Combining data analytics with
sales & operations planning expertise
ACTIONABLE INSIGHTS FOR INTERIM MANAGER
Supplementing your situation assessment on new assignments with Actionable Insights will help you to:
-
align your client's team in clear understanding of the root-causes and their impact
-
be efficient in generating direct impact by targeting the highest impact weaknesses
-
deliver sustainable results by addressing the true root-causes instead of existing, but low impact weaknesses
Actionable Insights discover and validate the actual root-causes for performance issues. Actionable Insights are made possible by bringing together a special combination of:
-
Stringent logic tree methodology
-
Extensive data analysis competence, and
-
Functional senior management / consulting experience
CASE STUDIES & INSIGHTS
INTEGRATING ACTIONABLE INSIGHTS
What are the stages, and who needs to get involved?
1. Step: preliminary scoping and pricing with Senior Management / Project Sponsor - allocation of process owner / analysts 2. Step: verification of available data with process owner / analysts - final scoping and pricing 3. Step: data request, content review and gap closure with data analysts 4. Step: initial data analysis 5. Step: verification of results with process owner / analysts (clarification of open questions) 5b (if necessary): second round of data analysis to adjust for process owner input 5c (if necessary): second round of verification Optional Step: support for process owner to develop improvement action plans to present together with insights to Senior Management / Project Sponsor 6. Step: result presentation to Senior Management / Project Sponsor
How long does an analysis take?
The duration of an analysis depends on two factors: a.) Type / extend of the analysis b.) Speed / efficiency of data submission / feedback loops On average a review takes one month. More limited, targeted reviews can be conducted in 1-2 weeks with full, timely support from the client. Extended packages are subject to negotiation about the specific scope of the analysis.
Which data is required, and how should you provide it?
The exact data requirements are individually determinded based on: a.) The scope of the analysis b.) The available data in your company In order to assess the available data I either: a.) Conduct a series of efficient 15 minutes online interviews or b.) Provide short questionnaires to be filled out by inhouse analysts / process owner Only after that can we determine the exact scope of the project as well as the data required. I generally request raw data to reduce the burden for the organisation. The data needs to be provided in Excel or CSV files. They can be either sent by email, shared via a data room organised by the company, or a secure upload provided by me.
What is the final output
of the analysis?
Senior Management is provided with an online presentation summarising the actionable insights with the highest impact. If requested, an additional report can be provided detailing the results of the different analyses conducted, and their actionable insights. The analyses results and actionable insights will have been agreed upon before with the process owners.
ACTIONABLE INSIGHTS PACKAGES
Comprehensive Entity
Insights Review
Comprehensive review providing Actionable Insights into the core performance areas of your client. Covering sales and margin performance, as well as the sales & operational planning process – providing insights to increase sales, improve margins, reduce inventory and improve cash flow. Bringing together data from often siloed departments to create a holistic view not possible through the often narrow and topic specific analyses provided by analysts. Using a combination of logic tree methodology combined with functional management experience / consulting know-how to discover actual root-causes. Aligning closely with the function management and inhouse analysts to ensure accuracy of findings as well as generate team buy-in to act on these directly actionable insights.
Sales & Margin
Insights Review
Focus on improving sales & margin performance. Providing Actionable Insights about the root-causes for your client's sales and margin development by answering questions like: Is customer profitability driven by pricing, conditions, volume, or product mix? (differentiated by customer) Is product mix driven by individual customers or customer groups? Is it driven by conditions / OTIF? Are those developments directly attributable to specific sales people? Do customer conditions positively stimulate sales growth? Does OTIF performance create pricing pressure? Do credit notes / returns show actionable root-causes? Did customer actually earn their volume related discounts?
S&OP Process
Insights Review
Focus on freeing liquidity by sustainably reducing inventory. Providing Actionable Insights about your client's sales & operational planning process by answering questions like: What is the correlation between their forecast, demand planning and actual purchases? How do discrepancies correlate with current inventory levels? How well do purchasing parameter reflect reality (actual supplier lead-times, actual demand, actual customer lead time requirements)? How do purchases correlate with the purchase parameters? How do discrepancies correlate with current inventory levels?
Extended Package
Options
Extend any package by adding: a.) Financial or compliance control reviews b.) Additional extensive data analyses. Additional extensive data analyses options include, but are not limited to: - Total cost of service analysis per customer - Production process lead time and in-process inventory - Shipping cost efficiency and sourcing processes - Custom analyses based on your specific interim management fields
*Allow me to understand more about your discovery process and for us both to get a feeling whether or not I am the right person to help you.
EXPERIENCE
Actionable Insights is providing you with a root-cause analysis system that I have gradually developed and fine-tuned by analysing performance root-causes and helping teams to develop improvement solutions in over 100 companies on 5 continents, during different steps of my consulting career:
Senior Consultant, mbb consult GmbH, Düsseldorf, Germany:
As Senior Consultant I was part of a team that developed for HSBC’s German Mezzanine fund a standardised company review program, consisting of:
-
A detailed offsite data analysis, and
-
An onsite review / assessment workshop to validate insights and suggests implementation projects
My input in the development was focused on sales performance and Net Working Capital (NWC), especially the sales & operations planning process with a focus on inventory reduction. We performed our new review program on over 20 companies, resulting in more than 10 implementation projects, before I got headhunted to join Franke.
Senior Internal Auditor, Franke Management AG, Aarburg, Switzerland:
As Senior Internal Auditor I introduced detailed offsite data analysis to the audit process and started to apply a stringent logic tree methodology to identify and validate true root-causes, at this stage especially in my focus area of sales performance review. I developed detailed product-customer matrix analyses as well as a total cost of service analysis. Those analyses helped the Franke companies we reviewed to identify margin improvements of (on average) 1.5 percentage points.
Head of Internal Audit, Franke Management AG, Aarburg, Switzerland:
Together with other functional experts hired into the Internal Audit team, we expanded the root-cause analysis logic to other functional areas, in particular purchasing and inventory management. These extensive "pre-audit" analyses enabled my audit team to arrive onsite with actionable insights into the root-causes for local company performance issues, and to use the onsite audit period to verify insights and support local teams in developing their own improvement solutions. We consistently achieved a return of above 10x audit costs in impact from improvement projects confirmed by the reviewed entities.
The circumstance that Franke Management AG owned 4 operationally highly diverse divisions forced us to create a comprehensive, but highly variable analysis system, applicable to the full variety of entities in widely different stages of process and system maturity.