Industrial Services - EBITDA Expansion

Our client was parachuted into a private-equity backed chemicals manufacturing company a few years after acquisition as CEO.  A key realization during his first 90 days was that the organization did not understand their core product cost elasticity dynamics and range.

The largest segment of his business was via a comprehensive services offering, with fixed price (and in some cases multi-year) contracts.  While overall, this segment was historically profitable, on closer look, the company delivered profit one some contracts and was upside down on others.

We worked with the client and his team to first develop a detailed cost analysis, and secondly to build a predictive pricing model that could dynamically assess the specific parameters of customer contracts in order to price appropriately and predict net margin.  

The result was a doubling of the company's EBITDA over the next business cycle.

Energy Services - Customer Retention and Revenue Protection

After years of unprecedented growth, our client's industry was heading into a tough downturn.  The sales organization was communicating that the company was still in favour with most of their key vendors.  Our CEO client was not confident that this was the reality of the situation.

We were asked to engage (as an independent third-party) with the customer base to gauge sentiment of senior leaders and decision makers with respect to the company, its service and value proposition.  

Our client was correct.  His company was losing favour and quickly.  The previous ease of doing business was being replaced by hungry competitors offering real value and a willingness to work with customers to help them through this difficult industry development. The sales organization had not been proactive, had not stayed close to the current situation, and had set the company up  to lose favour with key customers.

We worked proactively and collaboratively with the CEO, providing real-time updates on customer discussions and equipping him with strategic perspective allowing him to engage immediately to rebuild customer confidence.

The result of this engagement was retention of over $80 million in business and re-establishment of key customer relationships.

Heavy Equipment - Sales Expansion

Our client was the COO of a large heavy equipment dealer/distributor located in the United States.

He and his team were unhappy with sales performance in a targeted region of his territory.  They felt that while maintaining overall share, with the strength of their brands, branches and business reputation, they should be performing and growing faster.

We undertook a data-driven analysis of his business in that territory, pulling in company as well as third-party data to look for opportunities to improve sales coverage, territory design, and overall performance.  This included development of detailed sales planning and coverage tool designed to maximize the sales performance of each individual sub-territory and market.

The result was identification and enablement of an additional $126M of sales opportunity for the dealership.

Crown Corporation - Operating Cost Reduction

Our client's organization outsourced much of its operational capacity to a small number of key external vendors.

The CEO and his team enjoyed long and trusting relationships with these external suppliers.  However, the board encouraged our client to look into the cost and value being provided, particularly since a review had not been done in several years.

We worked with the CEO, his team, and these vendors to review historical costs, services provided, contract terms, resources being provided, etc. to see what kind of value the organization was getting.

In the end, a variety of opportunities were identified, resulting in renegotiation with certain vendors and new requests to tender for others.

The result was a +10% reduction in operating costs for the client's organization.