Challenging your thinking
Our unique blend of exceptional facilitation skills and deep commercial understanding mean that our workshops challenge your thinking and bring you to actions. We have three areas in which we consider ourselves experts:
1. Pricing and margin improvement
Getting pricing right is one of the most important management decisions – and is the most powerful lever to improve margins. But, pricing decisions are too often driven by short-term pressures and internal financial data. We have considerable expertise in running practical workshops to shift the focus to long-term and external drivers; to identify and agree the right price strategy based on them.
Case study: Pricing AND Gross margin
A multinational beauty business asked us to help them review their pricing to deliver better gross margins. We identified existing data they could make more use of (for example on promotions) – and the gaps that had to be filled (eg on consumer attitudes to key brands). We helped them assemble the data, and analysed it to bring out insights. We then brought a cross-functional team together for a one-day workshop. This identified tangible actions to move the business towards a better price strategy – and equally important, helped the team identify the changes in mind-set that they needed to take on.
“He brings clarity and energy. Clearly his finance background as well as his overall business perspective are of great value to his clients.”
2. Decision analysis
Businesses thrive when they make well informed decisions. Our Decision Analysis and related workshops focus on the key areas which drive decision quality:
- Clarity – of decision scope, options to be evaluated and selection criteria
- Analysis – using tools from decision trees through to probabilistic modelling
- Action – from recommendations through to clear implementation plans.
Decision Analysis can be applied at the level of an individual investment, and also to shape and support the establishment of a whole business strategy.
Case study: Decision analysis
An international FMCG business invited us to design and facilitate a workshop on strategic innovation of one of its major categories. Our initial work involved shaping the scope of the workshop, defining the participant attendance and focusing the supporting data analysis. We facilitated the two-day session, driving and supporting the multi-functional teams to make complex trade-offs and establish priorities across a diverse product portfolio. Our final contribution was to deliver a comprehensive communication and implementation plan.
“He quickly established the necessary understanding of the needs of the different stakeholders, gave continuous and reliable support to different areas in the business and could always provide pragmatic and action-oriented solutions in time.”
3. War gaming
War gaming will help you succeed in the market. Our approach brings your competitors to life and identifies how best to beat them. War games improve team alignment around winning plans.
Our process is flexible and can be used to:
- Stress test your own strategy, product launch and/or major investment
- React to anticipated or actual competitor moves
- Turnaround your business to address ongoing competitive losses
A war game is a facilitated workshop to improve your chances of success in a competitive market.
Case study: War gaming
A fast-growing online classifieds business was concerned that it was too internally focused and did not have a joined-up approach to delivering its strategy in the face of fierce competition. We designed and facilitated a workshop:
- To generate actionable insights about their industry landscape
- To develop a competitor analysis framework to deep dive on four competitors
- To then run a war game simulation on the toughest competitor; identifying significant risks it posed to future success
- The team addressed these risks, developing a killer plan with clear follow-up and governance.
“I liked a lot putting myself in a competitor’s shoes (very hard), something we normally don’t do.”
Learning needs analysis
Over the years, clients have asked us to help them to define their learning needs before we start designing a new piece of training. We do this by drawing on our deep experience of delivering training – and also on our broader understanding of corporate life. Learning needs analysis can be as narrow as reviewing how to build knowledge in one topic – or as broad as re-imagining how people develop their careers.
Case study: Learning Needs Analysis
The Finance function in a major education company wanted to run training to improve the support they gave to the business. We worked with them to:
- understand the real business needs that Finance had to meet
- be clear on how this work should be spread across Finance
- improve the skills definitions used in Finance, so that they reflect the new need
- create training so that Finance people could develop these skills
- build a new career map to show how people could develop themselves in the new world.
This work became a key part of a wider change initiative, credited with helping the Finance function to deliver significantly better service.
“The workshops were a cornerstone of the change management plan and feedback from the workshops was extremely positive from those who participated. ”