Customer Intimacy Accelerates Growth
Client
- For over 40 years, this mid-sized regional sales and service organization has helped life science, food & beverage, energy, pulp and paper and specialty chemical clients to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their plant operations.
Challenge
- Markets changing at unprecedented rate
- Gap between the client and competitor’s products was narrowing
- Customers becoming more sophisticated buyers, consolidating their vendors, and raising their expectations for suppliers
- Client too dependent on a single industry, a few accounts, and one master sales person
- Management wanted to ensure its strategy was aligned with changes
Solution
- Helped management formulate a customer driven business strategy
- Established customer intimacy as foundation for sustainable competitive advantage
- Segmented the market, profiled and prioritized customers, expanded offerings, and formulated compelling value propositions
- Helped implement strategic initiatives (e.g., incubated and launched new service, designed and applied new strategic account management process, key process improvement)
- We have repeated strategy and implementation assistance in each of the last three years
Client Results
- Compound annual revenue growth rate of 22 percent in each of the last three years
- Management consensus around a single, common vision and strategy
- Business diversification plan
- New service offering
Customer Driven Makeover
Client
- Public company in the financial services industry has facilitated over $16B in loan volume.
Challenge
- Rapid growth created the need for a more formalized approach to management
- Company's success creating more opportunities than resources
- No guide to make more informed decisions
- Customer intimacy with their clients was selected as foundation for competitive advantage
Solution
- Formulated customer driven vision and strategy with CEO and management team
- Redesigned operations and leveraged technology to deliver a better customer experience
- Developed a broader portfolio of offerings to leverage investments in customer relationships
- Strengthened employee skills and clarified and reinforced desired employee behaviors
- Developed and implemented a formal customer feedback system hardwired into continuous operational improvement
- Conducted annual survey with client’s customers to assess performance, shore up vulnerabilities, and target new strategic initiatives
Client Results
- Revenues exceeded $200 M for a four year compound annual growth rate of over 205%
- Net Income exceeded $75 MM for a four year compound annual growth rate of over 230%
- Market capitalization increased 122% over 20 month
- Staff expanded from 35 to over 700 in four years
- Loan volume increased 56% per year over five years
Corporate & Business Unit Strategies Mesh
Client
- This public corporation provides highly engineered materials to the automotive, industrial, and consumer markets worldwide.
Challenge
- Company just emerged from a substantial reorganization
- Recently added a new business unit
- Introduced EVA to measure financial performance
- Business units were getting larger and more complex
- Sought help in formulating a strategy for corporate and each business unit
Solution
- Helped CEO and business unit leaders to formulate a corporate strategy that addressed their portfolio of businesses
- Selected skills transfer model as the basis by which corporate adds value to business units
- Developed resource allocation to support corporate strategy
- Designed new governance and management process to enhance shareholder value
- Strategy emphasized a focus on customer needs, solutions in the most lucrative portions of their value chain, and leveraging strong customer relationships for deeper account penetration
- Structured and facilitated the development of individual, customer driven business strategies for each of the five divisions
Client Results
- Management consensus around a corporate vision and strategy
- Five business unit strategies fully aligned with the new corporate direction
- Successful sale of two business units
- Greater concentration of resources on three most attractive growth businesses
Serving Small Customers
Client
- Large, public industrial materials supplier provides a wide variety of products to the automotive, appliance, container, industrial machinery, construction and oil and gas industries.
Challenge
- Client's domestic production was under performing past levels with no signs of improvement
- Big customers were getting stronger
- Management sought to change the game with an internet enabled business
Solution
- Dispelled current myths about who customers are, feasibility of serving smaller customers, and customer use of the Internet
- Used Internet to circumvent value chain and aggregate orders direct from end users
- Funneled volume through selected distributors to squeeze inefficiencies out of supply chain
- Shared savings with customers to encourage more direct orders
- Used customer interactions to strengthen relationships
- Leveraged stronger relationships into the sale of additional products and services
- Designed and built a new standalone company to execute the new business
Client Results
- Start up revenue exceeded $75 M in two years
- Reduced dependency on supply chain
- Established new customer driven, Internet enabled business
CRM Readiness
Client
- A turnkey financial asset management company providing investment products and services to individuals and institutions in 50 countries. They have more than $100 B in assets under management.
Challenge
- CEO had ambitious three year growth plan
- Several systems and processes required a redesign to support growth
- A customer relationship management (CRM) system was one area targeted for improvement
- Company had no CRM strategy
- Management had no understanding of the requirements for a CRM system of the future
Solution
- Interviewed senior management and conducted workshop with key management and staff
- Reviewed best practices and common reasons for CRM failure
- Formulated a vision for the CRM system needed in the future
- Assessed current customer driven strategy and CRM implementation today
- Identified and prioritized gaps between the CRM vision and the client's current reality
Client Results
- Consensus around a vision for the company's CRM
- Clarity around which customer driven objectives CRM must support
- Specific, practical and achievable strategic initiatives for next 12 months
- Detailed action plans and milestones to guide actions
- Clarity around challenges to CRM implementation and recommendations on how to address them
Customer Centricity Creates Value
Client
- A multi-billion dollar consortium of independent sales and service businesses that provide products and services to industrial markets throughout North America. These businesses have exclusive geographic territories and presents themselves to customers as a unified channel.
Challenge
- Market demand was flat, margins were deteriorating, and offerings were commoditizing
- Suppliers to consortium dominated the relationship
- Consortium wished to address trends, strengthen their position, and enhanced shareholder value
- Diverse makeup of consortium and its organizational structure created special challenges
Solution
- Worked with member CEOs to define a five year vision and customer driven business strategy for the consortium
- Developed framework for transforming each member into a customer-driven business
- Helped consortium to implement strategic recommendations
- Re-segmented customers based upon value
- Restructured sales force around segments
- Enhanced consultative selling approach
- Designed and implemented a new account management program
- Expanded and innovated service businesses
- Facilitated forums to accelerate best practice sharing between members and companies outside consortium
Client Results
- Compound annual revenue growth rate of 13 percent for each of the last six years, despite the recession
- Five year financial objectives achieved in two years
- A more customer driven business model
- Businesses reconfigured around customer value
- A services led, consultative selling approach
Services Strengthen Customer Relationships
Client
- The sales and service arm of a large electronics product manufacturer has been offering world class brands, deep application expertise, broad industry experience, and global reach for decades.
Challenge
- Products dominate revenues
- Customer interactions were infrequent between buying cycles
- Current services viewed as commodity
- Unable to achieve full solutions provider status
Solution
- Clarified distinction between product and service businesses
- Assessed implications of differences for operations
- Helped define the role and strategic intent for services
- Assessed market position for each service
- Developed customer driven service innovation process
- Applied process to reposition and expand services
- Defined business model required to support services
Client Results
- New role and strategic intent for services
- Customer driven service innovations
- Services repositioned as higher value offerings
- Strategy and business model to maximize the success of each service
- Double digit growth throughout the recession