Case Studies

Consulting with the experts

Bamboo Orchard deployed an online Virtual C-Suite to help Quickbus’ leadership team, giving them on-tap access to our entire team of Directors across all their business functions.
This enabled them to:

• Understand their current challenges
• Work with our team to navigate and solve those challenges
• Remove potential barriers to profitability before they became an issue

Finding the product-market fit

Next, Quickbus needed to find the right service level and pricing that would resonate with their target consumers. To do this, we guided them through a comprehensive process which included:

• Identifying their highest ROI projects across the core markets of Nigeria and South Africa
• Mapping the impact of their quarterly prioritisations
• Budgeting for testing projects such as onboard entertainment, parcel delivery, Covid solutions, B2B partnerships
• Guiding them on which test projects to continue investing in, and which to move away from

Securing investment

Following this, we supported Quickbus in investor relations. We mentored the leadership team through two investment rounds worth a total of £3 million, which included Bamboo Orchard holding a board-level advisory seat, and offering insight and credibility to the management team across their investor relations.

Our work here helped Quickbus negotiate a complex joint venture with South Africa which led to the region being more than 35% of their revenue. 

Building the business

Once we’d secured investment, we began work on strengthening Quickbus’ business to accommodate their increased demand. Focusing on their commercial operations, we assisted the leadership team with:

• Hiring employees
• Establishing reporting lines for employees
• Setting critical business goals
• Managing day-to-day businesses processes
• Managing day-to-day businesses processes

Rebuilding the app

We began with a thorough assessment of the pH7 mobile app, and consultation sessions to understand the product’s target audience and company goals. From this, it was agreed that the best way to achieve pH7’s targets was to rebuild the app from the ground up.

Where the first version of the app had been created before the business strategy, our new version was designed with its target users in mind, as well as the expectations of its launch markets. 

This gave pH7 the security needed to effectively scale as the business moved from the product market fit stage, into the growth stage.

Building the business

In conjunction with developing the app, our People and Governance team worked with the CEO of pH7 to navigate the ongoing commercial relationships and negotiations needed to secure the operation of pH7 in Europe and the UK.

As part of this, we restructured pH7’s cap table to remove legacy co-founders, and give the business scope to grow and raise money from institutional investors. Our work included guidance and oversight on:

• Operational protection
• Supply chain management
• Supplier performance management

A large part of this work was securing the future structure of the business and holding groups to ensure operational efficiency and security. This involved managing the transfer of liabilities to new incorporations and setting up agreements to support the most effective IP ownership within the business group.

Creating a tactical plan

Our first step was to create a comprehensive plan which laid out the outcomes, risks, and objectives of each of Captain.ai’s commercial transactions. 

With this in place, our team was deployed to assist across a range of governance projects, including:

• Acting as liaison between Captain.ai’s counsel and their clients’
• Negotiating and transacting on Captain.ai’s behalf
• Acting as the first point of contact for any commercial transactions and negotiations

Expanding into new markets

Our expertise here allowed Captain.ai to keep their focus on expanding into their chosen new markets: the Americas and Asia Pacific. 

Captain.ai called on us to assist them with this, too, with a view to making sure that their new market launches were as successful as possible. To do that, we:

• Designed and implemented the business’ legal and commercial delivery structure
• Created the internal operating processes for the delivery of their services
• Oversaw the expansion to ensure it was as risk-free and profitable as possible

Our Governance team also remained the first point of contact for transactions and negotiations when necessary.

Continuing growth

Finally, our People team helped Captain.ai facilitate their continued growth by ensuring they were compliant with local jurisdictional HR requirements, completing any and all HR administration for them. This included:

• Setting up, and ensuring compliance with, jurisdictional HR matters
• Created an ecosystem for handling all internal issues
• Carrying out and managing the HR administration process

Creating the brand

As a first step, we prepared a robust market strategy for Serious Learning Games, which highlighted the need for a more dynamic brand to appeal to their target customers.

We took their leadership team through our Unfair Advantage branding strategy, in which we:

• Identified SLG’s strengths, values, and USPs
• Created a new visual identity, tone of voice, and messaging that represented them
• Defined a new name for the brand - Adeptly.

Getting recognition

With a new, more representative brand in place, we began a six month, high-impact content and thought-leadership campaign in order to raise the company’s profile. 

