Company Context

NovaDesk is a B2B SaaS company that provides customer support software for mid-market e-commerce brands. The company has grown to $120M ARR, serves 4,800 customers, and competes primarily against Zendesk, Gorgias, and Freshdesk in the U.S. and Western Europe. After a strong growth period, NovaDesk missed its last two quarterly targets, and the CEO has asked the strategy team to ensure all major analyses and recommendations are explicitly tied to the company’s current strategic priorities rather than broad market opportunities.

Strategic Situation

You are the incoming Strategy Manager. The executive team has defined three priorities for the next 12 months:

1. Increase net revenue retention (NRR) from 102% to 112%
2. Improve contribution margin from 8% to 15%
3. Accelerate growth in the mid-market e-commerce segment while avoiding enterprise expansion this year

Several teams are pushing different initiatives: Sales wants to enter enterprise accounts, Product wants to launch AI automation features broadly, and Marketing wants to expand into new verticals such as healthcare and education. The CEO wants a recommendation on how to evaluate growth opportunities in a way that is clearly aligned with the stated priorities.

Data Points

Additional facts:

• 65% of revenue comes from mid-market e-commerce customers.
• AI automation add-ons have 30% attach rate in the core segment and 18% in non-core verticals.
• Enterprise expansion would require $6M incremental investment in sales, security, and customer success.
• The company has a 12-month operating budget cap of $18M for new initiatives.

Deliverables

As Strategy Manager, prepare a recommendation for the CEO and executive team:

1. Define a practical approach for ensuring analysis is aligned to NovaDesk’s strategic priorities.
2. Assess which growth opportunities should be prioritized, deprioritized, or sequenced later.
3. Show how you would evaluate at least three options using the company’s stated goals and available data.
4. Recommend a decision framework and governance process for future strategic analyses.
5. Outline the key metrics leadership should track to confirm ongoing alignment.

Constraints

• The company must show measurable progress within two quarters.
• Leadership does not want to pursue more than two major strategic bets simultaneously.
• Headcount growth is capped at 10% this year.
• Recommendations must be realistic within the $18M initiative budget and current product roadmap capacity.