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Case Study
Seer
Seer is a young, fast-growing medtech company. It specialises in products and services to help diagnose and manage neurological, cardiac and sleep conditions, and transition clinical monitoring from the hospital to the home.
Support provided by Three Chairs Consulting
About three years into the business, Seer engaged Three Chairs Consulting to strengthen their Board governance, including maturing their Board meeting preparation and processes, and committee and subcommittee structures.
A year later, as the company looked towards securing a global leadership position in the at-home health sector, Seer once again sought Three Chairs’ expertise to research the international market and build a supporting valuation model to stress test the international expansion and product diversification strategy.
Seeing the opportunity to maximise the resources available for this project and produce the best possible outcome, Melanie Bois took an unconventional – but ultimately successful – approach to building the project team by bringing six talented MBA students from Melbourne Business School on board to support this work as part of their internship.
“Three Chairs was able to provide the rigor around the methodology and access to the students themselves, but they also played that integrating role of defining the scope, managing the project and managing the deliverable, which was a strategy paper,” says Damien Kenny, Chief of Staff at Seer.
“It was my feeling that we had very much a strong partnership orientation with Three Chairs.”
“I think the relationship with Melanie grew because of the way we worked together initially. We would never have done that strategy piece if Melanie wasn’t a trusted advisor at that time.”
Outcomes
As a five-year-old company, Seer is still in the early stages of its growth journey. But with rapidly increasing revenue and a team that has almost doubled in the past two years, the work with Three Chairs has helped set up a strong foundation for the future.
Seer has streamlined its Board processes, with a calendar to ensure that all aspects of governance are given adequate time for discussion throughout the year, rather than relying on the top-of-mind priorities.
“We have confidence that we’re checking off the things that need to be talked about at the right time in the year,” says Damien.
The research and strategy work with Three Chairs and the MBA student team provided Seer with tools they can use to sequence and prioritise their choices, including considerations such as operating model, pricing and chosen markets.
“That was great research and raw data for us that we’ve been able to use to inform executive level conversations about our opportunities,” says Damien.
The value of working with Three Chairs Consulting
“The value proposition that Three Chairs brings – at our lifecycle stage – is that they could be flexible, and they weren’t heavy-handed. It was just the right amount of structure for where we were at,” says Damien.
“The soft skills are there as well; it’s not just the results. Melanie is just a nice person to deal with.”
“I think Three Chairs’ process is characterised by adaptability and flexibility backed up with experience and methodology. So, it’s a good process and it’s a good experience for a client.”
