341 Posts found for Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG)

Companies repeatedly launch cost reduction programs—with mixed results. To cut costs sustainably, they need to redesign the organization and change the underlying behaviors that lead to cost creep.

Content: Article | Authors: Kevin Kelley, Miyabi Honda, Sarah Baxter, Travis Meyer | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

Too often, companies focus on organizational structure at the expense of governance, leadership, and ways of working. Rigid structures lock talent into fixed teams. Companies fail to establish clear mechanisms for building future-proof competencies into the organization and to adopt company-wide mechanisms for structuring alignment across teams.

Content: Quotation | Authors: Andrew Toma, Benjamin Rehberg, Jaap Backx, Julia Madden | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

Unconventional project-management approaches are fine in normal times, but they don’t work during transformations, when individual initiatives and portfolios of initiatives require the cooperation of multiple departments and the careful use of scarce resources. Everybody needs to align on one way of doing things—using the same process, accessing the same tools, and following the same cadence for reporting and meetings.

Content: Quotation | Authors: Connor Currier, Cordelia Chansler, Julia Dhar, Kristy Ellmer, Paul Catchlove, Simon Weinstein | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: Change Management, Management, Project Management

Companies have a huge growth opportunity in emerging markets, but only if they have the right approach to get their products onto store shelves and into consumers’ hands.

• Many emerging markets have expanding populations and rapid GDP growth, making them more attractive than developed countries.
• They also pose some challenges, such as highly fragmented retail channels, small-scale retailers, gaps in the skills of frontline sales staff,

… [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: International, Management

Companies have already taken steps to reduce costs along the supply chain. Further reductions require tougher decisions in several key areas.

• It’s critical to link the cost agenda for the supply chain to the company’s overall growth outlook in order to determine which costs should be targeted.
• Modeling can help operations leaders anticipate how specific measures will impact costs before they’re implemented.
• Companies need to develop a

… [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Ashish Pathak, Dustin Burke, Jacopo Brunelli | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subject: Operations

Though they face a faster, more complex landscape than those who’ve come before them, CEOs can take a few key actions to create a lasting legacy.

• Adopting a strategy of regret minimization can help a CEO avoid wishing, years later, that they had moved faster, been bolder, or treated people with greater kindness.
• Building a cohesive senior leadership team that can fearlessly tell a CEO what

… [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: James Brownsell | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subject: Corporate Governance

Cost, competition, and customer value … are the three fundamental information sources for the development of any business strategy. The traditional pricing perspective, however, treats these information sources as inputs into price calculations… From this tactical perspective, customer value sets a price ceiling or a maximum price, while costs define the floor or the minimum price. To calibrate the range in between, leaders take competitor … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Arnab Sinha, Jean-Manuel Izaret | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: Marketing / Sales, Pricing, Strategy

While not every sustainability-related investment has the potential to create value, taking full advantage of the ones that do is essential.

Content: Article | Authors: Alexis Colombo, Gerry Hansell, Hady Farag, Jesper Nielsen | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subject: Social Responsibility (ESG)

Fractal innovation enables large companies to be more responsive to customer needs, leverage their global scale, and set the pace for their competition. Multinationals often face strong competition in geographies where nimble, local companies are able to succeed by meeting the changing demands of local customers with speed, responsiveness, and innovation.

• Large companies face two main innovation challenges: They have a limited understanding of the

… [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Saurabh Chhajer, Sharad Verma | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: Innovation, International, Management, Strategy

Job holders without degrees perform as well as those with degrees—but they tend to stay in their jobs longer and be more engaged.

Content: Article | Authors: Cassandra Di Prizio, Claire Roehri, Lina Bankert, Molly Verghese, Nico Lake, Nithya Vaduganathan, Sara Wasserteil | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: Hiring, Human Resources

With proper attention and investment, frontline workers constitute a motivated workforce that can unleash an organization’s highest potential.

Content: Article | Authors: Cassandra Di Prizio, Claire Roehri, Julia Dhar, Lina Bankert, Molly Verghese, Sara Wasserteil | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: Human Resources, Organizational Behavior

Every corporate merger is a leap into the unknown. But for leaders contemplating a megadeal, certain rules do apply. Here’s what CEOs need to know.

Content: Article | Author: Gren Manuel | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: Best Practices, Mergers & Acquisitions

At many companies, support functions can be a drag on business performance, with unnecessarily complex processes, bureaucratic structures, and a frustrating experience for both internal and external customers. But with the right approach—including the five priorities discussed here—companies can address these issues and turn support functions into a driver of performance. In that way, they will become true partners to business units and help companies … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Emmanuel Sissimatos, Fabrice Roghé, Martin Twesten, Mieke Gielis, Stefan Scholz | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subject: Management

Fair-chance job seekers are people who have been involved with the criminal justice system, whether convicted of a crime, incarcerated, or arrested but never convicted. These individuals—one in three US adults—are more likely than the overall population to be actively looking for work, but they have little to no access to quality employment opportunities because of their background.

But there’s good news. The data shows that … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Cassandra Di Prizio, Claire Roehri, Gabrielle Novacek, Lina Bankert, Molly Verghese, Nico Lake, Sara Wasserteil | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: Hiring, Human Resources

Top-notch deal teams collaborate with business units to identify targets, execute transactions, and expertly navigate a minefield of risks.

• BCG collaborated with global dealmakers to study the common hazards and success factors involved in setting up M&A organizations.
• We found that making the right choices in several key areas is essential for building effective teams.
• Companies must tailor their design choices across these topics, applying a detailed

… [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Anant Shivraj, Daniel Friedman, Daniel Kim, Jens Kengelbach, Maximilian Strauch | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subject: Mergers & Acquisitions

Most technology revolutions have required accompanying applied innovations to unlock their full potential. Electricity in itself did not immediately translate into big productivity gains for industry. This only happened as new technologies like electric motors and social innovations like new factory layouts took hold.

Content: Quotation | Authors: Christian Stadler, Martin Reeves | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subject: IT / Technology / E-Business

A new technology can be novel, it can be useful, it can even generate massive value for consumers and providers, but without creating sustainable competitive advantage in specific applications, it can easily distract and divert attention and resources from more promising opportunities.

Content: Quotation | Authors: Christian Stadler, Martin Reeves | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subject: IT / Technology / E-Business

There are three truths about revenue growth. It’s imperative. It’s perilous. And it’s possible regardless of your industry or starting point. Our latest research on growth confirms these truths. Ultimately, getting growth right entails making smart choices and investing time and money in them. We unearthed insights from successful growers that can help others choose their optimal growth path. Crucially, our analysis revealed that the … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Asin Tavakoli, Holger Harreis, Kayvaun Rowshankish, Michael Bogobowicz | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: Best Practices, Management, Strategy

Agile initiatives have proven highly effective in teaching teams how to build but not nearly as effective in teaching teams what to build.

Content: Quotation | Authors: Allison Bailey, Amanda Luther, Charles Gildehaus, David Allred, Sesh Iyer | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: Innovation, Management

As functional hierarchies grow larger, they tend to become more rigid, pushing decision-making authority up the hierarchy and away from where customer interactions take place. In this system, no single team or leader owns the full end-to-end product and customer experience, making it exceedingly difficult to implement customer-centric innovations quickly and effectively. As a result, frontline employees, who have the insights and inspiration to drive … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Allison Bailey, Amanda Luther, Charles Gildehaus, David Allred, Sesh Iyer | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subject: Organizational Behavior