Stop Thrashing Your Suppliers: Focus on value and profits, not just cost, in the sourcing process
Because external spending is the largest cost center for most companies, many firms have done the obvious things to cut costs in procurement, such as renegotiating contracts with suppliers and consolidating big-volume purchases. But these tactics, which focus on one-time supplier price reductions, cannot drive long-term performance gains.
Managers need an approach that allows them to realize and sustain high returns on their investment in improving … [ Read more ]
Content: Article | Authors: David Bovet, Grégory Kochersperger, Matthew Anderson | Source: “Mercer Management Journal” | Subjects: Management, Operations
A Quick Guide to Strategic Planning Success
Strategic planning should not be a once- or twice-yearly event disconnected from running the business. Only by erasing the distinction between strategy and daily execution can companies reliably craft and execute a winning plan. Executives looking to make their strategic planning more strategic can quickly refer to these ten best practices.
Content: Article | Authors: Jonathan Gove, Olivier Defline, Phyllis Rothschild | Source: “Mercer Management Journal” | Subject: Strategy
Chinese Tourism Market
M&A Activity in China
Portfolio redesign: Mapping value growth in complex portfolios
As companies have grown in size and complexity, delivering sustained superior performance has become increasingly challenging. Today’s large corporations compete across multiple product and service markets, value chains, and geographies – each of which is experiencing major shifts in economics and opportunities.
The typical approaches to charting portfolio strategy are no longer adequate. Neither the “hands-off” financial manager focusing on the numbers nor the synergy manager … [ Read more ]
Content: Article | Authors: Bill Stevenson, Phyllis Rothschild, Richard Balaban | Source: “Mercer Management Journal” | Subjects: Management, Strategy
Ready for the next move? Understanding a brand’s potential requires a new set of metrics
A dispassionate analysis of a brand can uncover opportunities for a company to expand into new profit zones. It also can reveal signs that the brand is becoming irrelevant to changing customer priorities.
Content: Article | Authors: Andy Pierce, Suzanne Hogan | Source: “Mercer Management Journal” | Subject: Marketing / Sales
A “Mindshare” Manifesto: Common Misconceptions Squander the Power of the Modern Brand
Powerful brands can help firms leave rivals in the dust. But brand building today must encompass a more complex set of activities and target a broader audience than in the past.
Content: Article | Authors: Eric Almquist, Kenneth J. Roberts | Source: “Mercer Management Journal” | Subject: Marketing / Sales
Telecom Managed and Advisory Services Growth
Putting an End to Ad Hoc Pricing
Pricing may well be the weakest link in the value chain. It has such potential to accelerate revenue and profit growth, yet it is so clearly under-managed at consumer and business-to-business companies alike. There are opportunities for improvement in five areas of pricing strategy.
Content: Article | Authors: Krishnakumar (KK) Davey, Nagi Jonnalagadda, Paul Markowitz | Source: “Mercer Management Journal” | Subjects: Marketing / Sales, Pricing
Just in Case: Balancing risk and return in global supply chains
As you push deeper into uncharted supply chain territories, managing risk becomes critical. Executing the supply-to-market strategy and tactics that best support your business requires investment in new forms of internal analysis and a willingness to make decisions that fly in the face of organizational precedent.
Content: Article | Authors: David Bovet, Eric Vratimos, Jonathan Gove | Source: “Mercer Management Journal” | Subject: Operations
Krishnakumar (KK) Davey, Paul Markowitz, and Nagi Jonnalagadda
Many sales and marketing managers continue to have faith that price cuts can “fix” problems such as undifferentiated products or an obscure brand image. Their faith is misplaced. Price decreases are easy to implement–especially compared to changes in product attributes or customer service, for instance–but extremely difficult to reverse. It often takes years, to bring a price back to its original level. What’s most regrettable … [ Read more ]
Content: Quotation | Source: “Mercer Management Journal” | Subject: Marketing / Sales
Adrian Slywotzky, Peter Baumgartner, Larry Alberts, and Hanna Moukanas
By business design, we mean the fingerprint of the (hopefully) unique way a company does business–which customers it chooses to serve, which unique value proposition it offers to customers, which profit models it employs, which scope of activities it engages in, which forms of strategic control it develops to protect profits and customer relationships, and which organizational architecture it uses to implement these decisions.
