Corporate Development refers to a group belonging to a corporation that is responsible for strategic decisions to grow and restructure its business, achieve organizational excellence, as well as establish strategic partnerships. According to Steven Rindner, the key aim of corporate development usually is to create opportunities for an enterprise through actions like divestitures and mergers and acquisitions (M&A). It also involves making deals that can leverage the value of the business platform of the relevant firm.
Steven Rindner sheds light on the aspect of corporate development
Corporate development is required by a firm to create and execute innovative strategies that can aid the company in orderly harness its competitive advantage. Steven Rindner mentions that proper corporate development can aid a firm to improve both its financial and operating performance, as well as outperform its competitors. Rindner is an experienced business and corporate development executive. His prime expertise lies in the aspect of business development and growth strategy. His expansive experience in this domain makes him the perfect candidate to talk about the element of corporate development. According to him, corporate development is majorly a centralized function as it provides the development team of a firm with a distinct birds-eye perfective of the organization which significantly aids in identifying the key threats and opportunities of the company. This factor invariably allows the firm to take advantage of being a first-move in the scenario of an opportunity, and ultimately take pre-emptive action against threats. The corporate development team of a firm often tends to structure deals with other business organizations that orderly fit into the portfolio of a firm.
It is important to note that a centralized corporate development team, however, does not imply the fact that the department works entirely in isolation from other operational groups that are present within an enterprise. As an example, according to Steven Rindner subsequent to acquiring a business, the corporate development team of a firm ideally aids in integrating the relevant acquisition into a firm by adequately collaborating with business lines and support functions that tend to lie within the firm, as well as with vendors that are outside the company.
There are a number of important functions that the corporate development team of a company performs. Here are some of the key priorities of such teams:
- Try to achieve operational excellence
- Analyze new strategic initiatives and invest in them. This can include strategic divestitures, acquisitions, and mergers
- Creating forecast models and budgets to determine asset allocations and monitor the performance of the company
- Deal with giver industry or government regulators
- Make sure of the capital adequacy of a business
- Identify and handle diverse on-core business assets
- Improve the overall client-customer experience
- Optimize the productivity of a firm
- Help in ensuring proper product development and market penetration
The corporate development team of a company is also required to understand the prime drivers of expenses and revenues of a company, as well as identify the most crucial KPIs or important Key Performance Indicators with the aim of measuring and evaluating the performance of a firm.
