Application Management

Enhancing the performance of application development (AD) management creates business value. We work with our clients to improve AD capabilities (e.g., outsourcing, business unit IT interface, fine-tuning an AD organization, performance management, and redesigning the application development process from specification to deployment). We also focus on requirements management, performance assessments, and capability maturity models (CMM), capability building, and lean redesign of the AD process.

Enterprise Architecture

We help our clients address the traditional architectural challenges (e.g., inconsistent data) as well as emerging issues (e.g., service-oriented architecture or server virtualization).

IT Infrastructure

Developing and managing IT infrastructure to allow access to data and applications is a critical function of IT organizations. We work with our clients to help them improve the technology infrastructure through effective use of infrastructure virtualization, productization, and global operating models, while ensuring overall effective demand management and performance tracking.

IT Strategy & Organisation

We work with our clients to improve their IT strategies and align them closely with their business strategies. To deliver on this goal we help define required IT capabilities and priorities based on business strategy and objectives, identify the relevant IT and business improvements, and structure the necessary IT transformations. We also help improve IT organizations by aligning their structures, leadership mandates, decision-making processes, skills, incentives, and performance metrics to the companies' overarching IT strategies.

Lean IT

Lean IT is the extension of lean manufacturing and lean services principles to the development and management of information technology (IT) products and services. Its central concern, applied in the context of IT, is the elimination of waste, where waste is work that adds no value to a product or service. Today's IT shop has an unprecedented level of complexity. This situation results in increasing variability in delivery and service, decreasing utilization, and significant customer dissatisfaction. A methodology based on a lean approach can improve these issues. Lean methodologies aim to move IT infrastructure and application development and maintenance work practices towards a set of consistent standards that drive higher quality and productivity. This approach has proven to have significant and lasting impact. Leading institutions globally are driving operational excellence in IT by applying lean industrial engineering principles. Among the support we offer our clients, we provide a lean IT diagnostic and approach that is globally and consistently applied in each lean transformation.

Outsourcing

Outsourcing of business and IT processes is an important way to reduce cost and increase speed, flexibility, and revenues. We help our clients evaluate whether a process should be outsourced o by examining a number of factors of their specific organization, such as whether a process can be executed remotely and what level of collaboration is needed to complete a process. We carefully weigh when to transform an organization's processes, when to offshore, and what the trade-offs are between the two. We additionally work with clients to implement the best solution and build capabilities within the organization.

Tech-Enabled Marketing & Sales

We focus on helping clients architect, select, and implement their sales and marketing IT systems to capture the greatest business value in the shortest period of time. Our work focuses on areas such as using technology to manage customer lifecycles, track sales and channel performance, and improve marketing return on investment.

Tech-Enabled Operations

IT is an important driver of operations transformation at leading companies. We help our clients both understand and capture the potential of technologies to provide transformational improvement in every facet of operations, ranging from product development over supply chain management to service operations.

Example:

Tech-Enabled Service Operations:

We work with our clients to develop and implement service strategies that integrate best practices in both lean processes and IT. Our work encompasses frontline and back office people operations, forecasting, scheduling, and performance management. The Service Ops Tech Lab is staffed by a group of highly skilled analysts who maintains dozens of proprietary and third-party software tools. These tools are used to guide our clients in performance diagnostics and rapid pilot programs. The pilots lead to detailed, field-tested specifications that can then be put into implementation.

Corporate Finance

Alliance and Joint Venture

We help our clients develop the strategy necessary to structure, negotiate, and set up alliances and joint ventures. We also assist them in identifying the best possible partners and assessing potential value creation. For many companies, maximizing value requires exploring alternative forms of corporate collaborations, including alliances and joint ventures (JVs). In recent years, alliances have become an increasingly important vehicle, driven by such forces as new geographic markets, industry convergence, and the need to spread the costs of developing new products and services. We collaborate with our clients on:

• Developing alliance strategy
• Selecting and evaluating partners
• Structuring and negotiating the deal
• Managing or restructuring existing alliances
• Building internal alliance capabilities

Value based Management

Value-based management to enhance performance is organically intertwined with capital market diagnostics and general corporate strategy.

Marketing and Sales

Branding

We help companies define the benefits and experiences that make brands relevant, distinctive, and credible to customers, and develop strategies to differentiate brands through superior positioning relative to competitors.

We serve in these areas:

• Making brands matter
• Optimizing brand portfolios and architectures
• Delivering the brand promise at all touchpoints
• Building client capabilities
• Tracking and sustaining impact

Digital Marketing

Digital marketing is no longer about merely adding online channels to the media mix; it is about integrating digital into all facets of marketing. Digital Marketing is the promoting of brands using all forms of digital advertising channels to reach consumers. This now includes Television, Radio, Internet, mobile, social media marketing and any other form of digital media.

We provide services in these areas

• Utilize digital marketing to transform business effectiveness
• Optimizing the customer experience across channels
• Creating and implementing new growth models

Operations

Capital Productivity

We enable our clients to grow profitably by helping them maximize the value of their capital expenditure investments.

Product Development

We support our clients' growth by improving the new product development process, We take a fully-functional approach; working closely with strategy, technology, engineering, marketing, purchasing and production.