Our Services
Our consulting services focus on our clients’ most critical issues and opportunities: strategy, marketing, organization, operations, technology, transformation, digital, advanced analytics, corporate finance, M&A and sustainability across industries and geographies. We bring deep, functional expertise, but we are known for our holistic perspective: we capture value across boundaries and across silos in any organization. We have demonstrated a multiplier effect by optimizing the sum of the parts, not just the individual pieces.
Digital transformation
To win in the digital age, you need bold ambition and flawless execution. We can help with both. Our multidisciplinary teams of experts work side-by-side with you to design, build and scale truly transformative digital businesses.
Whatever your plan, from adopting new digital capabilities to reinventing how your company operates and launching entirely new digital businesses, we can help you set a new standard of excellence and achieve unprecedented levels of value.
Our approach combines an end-to-end transformation framework, an integrated platform of digital capabilities backed by an expansive ecosystem of best-in-class partners specializing in digital transformation. No wonder we are recognized as a provider of global digital strategy consulting services.
Working closely with senior executives from many global companies, we have developed a holistic approach to transforming your digital enterprise
Innovative technologies can serve as the engine of a digital transformation, but they are not the whole story. Real transformation must start with a clearly defined digital strategy, one that can deliver gains today and outline a fast but flexible path to the digital future. Our unique approach includes:
- Analyzing the digital trends and emerging innovations that will shape your industry five, ten and even twenty years from now.
- A highly effective tool to measure your current level of digital maturity, so you understand where you are strong, where you have gaps and where there is room for improvement.
Our comprehensive approach to digital transformation culminates in a complete set of capabilities and expertise that ensures you implement, monitor and extend your progress to achieve your ultimate ambition. Our tools and techniques include:
- Unique approach to keep your transformation on track. It goes beyond reporting progress, enabling you to anticipate and respond to risk, while providing the right advice to keep your change efforts moving forward quickly. A digital tool for transformation management, it helps you monitor progress and foster collaboration in a fast, flexible and secure way.
- Create scenarios of an agile, responsive enterprise, and scale across your organization this training, looking for a benefit, not a burden.
- Our end-to-end approach to developing digital startups, designed to support you at every step, from planning to building, implementing and, most importantly, scaling.
Cost transformation
True cost transformation is about simplifying, refocusing and strengthening your organization so it can pursue growth and deliver a better customer experience. Our approach is both holistic and customizable, allowing you to cultivate, reward and continuously improve a sustainable cost management culture.
How does cost transformation benefit you?
Here are some indicators
20%
Identified average total savings
50%
Value delivered in the first year
16x
Average ROI for cost transformation customers
3.8x
Average increase achieved by our cost transformation projects
- Gaining confidence
Make sure every dollar supports your strategic priorities
- Change the culture
Instill an ownership mindset throughout the organization
- Develop new capabilities
Achieve continuous improvement by changing behaviors and ways of working.
- Free up cash
Channel funds to the initiatives and investments that will drive your growth
A successful zero-based budgeting program relies on four repeatable components to achieve continuous cost improvement:
- Granular KPI-based target setting.
- Negotiated driver-based budgeting between dual cost owners
- Rigorous tracking
- Identifying a steady stream of savings initiatives and innovative ideas that challenge the status quo.
We have helped companies in many different industries successfully execute zero-based budgeting programs, in some cases freeing up hundreds of millions of dollars to reinvest in the business.
When combined with zero-based redesign, the impact can be even more transformative. In fact, when companies use budgeting and redesign together, they achieve savings of 25% or more for specific functions and activities, as this combined approach extends the clean-sheet view of their business across their operating model, processes and workflows.
Approximately 80% of a typical IT budget is dedicated to “keeping the lights on,” leaving little room for cuts. But we can show you how to simplify and refocus your IT, strengthening your organization to pursue your most promising business priorities. Our approach is holistic and customizable. We can drive short-term results while producing sustainable savings through increased productivity and efficiency. Let us help you cultivate the transparent cost management discipline you need to execute your digital strategy.
- Set your cost ambition
Achieve both short- and long-term success with a technology costing program that supports and accelerates your digital strategy
- Identify and capture value
Assess technology costs across your enterprise, take action to achieve quick wins, and build organizational momentum to bend the cost curve
- Maintain profits
Manage risks early, track progress using high-value metrics, and develop capabilities to extend your new cost management expertise
Businesses can free up a significant amount of cash by focusing on working capital, but most struggle to make it happen. Our program helps you quickly generate the cash you need to drive critical improvements in your business.
