Our consultants have experience across a range of industries, including manufacturing, private equity, retail, consumer goods, transportation and business services.*  The common theme in all of our work is high impact.

Manufacturing and Distribution

  • Led strategic sourcing of major direct material categories for a consumer durables manufacturer.  Results included significant cost reductions ranging from 5% to over 25%, increased assurance of supply through the introduction of more capable suppliers, and enhanced innovation.

  • Led supply chain / procurement optimization engagement to address long lead-time supply of highly engineered parts for heavy industrial manufacturing firm.  Client business issues included balancing objectives of cost reduction, supply assurance, and lead-time / backlog management.

Private Equity

  • Developed pricing strategies and recommended price changes for multiple domestic and international portfolio companies, resulting in average gross margin improvements of 10-15% and accompanying EBITDA increases of $3-5M for each company.

  • Analyzed product SKUs to rationalize and focus on the most profitable SKUs, and eliminate low or negative margin SKUs.  Results included elimination of over 750 SKUs, reduction in inventory exceeding $1M, and increased margin percentages.

  • Led strategic planning process for private equity firm, helping firm to focus on industry segments and prospective targets, as well as to develop specific EBITDA improvement approaches applicable to multiple portfolio companies.

  • Directed strategic growth initiative for private equity backed apparel company.  Project included helping company identify and expand into new markets from their existing customer base.

  • Managed portfolio-wide strategic sourcing initiative for a major private equity firm with over $5B under management.  Scope included IT, telecom, insurance and other services spend categories for over 25 portfolio companies.  Savings exceeded $12M in total and averaged over 15% (ranging from 10-25% within categories).

Consumer Goods 

  • Led Brand Positioning engagement for snack brand with declining market share and limited distribution.  Conducted review of successful ‘analogous brands’ with a similar profile - to understand competitive keys to success and capture lessons, develop hypotheses.  Segmented target consumers/shoppers with understanding of attitudes/behaviors/motivations.  Aligned executive team on compelling positioning to differentiate the BRAND and provide clarity for marketing/innovation efforts going forward.

  • Designed pricing strategy for international natural and organic food and products company to simplify and standardize pricing across many brands and SKUs and reflect the underlying actual costs of freight.  Analyzed freight and other costs on a brand, product group, SKU, customer, and distribution center basis to optimize recommended pricing.

  • Developed trade model to support negotiations between large health and beauty goods manufacturer and its key retailers.  Included all trade spend and incorporated trade ROI to optimize future trade spend by trade vehicle (event), brand, product group, SKU, and store type, and forecasted financial impact to both manufacturer and retailer.

  • As part of a sales and marketing due diligence engagement, developed a growth strategy for a consumer products acquisition by a private equity firm.  Insights were developed through primary and secondary research along with customer calls.

  • Reduced packaging costs by more than 20% at a Fortune 500 consumer products company through the implementation of a should-cost approach to their sourcing process.

  • Enhanced global procurement process for major consumer products company.  Over 250 personnel trained globally and most major spend categories in scope.  Piloted with selected key direct materials and ocean transportation.

  • Performed market sizing and strategy development for mid-size private label manufacturer.  Scope included line extensions as well as sizing and strategic assessment of potential new categories.

  • Designed change management and communications strategy for an enterprise-wide procurement transformation affecting over 1,000 employees across 25 different brands organizations at a Fortune 500 CPG company.

Retail

  • Led strategic sourcing of all capital and operating expenditure for major national retailer.  Categories included fixtures, printed materials, temporary services, as well as energy.  Savings averaged nearly 15%.

  • Built a spend analysis database tool with customized analysis and reports for a $3B apparel retailer.  Resulted in enhanced transparency into non-merchandise spend and the launch of multiple sourcing initiatives saving the client between 10-50% per category.

Transportation

  • Developed strategic sourcing strategies and tools for large freight forwarder to procure air cargo capacity globally.  Results included driving freight rates faster than market declines, resulting in increased margin opportunity and better competitive position, thus driving new revenue.

  • Facilitated challenging strategic sourcing of temperature controlled air cargo for multinational pharmaceutical company.  Results included more competitive rate cards from a broader set of high quality freight forwarders, thereby decreasing the risk to product and to customer.

Business Services

  • Built overall procurement strategy for major insurance company, including core processes, organizational design, and training.  Assisted client in staffing and ramping up organization.

  • Supported development of marketing strategy for commercial segment of multinational insurance company, specifically identifying strategies to increase sales success with mid-size business customers.

  • Developed set of strategic growth imperatives and facilitated consensus across senior executive team for a Fortune 100 insurance company.  In addition, rolled out extensive sales force improvement initiative to drive policy and premium growth.  Scope included over 13,000 independent agents nationwide, and internal field management team exceeding 1,000.

* Includes work performed at previous employers.