Leveraging alliances with scale-ups – here's how Deloitte does it

Reaching the scale-up phase is a massive achievement in a company's lifecycle. Still, this rapid growth comes with plenty of challenges – from effectively growing the team to expanding to new markets while staying focused on the key customer at the same time.

Deloitte aims to empower scale-ups on this growth journey. And they do so by allowing scale-ups to tap into their connections, international scale, expertise and much more. Deloitte’s scale-ups ecosystem brings together different players, from governments and academia to investors, corporations, and, of course, start-ups and scale-ups.

How Deloitte supports scale-ups

There are four main ways Deloitte supports scale-ups and helps them accelerate their growth.

One, by connecting them to Deloitte's client portfolio companies looking for new sources for growth and business transformation opportunities.

Two, by forming alliances and embedding scaleup solutions into Deloitte's digital offerings. "We might position the scaleup as a Deloitte subcontractor, or we could target the market together. As the partnership matures, we might start building teams around the service or solution," explains Anaïs De Boulle, Scale-Ups Director at Deloitte.

Three, by providing scaleups with the necessary expertise and coaching – from advice on strategic or legal support to help attract funding. What's important, these services are aligned with scaleup needs. 

And four, by providing visibility and recognition, which empowers scaleups to attract talent, clients and funding. This is done through various programmes, like Deloitte's Technology Fast 50, to name one major eminence programme.

A closer look – accelerating growth of supply chain scale-ups

Supply chain is one of the verticals where Deloitte is actively supporting scale-ups in their growth journey. Over the last years, supply chain management has become exponentially more complex, having to deal with many (potentially conflicting) objectives of service, efficiency, resilience, agility and sustainability, not to mention digitalization. This has given scale-ups new opportunities to help companies with innovative solutions.

Being a well-recognized brand in this domain, Deloitte works as a matchmaker and brings together different players in the supply chain ecosystem to everyone's benefit. Here's one of the recent examples of how they work, told by Kevin Overdulve, Partner Supply Chain & Network Operations at Deloitte:

"Currently, some of the challenges in global supply chains include shortages in capacity & material supply, how to deal with ever-present uncertainty, raising customer expectations, inflation & energy, geopolitical events – that's to name a few. At the same time, some of the scale-ups in our ecosystem have developed solutions to (partially) overcome these challenges, and we can connect them with our corporate clients to foster a positive impact for people & planet."

Kevin says that they frequently leverage their logistics knowhow and connections with these scale-ups to inspire corporates. Other times they co-create solutions with scale-ups directly or through Deloitte’s partnership with Log!ville – Europe’s largest logistics-of-the-future experience center.

But maybe the most important challenge Deloitte assists scale-ups with is talent at scale. The war for talent is omni-present across all industries, and supply chain scale-ups aren't an exception. 

"Deloitte has become a go-to implementation partner for many scale-ups, helping them to deliver their solutions at scale at multinational clients. At Deloitte, we understand supply chain processes and have the expertise to implement a wide range of technology solutions. Blended with deep technical expertise from the scale-ups’ technical delivery teams, the combination of both capabilities allows Deloitte to make an impact that matters at clients, and the scale-up to accelerate their growth as they no longer are constrained by their own capacity to implement," Kevin tells us.

How to reach out

More information regarding Deloitte’s Scale-Ups programme can be found on How to scale up your business? | Deloitte Belgium | #GlobalScaleUpPartner.

If you want to connect with the Deloitte scale-ups team, your next chance is during The Big Score which will be held on Nov 15-17 2022 in Gent, Belgium.