Achieving a step change in net working capital (NWC) performance can be challenging. Companies tend to focus much more on operating profits. P&L-level financial reporting does not measure working capital optimization. Getting full visibility into cash performance and availability can be complicated. And improving NWC performance requires cross-functional cooperation and alignment with mid-level managers, which is difficult to achieve, particularly when your incentives are not aligned with effective working capital management. We have helped companies in many industries overcome these hurdles and reduce the cash conversion cycle in a remarkable and sustainable way.
- Invierta Invest in growth
Free up the cash you need to fund turnaround initiatives or other priorities
- Increase your credit rating
Pay down your debt and reduce your leverage and cost of debt
- Improve your organization
Create greater transparency, drive engagement and enable timely decisions by working capital owners
- Change your mindset
Shift your company’s focus from cash tracking to cash optimization.
Customer experience
Leading companies know that great products are necessary, but not sufficient: in today’s world, you need to deliver great customer experiences to succeed. We call our approach Simple and Digital. We provide the expertise and tools that help you discover what matters most to customers and equip your team to deliver delightful experiences while simplifying processes and eliminating costs. These efforts will produce happy customers, happy employees and happy shareholders – a triple bottom line that you can measure and accelerate through our innovative benchmarking service.
Creating exceptional customer experiences means seeing your business through the eyes of your customers and understanding what they encounter when trying to meet their needs. The key to transforming that journey is to focus on “episodes,” the sequence of discrete interactions a customer experiences to meet a specific need.
Customer episode design is a proven way to reinvent those customer episodes. Our Simple and Digital approach combines analytics, benchmarking and human-centered design to reveal what delights your customers and then shows you how to deliver it efficiently and at scale. We’ll bring our extensive experience in technology and organizational change to help you prioritize, design and implement the improvements that will have the greatest impact on customer satisfaction and, ultimately, the bottom line.
In today’s business world, the pace of change is not only relentless, it’s accelerating. Business models, customer behaviors, technologies, competitor movements, market opportunities and more: every facet of your business change is changing like never before. That’s not a bad thing. Companies that can navigate disruption, reinvent the future and out-innovate the competition will thrive in this new normal. Our deep bench of technologists, designers, engineers and digital leaders work closely with your teams to conceive and develop entirely new products, services and experiences that will have a huge impact on your customers and their growth.
Our approach combines seamless integration across disciplines, an intense focus on user needs, testing and learning methodologies that allow us to bring the right product to market quickly, and a close working relationship with your teams, including skills transfer and training.
- Unique integration
We are seamlessly connected across all disciplines and deeply integrated into the strategic process.
- Human-centered approach
We listen carefully to users and put them at the center of everything we create.
- A highly iterative approach
We apply a spirit of testing and learning to ensure we bring the right product to market, faster.
- New capabilities
We work closely with your teams and transfer skills and learnings to help you accelerate change.
The information you need to create superior customer experiences is now at your fingertips. Our tools integrate operational and customer data with an easy-to-use interface that makes analysis fast and efficient.
We provide powerful new insights into your current performance and can point the way to dramatic improvements. Our approach can help you redesign customer episodes to be simpler, faster and more cost-effective. We help the entire organization, from leadership to the front line, take the actions that will increase the overall value of your customer base.
We offer a full range of services, from episode analytics to sentiment analysis and predictive NPS powered by our tools. We implement high-level processes, to ingest data from a wide range of systems, including CRM, clickstream, contact center, marketing and more. And we apply cutting-edge visualization and artificial intelligence technologies to help you understand customer behavior, customer flow and other factors that can inform customer episode redesign.
Learning and development
Empower your teams to make the most of their talents. We offer training in a wide range of technical and soft skills, tailored to meet your most pressing challenges. Structured as single content modules or as longer programs, and delivered in single-client and multi-client environments, these high-touch, interactive experiences are effective and engaging, and regularly win praise from participants.
From zero-based budgeting to inspirational leadership, from senior executives to the front line, our programs ensure your teams have the strategic capabilities they need to upgrade. Our training is delivered exclusively by Lead Beyond Business’ in-house experts, highly experienced professionals who not only teach the material, but make sure your teams know how to put what they’ve learned into practice.
Master Classes
We offer interactive classes that are immersive, engaging and based on the latest research on effective adult learning. Enhance your teams’ skills and expertise through carefully designed single or multi-day sessions that can be delivered in person or through live virtual training. Our customized learning programs are designed to incorporate the capabilities that will drive organizational performance and the bottom line.
eLearning
Our eLearning option is a cost-effective complement to our live sessions, providing the same world-class instruction as our in-person programs, but with a broader scope. Your emerging leaders can now learn at their own pace, with interactive digital content that combines our proprietary material with curated information from outside experts to provide a deeper dive. Our platform-independent modules focus on applied learning, with exercises designed to maximize engagement and meet your organization’s specific objectives.
