Working Capital reduction by EUR 20m
For an international service provider in the field of facility management, we assumed operational responsibility to reduce working capital by more than EUR 20m.
Performance Improvement
“Getting the most out of the available resources” – or more formally: the development of measures to improve the performance of profitability of companies or to make them leaner, more resilient and more flexible.
Armchair decisions don’t usually produce effective concepts. We achieve the best results by listening hard, concentrating on the numbers and drilling down to the essentials – in other words, we make sure we’re all on the same page when it comes to delivering results.
01
Operational Performance Improvement
In our understanding, operational performance improvement involves optimising the organisational structures and processes in your business to make your operations faster, better or ultimately more profitable.
We’ll work with you to deliver measures that make your company or corporate division more customer-centric, enable faster learning, streamline processes or make them scalable. This may mean introducing new products or reducing overtime by improving processes, or it may involve teaching the organisation how to do agile project management, optimising production planning.
02
Cost reduction programs
Cutting costs can be a very short-term measure to slash unnecessary expenditure or quickly free up capital. Equally, a cost reduction program can also have the medium-term goal of making the company lean and flexible in the long run.
Cost-out programs enable structured thinking about what really counts. We’ll work together to reduce operating expenses and structural costs, rethink the supply chain, negotiate with suppliers or review the efficiency of support functions. Sometimes you need to get creative about cost cutting. Questions to look at may include: What would be our cost if we applied zero based budgeting? Should we opt for in- or outsourcing? What about design-to-cost?
03
Financial Performance lmprovement
A company’s performance is not merely reflected in its product or P&L, but ultimately in its financial position. In order to be flexible, companies need to ensure the right allocation of resources.
Financial performance improvement primarily means optimising the capital structure and managing working capital and liquidity. Introducing and embedding new processes can be difficult in this area, especially in organisations with many separate companies, whether in the home market or internationally. Specifically, we’ll work with you to optimise working capital, implement a liquidity planning process, reduce bank liabilities or sell off non-core business activities.
Recent Case Studies
Performance Improvement
in E-commerce
We helped an online retailer triple its operating profit. To achieve this, we helped introduce new products, renegotiate purchasing conditions, completely rethought shipping and returns, as well as additional new customer channels.
Lean Management in finance
We streamlined Finance processes for the CFO of an international group, consisting of about 50 companies. We introduced quarterly financial statements within a very short timeframe, shortened the length of time it took to prepare the annual accounts by 3.5 months and reduced the group’s audit costs by 30% – while at the same time cutting overtime to zero.