BCG Practice Case - Revenue Growth in Medical Software Industry

Hello,

I recently went through one of the practice cases on BCG website. The case question is below. I wanted to hear your thoughts on the structure that people usually use for this type of question. There are 2 approaches:

a) Structure similar to BCG approach
b) Walk through various growth strategies (each being a hypothesis) while assessing market etc to see which would work best

I think approach (a) seems to be more of boiling the ocean approach as it requires understanding what's going on and then recommend which growth strategy works best. On the contrary, approach (b) seems to be more of a hypothesis-driven where you are testing each growth strategy while understanding market, customers, etc. to either eliminate or short-list a strategy.

I understand the this basically comes down to personal preference as long as it is structured. However, I have noticed that while taking approach (b), the overall execution seems more controlled.

Any thoughts? Appreciate your help.

Your client is GenCo, a large, international, diversified company with a health care division that produces a wide variety of medical instruments and related services. Five years ago, it expanded into the health care software industry by purchasing MedCount, which markets administrative systems to large U.S. hospitals. These systems are designed primarily for back-office functions; they are not designed for managing patients or providing other physician and technical support. Since it was purchased, the software division has failed to deliver the growth needed to justify the multiple GenCo paid for it. GenCo feels it has already squeezed margins as much as possible, and now is looking for new sales opportunities. MedCount turned to BCG to help identify potential ways to increase revenues.

How would you approach this problem?