Executive Programs
Now you can quickly enhance the strategic and management skills your promising mid- and senior-level executives need to assume leadership positions within your organization. Our multi-day, multi-session classes are led by a team of regional and global experts and include participants from one or more companies. These highly interactive, small-group programs are based on fun and stimulating exercises and are carefully designed to ensure that participants receive the most relevant learning experience possible.
High-impact learning
Lead Beyond Business capability development programs are customized to achieve specific objectives, with content tailored by industry, company and function. Participants understand exactly how the training connects to their jobs.
Subject Matter Mastery
We start by providing a solid foundation, layering on more complex concepts and reinforcing learning with exercises to maximize retention.
An interactive experience
We don’t just lecture. Our experts use a variety of delivery methods and creative approaches, including simulations, games and small group learning, to keep programs engaging and fun.
Energy and inspiration
Feedback consistently shows that employees who participate in Lead Beyond Business capability development programs are more engaged and feel reinvigorated and supported as they improve their skills.
Supply chain
Pandemic, trade wars and severe storms: these are just some of the disruptions that have shaken markets recently. Today, the whole world appreciates the value of resilient and sustainable supply chains. But this is nothing new for our firm. We have helped our clients achieve these virtues.
Whether you want to undertake an end-to-end strategic transformation or targeted solutions for specific linkages in your operations, we are the perfect partner to collaborate on supply chain reinvention. We combine proprietary digital capabilities, deep domain expertise and a rich database of your industry’s key performance indicators to create highly effective customized solutions. We augment our supply chain expertise with a proven track record in areas spanning change management, sustainability, digital transformation and more.
Some highlights of our overview include:
Regardless of where your company sits on the supply chain maturity curve, supply chain reinvention can help you seize a competitive advantage. We have partnered to solve critical supply chain problems with more than half of the companies ranked in the “Top 25 Supply Chains.” And we’ve helped companies in consumer products, advanced manufacturing services, energy and natural resources, and nearly every other industry overcome capacity constraints, overcome margin pressure, adopt the latest digital technologies, and fully align supply chain capabilities with your strategic ambition.
The journey from suppliers to end customers is often global, complex and fraught with countless opportunities for value to escape due to errors, delays, unnecessary costs, inefficiency, and miscommunication and missed opportunities. Therefore, it is not surprising that most companies have underperforming supply chains, typically leaving 5 to 10 percentage points in potential gross margin gains.
You need a supply chain that is resilient, responsive to complex consumer demands and differentially enabled, all while remaining efficient and affordable in a way that satisfies both your investors and your price-sensitive consumers.
We provide the right combination of planning, technical expertise, specialized tools and ongoing engagement to bridge the gap between strategy and design, and ensure that your supply chain reaches its full potential without constraints.
Water scarcity, carbon emissions reduction, fair labor and consumer demand for sustainable products are driving companies to commit to change. In many ways, supply chains are at the heart of a company’s sustainability strategy and are key to success. From design, sourcing and manufacturing to delivery, use and disposal, each component of a supply chain intersects with a variety of environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues that define sustainability.
We can help you address critical issues from one end of the value chain to the other, so that your operations and supply chain evolve from a traditional linear approach to a circular ecosystem that embraces the 5Rs (rebalance, reduce, reuse, recycle, and remanufacture). We can help you accurately assess your ESG starting point, structure your sustainability ambitions, implement the organizational and operational models that enable you to execute a sustainability strategy across the value chain, and implement the traceability, metrics, and digital solutions that support these efforts.
We can also ensure you avoid common pitfalls to achieving sustainability in operations, adopt critical best practices to integrate sustainability into your operations, incorporate sustainability as a function of procurement, and develop a partnership ecosystem that can provide the specialized expertise you need to accelerate your progress. Our proven approach is designed to produce quick wins in the short term and keep you on track to achieve your long-term ambition. Your supply chain will not only become more resilient and reliable, it will become the backbone of your sustainable operations strategy, enabling you to take and maintain a leadership position.
Companies are often constrained by a complex manufacturing network. Assets, spin-offs and isolated investments are a common cause, as is the tendency to build expensive new plants to meet demand for a high-margin product. Complex regulations can be a challenge, while asset- or plant-level performance initiatives often fail to take into account the impact on the supply chain or the broader manufacturing network.
The results can be devastating:
Poor service levels.
