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AURELIUS Operations Advisory
Competitive advantage
Operational excellence has been a focus of AURELIUS since inception, with the AURELIUS Operations Advisory team founded in 2005 to drive portfolio company transformation. The importance of this has grown over time and is crucial in today’s world of limited opportunity for multiple expansion and leverage.
About AURELIUS Operations Advisory
AURELIUS is differentiated by its dedicated Operations Advisory team. Starting out as four specialists in 2005, it has grown to reach a global team of more than 180 today, making it one of the industry’s most sizable and impactful in-house advisories.
We reduce complexity and support companies in their transformational journey. Post-acquisition the team pursues an operational approach to accelerate transformation and growth, typically employing relatively low levels of leverage. The challenges of the last few years vindicated our model as we were able to adapt our tactics, reinforcing the importance of a rigorous and scalable operating model.
Benefits of AUROM
AURELIUS Operations Advisory employ the proven AUROM to support the transformation and growth of the portfolio companies in several ways, including add-on acquisitions as a way of building out platforms. A clear and concise operating model helps reduce complexity during the acquisition of new portfolio companies as it:
- minimises transaction risks for buyers,
- fosters trust in future returns through transparency, and
- clearly communicates our model for success to investors.
Additionally, it enhances implementation effectiveness and manages expectations when recruiting top talent.
Highly experienced talent drives success
AURELIUS’ Operations Advisory continues to build on its in-house expertise through its work with the growing portfolio.
We have built a strong team of Strategy & Transformation Managers who act as Generalists, supporting the AURELIUS portfolio companies in creating operational value by implementing and facilitating AUROM. Over the years, we have curated a team comprising Functional Experts in Finance, Sales & Marketing, Operations, Procurement, ICT, Artificial Intelligence, Business Intelligence, HR and ESG. These professionals work alongside our senior management team and the team supporting the portfolio companies on site, who are ultimately responsible in advising individual portfolio companies. We staff interdisciplinary teams to collaborate with each company’s workforce.
The execution-oriented team provides bespoke advice to increase efficiency, reduce risk, and create operational value, constantly honing the skills needed to achieve these goals. This commitment to transformation and development underpins our AURELIUS Academy, offering a broad and continually updated range of training formats across all relevant areas of expertise.
Spotlight on: AURELIUS Operating Model (AUROM)
Each business journey is unique, and so the AURELIUS Operating Model (AUROM) is designed to be highly flexible and adaptable.
At its core, four modules drive value creation:
Strategy Design and Re-Design:
It all starts with defining or redefining the companies’ strategies to ensure alignment with business goals.
Key Value Driver Execution:
An agile, iterative strategy aims to simplify and drive the transformation.
Operational Playbooks:
Implementing best practices and standards from AURELIUS Operational Playbooks to improve targeted business areas.
Exit Readiness:
Continuously working towards exit readiness from day 1.
Strategy Design and Re-Design:
It all starts with defining or redefining the companies’ strategies to ensure alignment with business goals.
Key Value Driver Execution:
An agile, iterative strategy aims to simplify and drive the transformation.
Operational Playbooks:
Implementing best practices and standards from AURELIUS Operational Playbooks to improve targeted business areas.
Exit Readiness:
Continuously working towards exit readiness from day 1.
By consistently improving AUROM, the Operations Advisory team supports the transformation of AURELIUS portfolio companies.
AURELIUS Operating Model AUROM
Creating success stories
We believe that every successful transformation begins with a strong, executable, and ambitious strategy. This is especially true for portfolio companies that often need to operate independently for the first time after being carved out from their previous owner. Such transitions demand swift, effective, and expert guidance to enable rapid decision-making, grounded in insights and opportunities for value creation.
Our multi-step strategy design process is methodical, taking into account various factors unique to each of AURELIUS’ portfolio companies, such as their competitive positioning and market environment. The process utilises strategic concepts, incorporates examples from client cases, and ultimately translates into strategic priorities that clearly guide an organisation to the key objectives. Most importantly we believe that strategy design should be iterative and regularly adapted rather than fixed.
Strategy can never work in isolation, and so we link it very closely to two of the core modules of our operating model: strategy execution and exit readiness. This way we can continuously gain valuable insights in the impact our strategy has and utilise those in a structured way to ensure the strategy remains aligned and up to date.
Impact by strategy execution
A good strategy is only as valuable as the outcomes it generates. To maximise operational value creation, AUROM starts with a strategy and executes it iteratively using our unique KVD (Key Value Driver) framework.
Key to this is customer centricity. We visualise the value chain with its individual customer domains, gauge performance against a set of KPIs and identify areas to address quarterly. Our operational specialists ensure that this adaptable approach incorporates best practices and achieves a high adoption rate across the portfolio.
Experience first
The AURELIUS Operations Advisory can quickly unlock value, and this is a huge advantage and differentiator. This is because we have hundreds of years of collective professional experience with over 100 Operational Playbooks to draw on. It means we don’t reinvent the wheel each time we work with a portfolio company, but rather bring this highly valuable experience to bear. Our resource is unrivalled in the private equity industry and enables us to create value quickly, reinforcing one of our core competitive advantages.
All systems checked
The eventual exit must be considered from day 1. This means that in addition to a continuously evolving business strategy, we follow a structured process incorporating real-life examples and tools to facilitate a seamless end-to-end exit process. The transformation efforts of the Operations Advisory, in close collaboration with AURELIUS’ portfolio companies, provide critical input for various exit readiness assessments. We believe this is essential from due diligence onwards and requires regular review.
Creating impact with bespoke advice
This is all achieved through close cooperation between AURELIUS’ Operations Advisory and the management team as well as the workforce of the portfolio companies.