Research: How Some Companies Avoid Accusations of Greenwashing
09/10/2023
Sustainability has rapidly become an indispensable part of corporate governance. But as companies commit to green practices, a worrying trend is also surfacing: Some corporations are painting themselves as green while failing to back their claims with concrete actions. Numerous examples abound: The UK Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has recently banned a number of ads […]
How Deep Tech Can Drive Sustainability and Profitability in Manufacturing
06/10/2023
The days of operations that pursue speed, quality, and cost efficiency above all else have come to an end. Today, the objectives that manufacturers must pursue to ensure competitiveness have evolved. Sustainability, long seen as incompatible with these traditional goals, is now a strategic imperative. This raises a question for manufacturers: How can they make […]
The Next Supply-Chain Challenge Isn’t a Shortage — It’s Inventory Glut
02/10/2023
It’s March 2020. Store shelves sit empty, without any toilet paper or cleaning supplies in sight. Tablets and electronic devices are out of stock. Consumers are clamoring for the basics they need to suddenly work and learn from home and live under quarantine. Meanwhile, on Zoom calls and in email threads, company leaders around the […]
Smaller Companies Must Embrace Risk Management
18/09/2023
There’s an unfortunate stereotype that risk management is boring. Risk managers are pessimistic clerks. Compliance officers are scaremongers. Too many managers think this way. As a result, risk management is an unloved and misunderstood discipline. Until disaster strikes, risk management is, for most, a painstaking and costly chore. In an increasingly volatile world, however, risk […]
When Scenario Planning Fails
24/05/2023
Over the past several decades, leaders have turned to scenario planning to identify future risks to their businesses. By analyzing things like revenues or margins across locations globally, this method allows leadership teams to design flexible long-term plans against a defined set of alternative external events and outcomes. The outputs can often include short-term financial […]
The next frontier of customer engagement: AI-enabled customer service
24/04/2023
How to engage customers—and keep them engaged—is a focal question for organizations across the business-to-consumer (B2C) landscape, where disintermediation by digital platforms continues to erode traditional business models. Engaged customers are more loyal, have more touchpoints with their chosen brands, and deliver greater value over their lifetime. Yet financial institutions have often struggled to secure […]
The 8 Responsibilities of Chief Sustainability Officers
19/04/2023
The word “sustainability” has never been more popular in the corporate world. The number of companies appointing a chief sustainability officer (CSO) is rising rapidly: In 2021 more CSOs were hired than in the previous five years combined. But despite good intentions — and widespread acceptance of the importance of sustainability — there is still […]
Rescuing ESG from the Culture Wars
22/02/2023
In the past year, ESG investing has become caught up in America’s culture wars, as prominent GOP politicians claim that it is a mechanism investors are using to impose a “woke” ideology on companies. Former Vice President Mike Pence has railed against ESG in speeches and in an op-ed. A variety of Republican governors and […]
Have Companies Become Too Specialized?
16/02/2023
Starting in the late 1980s, a de-diversification wave swept through corporate America, on the premise that conglomerates and highly diversified companies would perform better by focusing on their core businesses. At first this strategic shift brought benefits: academic research undertaken at the time found that all this refocusing was, on balance, beneficial for companies. The […]
What Do Your Customers Want in 2023?
08/02/2023
For many of us, a new year represents a fresh start. New Year’s resolutions offer an annual opportunity to transform our lives for the better, whether that’s by improving our health, relationships, finances, or whatever else we find most important. This mindset can create new opportunities for businesses as well — but shifting needs and […]
How Boards Can Guide Company Strategy on Social Issues
23/01/2023
For the past few years, we’ve been fielding calls from CEOs and other C-suite leaders who find themselves under increasing pressure to engage in — and take public positions on — issues that their companies would have considered outside their purviews only a few years ago. Recent research, including Edelman’s Trust Barometer, suggests that this pressure […]
HR’s new operating model
13/01/2023
The way in which organizations manage people used to be relatively straightforward. For more than two decades, multinational companies generally adopted a combination of HR business partners, centers of excellence, and shared service centers, adjusting these three elements to fit each organization’s unique nature and needs. Today, this approach—introduced by Dave Ulrich in 19961David Ulrich, […]
Taking a skills-based approach to building the future workforce
02/12/2022
As a pro bono contribution to the alliance, we worked in tandem to assess opportunities and actual skills-based job progressions that workers have made. Using these data, the team launched a series of practical tools, including a job progression tool 5 5. Job Progression Tool, McKinsey & Company and Rework America Alliance, accessed October 28, […]
Adapting Your Sales Approach in a Downturn
01/12/2022
There has been plenty of debate over whether the U.S. economy is in a recession. Regardless of the technical definitions and economic perspectives, many organizations see challenging headwinds on the horizon. Even if companies aren’t feeling the economic pinch yet, they will be more skittish when it comes to spending when news cycles predict doom […]
3 Steps to Prepare Your Supply Chain for the Next Crisis
25/11/2022
No one can say they weren’t warned about the likelihood of a global pandemic or a war in Ukraine. And, in the light of President Xi Jinping’s recent comments at the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, where he reaffirmed his government’s commitment to take control of Taiwan one day, no one can say that […]
Revenue growth management: Building capabilities to sustain impact
13/10/2022