Lower perfect order rates
Low asset utilization
Skewed capacity-to-demand ratios
Frequent outages
We can help you redesign your networks using a repeatable and proven approach that begins with a detailed assessment of the current state, an analysis of future demand and a definition of what the full potential may look like.
From there, we establish design principles and define service levels, use unconstrained thinking to visualize an optimal future state, and launch an iterative process that strikes the right balance between actionable scenarios and the capital investments needed to achieve them.
Our approach generates impressive results that encompass gross margin improvements, logistics cost reductions, and significant improvements in service levels, inventory turns, customer satisfaction and more.
We believe there are three essential building blocks to integrated business planning (IBP):
It must start with strategic translation, to ensure that your top business priorities inform the choices it makes about your network and operational parameters.
It must integrate with your supply and demand planning and must rely on metrics, root cause diagnostics, feedback loops and a variety of other tools and data sources to support continuous improvement.
Our IBP consulting expertise builds on these three elements by creating coordinated, cross-functional teams; applying clear decision rights and governance; integrating plans; connecting data systems; and developing the ability to identify the root causes of any issues or sources of poor performance.
Our clients have increased revenues by as much as 8% due to their increased ability to meet demand. Improved customer service levels pave the way for better pricing. Inventory is reduced by up to 25% due to superior planning capabilities. Lower operating costs lead to margin improvement of up to 3%. Forecast accuracy improves by up to 30%. And on-time delivery improves by up to 15% because they have the right inventory in the right place at the right time.
Operations
From the back office and research lab to the production floor and throughout your supply chain, we can help you develop a seamless end-to-end program to transform your operations. We’ll make sure you focus on opportunities that maximize competitive advantage and strengthen the connection between operations and strategy.
How do we do it at Lead Beyond Business?
We specialize in designing and developing efficient and effective customer service operations that support customer acquisition, retention, cost management and profitability. We combine deep expertise in advanced analytics with superior design capabilities to move quickly from prototype to full-scale implementation. We have helped hundreds of companies solve a multitude of service-related problems, including reducing unnecessary workloads, improving first-time work rates, placing the right person in the right job, reshaping capacity requirements, developing staffing models, radically redesigning for flawless episodes, and more.
From the boardroom to the shop floor, we can help you improve every facet of your manufacturing operation, tailoring an approach that scales from targeted improvements to a complete reinvention of your capabilities. We provide the domain expertise, tools, diagnostics, benchmarks, external specialists and best practices you need to achieve immediate value today as you move toward your long-term vision. Collaboration with some of our business partners gives you real-world guidance on Industry 4.0 execution strategies, so you can adopt digitization faster and more effectively than your competitors.
Organization
Leadership and talent
If people are your most important asset, it makes sense to invest in them accordingly. We work with companies across industries to help leaders become more inspiring, managers more capable, front-line employees more responsive to customer needs, and organizations better equipped to meet a variety of talent needs. We combine original research on effective leadership with best-in-class training to help everyone reach their full potential.
Leadership Alignment is a structured program that assesses and amplifies four essential traits that determine how well senior leaders operate as a team: trust, commitment, inclusion and a focus on the common good. These traits translate into superior company performance.
Much can and has been said about leadership, but we focus on what really counts: making sure your leadership is aligned to execute your strategy and deliver results. We work with your senior team to define the purpose, align on a compelling vision of the future and agree on the most important actions needed to get there. We help you master the skills and behaviors that directly correlate to higher growth, profitability and total shareholder return. Our approach includes:
- Proprietary leadership effectiveness diagnostics that assess the unique strengths and development opportunities of your leadership team. We use the results to develop a customized program that rapidly improves leadership alignment and performance.
- A series of facilitated dialogues and exercises that give each team member a better understanding of their leadership style and the role they play in achieving extraordinary results.
- Tools and training on decision-making styles, executive assessments and coaching.
The leadership team focuses on how your members work together to more effectively achieve operational and financial objectives.
The team understands the unique “leadership DNA” and perceives each member’s strengths and weaknesses at a much deeper level.
The team engages in concrete behaviors that deliver results and builds a foundation of inclusion, unity and trust.
The team works together to co-create a compelling vision for the future.
Sales and marketing
We help you achieve organic and sustainable growth by putting your customers at the center of your company’s strategy. Our approach tests every element of your customers’ experience, delivering optimal interactions at every touchpoint.
From our cutting-edge research on customer loyalty to our proven approach to customer episode redesign, we provide the information to help you realize your full sales and marketing potential. That includes our standard frameworks for measuring customer loyalty and maximizing its power to your bottom line.
We don’t just help your organization develop a rock-solid strategy; our team will help you execute on every ambition, giving you the tools, diagnostics and benchmarks you need to transform the way you serve your customers and earn their lasting devotion.
