52 Posts found for Source: Mercer Management Journal

Showing results 21 to 40

Choosing the Best Next CEO: Succession should be a process, not a horse race

CEOs and board of directors are often unprepared for the difficulties of succession. With so much at stake for different stakeholders, politics and emotions come into play and can derail the effort.

Conducted effectively, the succession process creates a smooth transition from one CEO to the next with positive outcomes for the company and all stakeholders concerned. While every succession situation is unique, an effective process … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Roselinde Torres, William Pasmore | Source: Mercer Management Journal | Subject: Corporate Governance

Countering strategic risk with pattern thinking: How to identify tomorrow’s profit zones before the competition

Companies face numerous types of risk, and they hedge or insure against them in a variety of ways. However, the largest potential risk to a corporation–strategic risk–must be borne directly by managers and shareholders. They face the consequences if a company’s shareholder value collapses, stagnates, or becomes dwarfed by a competitor’s. Pattern thinking can help managers both foresee risk and identify new profit opportunities … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Adrian J. Slywotzky, David J. Morrison, James A. Quella | Source: Mercer Management Journal | Subject: Strategy

Customer Churn: Stop it before it starts

For subscription-based businesses, even a small reduction in churn can have a huge impact on enterprise value. But traditional satisfaction data and attempts to rescue departing customers don’t get to the root causes that make customers want to leave. Instead, companies should invest in understanding which aspects of the customer experience drive consumer behavior, so that they can act to reduce churn cost-effectively.

Content: Article | Author: Martin Kon | Source: Mercer Management Journal | Subjects: Customer Related, Marketing / Sales

Strategic Planning Redux

Strategic planning at many large companies is a sterile annual exercise that managers endure. They’re often asked to produce either a shining vision or financial certainty, or both. But with growth back on the agenda, a few leading companies are creating value through strategic managing, which connects strategy to the front lines and to market opportunities as they unfold.

Content: Article | Authors: Jag Duggal, Phyllis Rothschild, Richard Balaban | Source: Mercer Management Journal | Subject: Strategy

Finding New Growth in Tough Consumer Markets

In a world of product and brand proliferation, consumer companies face bleak prospects for sustained revenue growth. But a few firms such as Kraft, Procter & Gamble, and Netflix are creating new growth by using their product position as a starting point from which to create solutions that address the issues and hassles that surround the product.

Content: Article | Authors: Ana Dutra, James Frary, Rick Wise | Source: Mercer Management Journal | Subject: Marketing / Sales

Rethinking Risk: Adventures on the strategic risk frontier

Beyond earthquakes and currency fluctuations, there’s a broad array of strategic risks poised to disrupt or even destroy any business. But embracing risk is also part of the growth equation. Is your business prepared? And what are the risks you should be taking but aren’t?

Content: Article | Author: Adrian J. Slywotzky | Source: Mercer Management Journal | Subjects: Risk Management, Strategy

Uncovering the Hidden Drivers of Demand: Customer Value Engineering™ Reveals What Matters Most

Customers often start a negotiation by emphasizing price and product features. These things always matter, of course. But buying decisions encompass many other considerations, such as reliability, service arrangements, certainty of delivery date, and the opinions of users inside the organization or expert analysts.

Cumulatively, these influences may account for 70% to 80% of the purchase decision. That’s why there is gold to be mined … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: John Hanson, Mike Sargent, Peter Frend | Source: Mercer Management Journal | Subjects: Management, Marketing / Sales

Outsourced, But Not Out of Mind: Turning contractors into strategic partners

Outsourcing services to a third party is typically done to reduce costs. But it also holds many hidden risks. Our best-practice research shows how managers can address these risks and move beyond a cost focus to create value that delights customers.

Content: Article | Authors: Andrew Chadwick-Jones, David Bovet | Source: Mercer Management Journal | Subjects: IT / Technology / E-Business, Outsourcing / BPO

Maximizing Returns from Brand Spending: Hard numbers for soft marketing issues

Many firms have shifted their brand-related spending to more easily measured areas such as direct marketing. As a result, the reservoir of brand equity gets low and important customer touchpoints are neglected. Here’s how rigorous customer science techniques can maximize returns in those soft areas.

Content: Article | Authors: Andrew Pierce, Simon Glynn, Stephen Brien | Source: Mercer Management Journal | Subject: Marketing / Sales

Tony Siesfeld and John-Paul Pape

It’s a cliché that you get what you measure, but managing to measures by itself rarely leads to superior value growth. To succeed, a company needs to manage performance rather than just measure it. This requires synthesizing outside-in perspectives of customers, competitors, industry patterns, and value migration with inside-out views of operations, accounting information, and cash flow. Companies that establish clear lines of sight to … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Mercer Management Journal | Subject: Management

Tom Love and Haig Nalbantian

Managers manage what they can measure–and they find it hard to measure people. While they can calculate payroll expenses, they typically don’t have the tools to determine causal relationships: why valued employees really leave, what happens when new staff are promoted rapidly, how training influences productivity. And when economic pressures dictate that labor costs should be adjusted to business realities, many managers don’t know when … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Mercer Management Journal | Subjects: Human Resources, Management