking exponential growth in a short time frame, need to ensure alignment across all business departments – not just management and not just product design. Integrating business design, strategy, product design, and technology keeps everyone focused on better outcomes for your customers, which is the most effective way to capture unmet demand.