How Flevy Helps You Navigate the Business Best Practices — CEO Interview

Esther is a business strategist with over 20 years of experience as an entrepreneur, executive, educator, and management advisor.

Published on March 22, 2024
Updated on March 28, 2024

How Flevy Helps You Navigate the Business Best Practices — CEO Interview

In this interview, we delve into the entrepreneurial journey of David Tang, the founder of Flevy. Discover the story behind this innovative platform that’s reshaping the way businesses access and utilize best practices. Tang opens up about the challenges, triumphs, and insights gained while building Flevy, a treasure trove for businesses seeking excellence. Whether you’re a startup enthusiast or a seasoned executive, join us as we uncover the strategies and foresight driving Flevy’s success in the dynamic world of business.

Origin Story

SBS – How did Flevy originate, and what inspired its focus on business best practices?

David – The idea for Flevy was born from my experiences working in management consulting. After several years working at a large, global firm, followed by several years working for boutique consulting firms as an independent consultant, I noticed one big advantage the large firms had was access to their internal knowledge management repositories. These were essentially databases of consulting documents from past client work (e.g., frameworks, deliverables, sales decks, financial models, status reports, etc.).

Having these ready-made, field-tested documents available allowed the large firms to quickly ramp up new project teams. Prior to the start of a project, the team would download all relevant documents from the portal to develop the “expertise” needed for the project. The consulting framework would provide a clear, structured approach to project delivery. Furthermore, working from an existing document would save hours over creating a similar document from scratch. The existing documents could also just be used as a reference.

I noticed these knowledge management libraries were unique to large consulting firms. The boutique firms didn’t have anything like this at their disposal. Even my largest consulting clients (the largest being Fortune 15) didn’t have access to similar resources.

At most organizations, instead of having a centralized document repository, each individual would have their own repository — i.e., the person’s laptop. If you needed a document, you would need to ask someone who you thought may have it and was willing to share it. If you didn’t know anyone like that or if the person was unwilling to share or unavailable, you would be out of luck.

Thus, my idea for Flevy was to create a public version of this document knowledge base. It’s a resource every business professional can rely on for their work. In other words, Flevy democratizes access to high-quality business documents, representing a fundamental shift from exclusivity to accessibility.

For instance, if the CMO of the startup is working on a pricing strategy for a new product, the first step should be to download all relevant pricing strategy documents from Flevy. The startup’s marketing team now can follow the same pricing strategy methodology that a team of Accenture consultants would follow.

Unique Selling Points

SBS – What sets Flevy apart from other business resource platforms?

David – What sets Flevy apart is the breadth and depth of materials we have available.

Regarding breadth, we currently have over 8,000 documents spanning over 500 management topics. We are, by far, the largest online marketplace of best practices.

Regarding depth and quality, our best practice documents are of the same caliber as those produced by tier-1 consulting firms like McKinsey, BCG, Bain, Deloitte, Accenture, etc. Our contributing authors are mostly ex-consultants from these firms or semi-retired C-level executives from notable companies.

Thus, much of our materials are geared towards executives and people with decades of experience.

On the other hand, most other business resource platforms focus on lower-level business knowledge — e.g., analyst or MBA-level material.

Impact Tales

SBS – Can you share a success story where Flevy significantly impacted a client’s business?

David – A customer once shared his experience of implementing one of our Key Account Management (KAM) frameworks that helped his company increase top-line revenue by 3X in 12 months.

Here are some testimonials that have been shared with us (and posted on our website):

“Flevy is now a part of my business routine. I visit Flevy at least three times each month. Flevy has become my preferred learning source because what it provides is practical, current, and useful in this era where the business world is being rewritten. In today’s environment where there are so many challenges and there is the need to make the right decisions in a short time, with so much scattered information, we are fortunate to have Flevy.”

“I have used Flevy services for a number of years and have never, ever been disappointed. As a matter of fact, David and his team continue, time after time, to impress me with their willingness to assist and in the real sense of the word. I have concluded, in fact, that it is not at all just a repository of documents/resources but, in the way that David and his team manage the firm, it is like dealing with consultants always ready to assist, advise, and direct you to what you really need, and they always get it right.”

“They [Flevy documents] not only augment my existing consulting and coaching offerings and delivery but also keep me abreast of the latest trends, inspire new products and service offerings for my practice, and educate me in a fraction of the time and money of other solutions. I strongly recommend Flevy to any consultant serious about success.”

