Expertise
As the economy becomes increasingly volatile and its development much harder to predict with economic cycles and boom and bust phases growing shorter, it is now more difficult to rely on (usually cyclically based) growth as a major value driver. The bandwidth between best case and worst case is increasing and there is less certainty that an explicit base case (which can be depicted in a specific set of figures) will actually reflect reality. Financial leverage is also diminishing as a key driver of value given that companies are compelled to operate with higher equity levels. The challenge now is to generate significantly more value through the twin goals of optimizing a company’s strategic positioning and achieving operational excellence.
Several crucial questions have to be answered:
- What are the key levers (e.g. footprint, sales efficiency and effectiveness, R&D roadmap, pricing)?
- After closing a NewCo transaction: What does the 100-days program look like?
- Which standardized formats have to be installed to monitor and control progress in respect of measures?
References
- Screening and assessing measures aimed at the medium and long-term profit improvement of all divisions of a diversified high-tech group; subsequently developing further measures
- Assessing a machine tool manufacturer’s business plan; developing profit improvement actions
- Realizing an overhead cost reduction program for a plant engineering company
- Drawing up a concept to improve the performance of an electronics/software company primarily geared toward organization and processes; supporting the strategy development process
- Benchmarking a plant contractor’s direct and indirect functions and key financial indicators against those of the relevant competitors
- Designing/implementing a performance improvement project (sales + Euro m 250; cost – Euro m 20)
- Performance improvement program for a component plant in China