We have masked the client company’s name as we are talking in part about decisions that affect their current strategy. We use the alias “East Coast Energy” for this company, but this is not their real name. There is no confidential information in this, or any other part of our site.

Objectives

“East Coast Energy” was started in 2000 to develop a non-regulated energy business for their parent company. The parent company’s strategy was to have “East Coast Energy” roughly balance the parent’s $3 billion of assets and $1 billion of revenues from its regulated utility holdings within five years. This rapid growth was possible because natural gas production was beginning offshore near the parent’s home base and this presented many very attractive opportunities.

Fall Line’s Role

Throughout "East Coast Energy’s (ECE) high growth stage in 2001-2003, Fall Line Systems acted as ECE’s organizational consultant. In this role we helped with organizational design, strategy building, leadership coaching, development of the decision structure, business plan formation, facilitation of planning meetings, development of accountability agreements and other tasks needed in a rapidly growing business.

Results

At the end of 2002, “East Coast Energy” had assets of $260 million and more than 100 employees. ECE had developed a solid process for evaluating business development opportunities and it had developed good systems and processes for operating its current assets. East Coast Energy and the parent company had developed detailed plans for integrating large acquisitions that were very close to completion.