covid crisis : accelerate & transform operating models

Companies are seeking ever rapid solutions to preserve their margins and cash flow
in the midst of the unprecedented and serious situation caused by the global pandemic.

At the same time, in a context of global uncertainty, fundamental questions have arisen about the coherence of these action plans, which are often concocted and launched in a hurry, with the medium-term transformation objectives aimed at by organizations to adapt to their markets: how can these plans be placed in a structuring and virtuous framework, aligned with the objectives of sustainable improvement of the efficiency of operating models over a period of 3-5 years?

Themes such as the digitalization of activities, shared services, ROI of marketing initiatives, etc then arise.

The first step – and not the least – to start our analysis consists in making the available data speak : purchasing teams that have tried this often remember it as a perilous climb: building the marcom part of the purchasing cube is often a small Everest in the finance/purchasing discipline.

Very few companies are able to extract full detailed costs per campaign from their purchasing cubes, or simply their creative and execution expenses, for example.

The services, invoiced on a lump sum basis by most suppliers, do not allow for a rapid and robust value analysis of the marketing/media/communication category without a specific and expert intervention.

Once we have injected our benchmarks into the data we have reconstructed from the purchasing cube, we can quickly extract the major issues that will be enriched and validated by the bilateral exchanges conducted by our senior consultants.

In a second phase and in a few weeks (about 4), our senior consultants, experts in these fields, supported by our benchmarks and the results of our client interventions (125 missions, 1.5 billion of expenditure analysed) will be able to identify representative samples, to build, with the help of each of the key contributors, a clear vision of the organization and the essential processes, of the dysfunctions and the main operational opportunities, and finally to quantify the financial and operational performance opportunities on the scopes of the project. With the help of each of the key contributors, we will be able to build a clear vision of the organization and the essential processes, the dysfunctions and the main operational opportunities, and finally to quantify the financial and operational performance opportunities on international multi-service scopes.

The third step is the co-construction of action plans, the enrichment of implementation levers and scenarios, and the confirmation of potential estimates in workshops with the business, finance, legal, supply and purchasing teams, under the guidance of our consultants.

The co-construction of business cases – accessibility (speed/effort/resources) of opportunities through the operational modalities of their capture versus valuation of P&L impacts (net of possible capex) – syntheses the work to ultimately present management with a roadmap and target benefits for each initiative.

In conclusion, such projects need to combine several dimensions to fully satisfy stakeholders :

1. Systematically deliver the operational and financial performances estimated in the diagnosis,
2. Impact the P&L as quickly as possible with financial and operational gains identified as easily accessible,
3. Closely accompany marcom & media teams to involve all internal and external stakeholders: the opportunities with the highest benefits almost always require changes in operational and structural modalities to move towards « better » and « less »,
4. And finally, common grounds for a vast majority of our projects:
   • Strong support and involvement from top management,
   • Generate « more bang for the « buck »,
   • Grow brands DNA,
   • Place such projects at the heart of individual team performance plans, ideally with individual financial incentives,
   • Empower teams : bring them meaning, real cases and real benefits,
   • Strengthen transformation of operating models with tools and technologies that generate added value for service providers and teams beyond marcom & media,
   • Contribute significantly to the overall agility of the organization, to serve mid-term vision and transformation plan,
   • Support the deployment of these plans through individual coaching, in particular on the basis of real scenarios from these plans, and on a voluntary basis.