We entered Adeptly into a number of awards, with our copywriters creating and submitting the awards entries based on the newly-created brand guidelines and mission statement. 

This resulted in Adeptly winning:

• Best E-Learning Tool 2020
• Bronze in the Learning Technology Awards 2023 - beating out companies like Hugo Boss and Allianz

The award wins and nominations resulting from our campaign helped Adeptly secure a number of new clients including: Google, KFC, EDF Energy, Nandos, and the BBC.

Understanding their challenges

Our People and Hiring teams worked closely with Spitroat’s operational team to understand what their challenges were, their expansion plans, and their fears and concerns around hiring and HR during the expansion.

Expanding their capacity

Once we’d developed a full Suite of HR processes, mapped out to align with Spitroast’s expansion goals, we began helping them expand their team. This included:

• Identifying which roles were needed and where, from floor staff to C-Suite, across the business’ 5 sites
• Creating the job specs for each role
• Interviewing and highlighting the best candidates
• Onboarding and integrating the new hires into the business
• Creating a central hiring template for the business, covering updated employment contracting through to operational procedures 

Creating HR processes

With the new hires in place, we then began to create the training programs, help systems, and evaluation frameworks that Spitroast needed to ensure that their new employees were fully onboarded, supported, and performing to requirements. These included:

• Creating a cyclical manager/leadership training program
• Implementing a business-wide performance management and assessment processes
• Creating a central online hub for full business monitoring and management
• Establishing performance benchmarking and incentive reviews, as well as employee satisfaction and feedback reviews
• Setting up central employee data management and HRIS processes 
• Creation of organisation growth structures and succession planning

Providing tactical onsite support

Our Head of People and Hiring met with Spitroast’s leadership to support them on any final questions they had, and to see how the practical implementations of the HR Suite would change and improve their business.

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Beginning their expansion

Our first step was to pre-assess the requirements of opening and staffing a UK branch with market analysis, before designing the group’s entire business relationship in the UK. This included:

• Incorporating their business
• Handling all aspects of governance
• Benchmarking employee salaries
• Creating the payroll structure

Supporting their staff

With the employment facility in place, our People team began training providers and establishing contracting and onboarding processes for employees transferring to the UK business. 

Meanwhile, our Governance teams worked to:

• Create the legal entity
• Meet the requirements of the holding business in the US
• Liaise constantly with the US team to ensure no loss of information
• Supported with the delivery of all areas of the incorporation and set-up

Our work ensured that TopHatch’s expansion was completed seamlessly and successfully, and left the company with a UK business ready to generate revenue and grow nationally.

Giving C-Suite level guidance

We created and implemented the business-wide policies V7 Labs needed to scale sustainably, as well as a number of additional strategies to ensure minimal friction on their global staff. These included:

• People management strategies
• Training programs
• Safeguarding initiatives

Throughout the process, we acted as the escalation point for any HR matters, including any high-level issues and disputes that arose.

Providing HR expertise on tap

All of V7 Labs’ strategic and tactical HR tasks continue to be delegated to Bamboo Orchard, in addition to us delivering specialised, people-focused strategies that empower the team to operate as smoothly as possible.This includes:

• Providing ongoing C-Suite HR advice
• Designing and implementing business-wide policies
• Managing and handling high level disputes
• Devising ongoing people management strategies and training programs
• Curating the business operational policies which govern all People processes

Creating the brand

MM Dating engaged Bamboo Orchard to develop a new brand that fully aligned with their aspirations for their product. Over a series of sessions, our Brand Director worked with the founders and core team to create a new brand story, strategy, and visual identity focused on the core values of their product: celebrating black love and black culture.

Beginning with an assessment of MM Dating’s product market fit, we identified the qualities that would enable MM Dating to significantly differentiate itself within the crowded dating app market. With that basis, we worked to define a personality and tone of voice that was both authentic to the brand and distinct from its competitors, and which would go on to inform MM’s messaging, content, and media strategies.

Finally, we developed an extensive visual identity for MM Dating, from creating an impactful logo and selecting brand colours that resonated with the new brand identity, to defining the photography style and creating example advertising.

Following the soft launch of the new brand, it was featured by Apple as part of their UK Black History Month.