Content: Quotation | Source: “Mercer Management Journal” | Subjects: Business Plans, Miscellaneous
Adrian Slywotzky, Peter Baumgartner, Larry Alberts, and Hanna Moukanas
Globalization will tend to make strong business designs stronger (through global sourcing, selling, and science). It will make weak business designs weaker (through more competition, reduced differentiation, and a greater disconnect from customers). And it will create more no-profit zones for companies and even entire industries.
Content: Quotation | Source: “Mercer Management Journal” | Subject: International
No Nasty Surprises: Anticipating the hidden risks of outsourcing
As more companies move to outsource services currently performed in-house, they’ll likely encounter a slew of risks, some of which become clear only when something goes badly wrong. Managers will have to mitigate these risks in order to reap the substantial benefits that outsourcing provides.
Content: Article | Authors: Andrew Chadwick-Jones, David Bovet, Olivier Fainsilber | Source: “Mercer Management Journal” | Subjects: Management, Outsourcing / BPO
Brand Investment Traps
Brands have become increasingly fragile and difficult to sustain. Failure to invest in the right mix of activities at the right time risks eroding the brand. On the other hand, those companies that anticipate and avoid the common investment traps can reap superior growth in brand value over a long period of time.
Content: Article | Authors: Adrian J. Slywotzky, Andrew Pierce | Source: “Mercer Management Journal” | Subject: Marketing / Sales
CEO Evaluations That Work: Building a valuable relationship between CEOs and their boards
CEOs today find themselves subject to unprecedented scrutiny and concern. That’s not cause for lament, however. Regular, rigorous evaluation by the board of directors is a healthy part of corporate life. But the evaluation must have teeth, with meaningful performance dimensions and metrics as well as a feedback process that uses the board’s time efficiently.
Content: Article | Authors: David A. Nadler, J. Carlos Rivero | Source: “Mercer Management Journal” | Subject: Corporate Governance
Selling for Profit: Redesigning the sales effort to jumpstart growth
One of the most accessible and potent levers for growth is optimizing the sales effort by targeting the right customers with the right offers and giving the sales force the time and tools that will raise productivity. The key is to solve customers’ most pressing needs rather than simply trying to sell more products.
Five principles can guide managers in optimizing their sales efforts:
* Make … [ Read more ]
Content: Article | Authors: Mike Weissel, Stephen Finch, Steve Grossman | Source: “Mercer Management Journal” | Subject: Marketing / Sales
Economics’ Gift to Marketing
Most new products fail and most high-volume marketing campaigns generate slim returns. Companies trip up when they try to estimate customer demand through weak market research, extrapolation from the past, or plain instinct. Fortunately, the science of discrete choice modeling is a powerful antidote to ignorance. It allows companies to estimate demand and know exactly how and why customers will make decisions, minimizing the business … [ Read more ]
Content: Article | Authors: Eric Almquist, Martin Kon, Wolfgang Bock | Source: “Mercer Management Journal” | Subjects: Market Research, Marketing / Sales
Setting the Agenda: Finding the right drivers of value growth
The task of the strategist has gotten more difficult. Opportunities are more dynamic and shorter-lived. The palette of strategic options has grown more complex. And the traditional pillars of strategy, such as scale and market share, have lost their ability to reliably support long-term value growth.
In this world of shifting profit zones, Wall Street’s expectation of sustained growth represents one of the few constants. Yet, … [ Read more ]
Content: Article | Authors: Hanna Moukanas, Ted Moser | Source: “Mercer Management Journal” | Subjects: Management, Strategy