The Strategy
SME-based, entrepreneurial, long-term
Acquiring, holding and further developing healthy industrial SMEs – that is CMG’s strategy. Our companies manage their operations independently under the umbrella of a slim-line holding company, but with its support and acting as an operating partner (www.tpgr.be). The goal: a strong group of “hidden champions”, market and technology leaders
Private equity companies (PE) are short-term partners
They often invest in companies in phases of significant growth before selling their stake.
The lucrative resale of their holding (the “exit”) is their stated aim from the beginning. We, on the other hand, purchase companies we intend to keep. CMG lives from the profit distributions of its subsidiaries, not profits from the resale of companies. The fact that CMG, as the acquiring holding company, finances the acquisition itself is another significant difference. In contrast to acquisitions in the private equity world, our operational subsidiaries are not burdened with interest or the repayment of the purchase price, which can cause particular problems in periods of economic difficulty.
Our performance Improvement programmes (Cost/Cash/Growth) are at the core of our corporate DNA as Holding.
We transfer methods, tools and expertise that are often commonplace at major corporations to the SME sector in an appropriate form.
Major corporations and SMEs each have their specific strengths and weaknesses. We want to get as close as possible to combining the best of both worlds. Our first step is to launch commercial and operative excellence programmes. Transitioning the SMEs from a product oriented towards a growth oriented and customer centric platform, leveraging cloud based customer engagement platforms with our partners are key in these programmes. Medium sized platforms need to digitize the front-end customer engagement processes and capabilities. This implies transforming product-centric driven companies towards 360 degrees customer centric firms, geared to scale thanks to SaaS solutions in the fields of services, sales, commerce, communities, integrations and analytics. We prepare our platforms to be resilient and nimble.