A winning brand and marketing strategy requires a balance of math and magic. Yes, brand success can be measured, if you invest the right data assets and analytics. But breakthrough results only come when those metrics are leveraged for creative insights into your customers’ unmet needs and the most authentic ways to reach them.
We believe that the individual “brand genius” as we know it is dead: there is no longer “the smartest person in the room.” Instead, great brand and marketing strategies are co-created by inclusive and diverse teams. And we believe they are based on data, not intuition. To that end, our framework helps identify precisely which factors matter most to your customers.
We’ll help you bring a new sense of purpose to every element of your brand and consumer strategy, to your choices in offerings, to the customer experiences you design, and to the way you approach the often dizzying array of available sales channels. Today, our goal is to help you understand how your brand is perceived and how much value it offers, today and in the future.
Our approach helps you build internal processes that are flexible, so you can test results and adapt continuously and quickly. We’ll help you bring agility to the way you work, making rigorous testing and learning capabilities a core element of your marketing culture.
Your customers’ needs and expectations are changing, sometimes overnight. To make sure your products and services keep pace, you need a product management strategy designed for today’s dynamic business environment. We can help you achieve a comprehensive transformation that enables you to:
- Reinvent your offerings based on a complete understanding of your customers’ raw needs.
- Work across organizational boundaries to effectively leverage your talent and intellectual property
- Apply test-and-learn approaches to drive innovation and shorten time to market
- Install a closed-loop system to measure and improve every element of the customer experience.
Implementation and change
It’s a daunting challenge: how do you move forward at high speed despite enormous uncertainty? Our unique approach enables you to create value now as you move toward your vision for the future, with the flexibility to adapt as scenarios change. We’ll help you make critical decisions and coordinate your transformation journey as you take the core to its full potential and build new growth engines.
Our tools are based on thought leadership expertise, including our recent work in our digital transformation partnership with the World Economic Forum and our extensive private equity experience. We offer a wide range of proprietary services that support all elements of strategy development, including, our transformation management tool. Our reputation for collaborating with clients to achieve exceptional results is unmatched in the industry.
Portfolio Value Implementation
Immediately after implementation, we support the drive for rapid returns with the Value Creation Plan to align management with strategic priorities and directly focused initiatives. During the implementation phase, we supported leveraged efforts in revenue enhancement and cost reduction and refreshed the value creation plan
Having paid record prices for recent acquisitions and with exit terms likely to be less favorable than entry terms, private equity firms need a radically different formula for attractive returns. They are replacing passive management with a hands-on approach to generating value in their portfolio companies.
Lead Beyond Business is a leader in supporting an activist approach to ownership. We often find that the work we do immediately after closing has the greatest impact, and our numbers tell the story: the average return on all investments during the first year Lead Beyond Business has been retained is 3.3 times invested capital, well above the industry average of 1.8 times. We help with post-closing activity in three proven ways:
- Create a value creation plan that defines the full potential of the business and create a program to capture it, complete with specific initiatives, detailed action plans, assignment of accountability for results, and a metrics dashboard to track operational and financial performance.
- Identify top priorities first, such as new product introductions, sales force productivity and integration of additional acquisitions.
- Provide a structured interactive forum for sponsors and managers to develop a value creation plan.
Strategy and Finances
A great corporate strategy combines five elements: a bold but realistic ambition, a carefully considered portfolio of assets, smart financial choices, a deep understanding of the advantages and, ultimately, a transformation roadmap that specifies the actions and decisions to reach your goals. We integrate these five elements, paying close attention to the role of finance, including access to capital, risk management, M&A capability building and more. The result is a clear plan of action to achieve your objectives, with the ability to adapt in response to technology disruptions, changing customer needs and other factors.
Investor Relations Strategy
When you move from a traditional investor relations approach to one that is integrated into your strategy, you get the value you deserve. We strengthen your position with investors by improving communication and establishing feedback loops that drive sustained growth.
While most companies communicate regularly with investors, a staggering 90% of them do not systematically link investor relations to strategy teams. This opens the door to communication gaps and inconsistent messaging, which affect the equity story and ultimately undermine investor confidence. At the same time, many companies do not carefully segment their investor base, making it difficult to retain shareholders and seek new ones. Integrating your investor relations strategy into your overall corporate strategy protects you from critical blind spots and, at the same time, helps you attract and retain the investors who are integral to your success.
If regular investor relations is a one-way street, our process ensures a virtuous cycle, one that helps you engage and stay close to the right audience and ultimately win in total shareholder return.
English 
Español