“Flevy is our go-to resource for management material at an affordable cost. The Flevy library is comprehensive, the content is deep, and it typically provides a great foundation for us to develop and tailor our own service offer further.”

“The wide selection of frameworks is very useful to me as an independent consultant. In fact, it rivals what I had at my disposal at Big 4 Consulting firms in terms of efficacy and organization.”

Quality Control

SBS – How do you ensure the quality and relevance of the materials offered on Flevy?

David – As a marketplace, the highest quality and most relevant materials naturally rise to the top. This also applies to our authors. The authors who offer the best quality and most applicable materials generate the most sales.

We are also constantly recruiting authors with deep functional and industry experience who either operate their own consulting firms or are C-level executives.

Evolution of Flevy

SBS – How has Flevy evolved since its inception, particularly in response to changing business trends?

David – We rely on the wisdom of our authors. We also share trend and search data with our authors to help guide them. For instance, when ChatGPT initially launched, we noticed a surge of interest in ChatGPT presentations. We shared this observation with authors and shortly thereafter, many of our authors released in-depth training guides on ChatGPT and prompt engineering.

When we receive specific customer inquiries for materials we don’t have, we also pass these requests to relevant authors.

Overcoming Challenges

SBS – What challenges did Flevy face in establishing its market presence, and how were they overcome?

David – The biggest challenge has, and remains, marketing. We are continuously trying expand and establish our market presence through a variety of online marketing channels, from social media to paid ads.

One of the most effective tactics we’ve utilized to increase awareness is giveaways on LinkedIn. I constantly release free whitepapers and presentations through my personal LinkedIn account. As a result, I recently crossed 50,000 followers on LinkedIn.

Diverse Business Solutions

SBS – How does Flevy cater to the specific needs of diverse businesses, from startups to large corporations?

David – Our goal is to build up our resources to be as extensive as possible, so it caters to all different types of organizations and industries.

Fortunately, most of our documents are industry-agnostic and can be applied to most types of organizations.

With that said, depending on the size of an organization, e.g., startup vs. large corporation, the functional focus changes. For instance, smaller organizations are more interested in growth, whereas large organizations are more interested in operations (e.g., process improvement, change management, post-merger integration, lean management, business continuity, etc.). Organizations going through growing pains find our maturity models particularly helpful. The maturity model helps the organization assess its current level of maturity, as well as the defining capabilities to develop and challenges to overcome to evolve to the next level.

We also have resources, including an AI consultant, to help customers find the materials they need for their unique situations.

Customer-Centric Approach

SBS – How does Flevy integrate customer feedback into its platform and content development?

David – We automatically follow-up with all customers to solicit feedback on their purchase and user experience. We take all feedback seriously, and we constantly iterate on our customer experience and share any relevant feedback with our authors. Periodically, we also conduct customer surveys and interviews.

Looking Ahead

SBS – What are Flevy’s future plans for growth and expansion?

David – Our focus for the near term is to continue to build our knowledge base. We currently have about 8,000 documents. I think we require at least 50,000 documents to be truly comprehensive and serve all our customers’ needs.

If we feel there are strong synergies, we may also launch new offerings that serve our existing customer base. For instance, at the start of this year, we launched the Flevy KPI Library. This is a database of over 15,000+ KPIs, making it one of the largest KPI repositories available. Thus far, this has been very well received by our customers.

Digital Transformation

SBS – How has digital transformation affected your business model and offerings?

David – As an online technology company, we are always trying to leverage relevant emergent technologies to improve our service and possibly extend our offerings.

Most recently, we leveraged generative AI to improve our customer service with Marcus, our AI consultant.

Entrepreneurial Insights

SBS – What advice would you give to entrepreneurs and business owners seeking to leverage platforms like Flevy for their businesses?

David – We consider Flevy a shortcut to success. Through Flevy, you can acquire the best practices used by Fortune 100 companies and global consulting firms.

Our documents are also extremely cost-effective, making them accessible to small startups and companies in emerging markets.

To effectively leverage Flevy, follow these steps:

Find the documents you need on Flevy. A good place to start is our list of management topics (https://flevy.com/topics)
In most cases, you should download framework presentations
Use your own employees to implement the framework the same way a consulting firm would

If you find the framework you need, I recommend using our AI consultant, Marcus (https://flevy.com/ask). It will generate an analysis of your situation and direct you to specific management topics and documents on Flevy that may be of use.

Lastly, if you can’t seem to find what you need or would like another opinion, please don’t hesitate to contact our support team at [email protected].

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