Key takeaways The growth of online shopping, supply chain constraints, shifts in the channel mix, gross margins strained by rising inflation—these are just a few of the headwinds consumer companies have faced over the past several years. Not surprisingly, revenue growth management (RGM) has emerged as a top priority for consumer leaders in this environment. […]
Keeping Up with Customers’ Increasingly Dynamic Needs
10/10/2022
A mere 20 years ago, a song typically stayed on the Billboard Top 100 charts for 20 weeks. Right now, it’s closer to two weeks. Similarly, the skillset that would once last your whole career now requires a complete refresh every three to five years. Corporate longevity is also rapidly changing: in 2020, the average […]
The power of the operating model in customer experience
22/07/2022
Transforming the customer experience (CX) isn’t about playing hard and fast. To succeed in the long game, companies need to manage it systematically. Doing it well is a game changer, which is why more than 70 percent of senior executives rank CX as a top priority for the coming years. Indeed, companies that effectively organize […]
When — and How — to Build Hurdles into a Loyalty Program
21/07/2022
Have you ever signed up for a rewards program, only to discover several months later that your points expired before you had a chance to use them? If so, you’re not alone. Research shows that loyalty program members lose up to a third of the savings they could have earned from these programs due to […]
5 Megatrends Fueling the Rise of Data Storytelling
14/07/2022
Infographic: The Rise of Data Storytelling Humanity is creating more data than ever before, and more of that data is publicly accessible. While “data is the new oil” has almost become a cliché, the impact that data abundance is having on the world is undeniable. All of the world’s most valuable companies are heavily reliant […]
Customer service excellence in 2022
12/07/2022
The stakes couldn’t be higher as teams try to adapt to a postpandemic era of customer care. Over the past two years, leaders have had to quickly adapt systems and ways of working to accommodate the shift to working from home—up to 85 percent of their workforces, in some cases. Contact center employees are harder […]
Future supply chains: resilience, agility, sustainability
30/06/2022
Supply chains matter. The plumbing of global commerce has rarely been a topic of much discussion in newsrooms or boardrooms, but the past two years have pushed the subject to the top of the agenda. The COVID-19 crisis, postpandemic economic effects, and the ongoing conflict in Ukraine have exposed the vulnerabilities of today’s global supply chains. […]
Driving sustainable, enterprise-wide performance acceleration
15/06/2022
The COVID-19 pandemic has been a disruptor of historic proportions across industries, economies, and lives. In the global pharmaceutical industry, it has caused problems in short-term cash flow and threatened supply reliability. But even before the pandemic, the industry had been facing several hurdles, including the declining value of new launches, challenges to growth in […]
What To Do When the Devil Wears (Your Brand)
14/06/2022
Protecting a brand’s equity and value should be one of an executive’s key responsibilities. Companies buy protection software and use blacklists to stop questionable publishers and endorsers from negatively portraying their brand, for example. But what happens when the brand is displayed unfavorably in an environment that the marketer can’t control? This is exactly what […]
Why CEOs should care about service operations
23/05/2022
As a CEO, you have a lot of ground to cover, and the way your organization defines, designs, and delivers services has a significant impact on almost all of it. Services matter in every industry, both as a direct source of value and as an enabler of value creation. For some businesses, services are the […]
How procurement leaders can fight inflation
09/05/2022
In the years before the pandemic, rising productivity and declining costs for many inputs—achieved through lean and just-in-time strategies and the globalization of supply chains, among other factors—had allowed many procurement organizations to operate successfully. But now the inflationary surge and frequent scarcity of critical supplies have made shortcomings of the traditional operating model increasingly […]
Four steps for managing risk at the CEO level
06/05/2022
Adapting to a fast-changing risk landscape has become a priority for most organizations, a necessity made more evident by the global pandemic and recent geopolitical events. At the same time, chief executives are under more pressure than ever to reconcile agendas from multiple stakeholders affecting their organization. The convergence of these two trends means that […]
Talking to Your Customers About Prices
11/04/2022
A simple take on prices is that they are an obstacle toward the purchase of a desired product or service. Companies, therefore, see a legitimate need to reduce “friction” in the transaction, which they accomplish by reaching into a seemingly bottomless bag of tricks, ranging from the subtle to the egregious. Some companies, for example, […]
Six customer experience pitfalls to avoid
01/04/2022
In recent years, organizations across sectors have been forced to overhaul many of their processes as the importance of CX has taken center stage. Largely due to the rise in “CX native” companies, customers’ expectations across areas like getting immediate help, maintaining control, and personalization have grown. Meanwhile, privacy concerns have increased, social media has […]
Building new supply-chain management skills for a digital age
30/03/2022
What expertise will your next generation of warehouse managers require? Computer programming? Data analytics? Advanced robotics? Maybe all those things and more. If you are like the 71 global companies that responded to a 2021 supply chain survey, you probably accelerated your investments in digital technology as your supply chain grappled with COVID-19 challenges. What’s […]
Does Your Company Need a Chief ESG Officer?
24/02/2022
There’s a new title in the C-suite: chief ESG officer. While top executives with “ESG” in their title are new and not yet widespread, this role is an opportunity that companies may consider as they face increasing pressure to address environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues; companies like C.H. Robinson, Royal Caribbean, and Verizon have […]
Precision Pricing When Inflation Is Rising
18/02/2022
Precision pricing is the key to pricing in today’s inflationary environment and in the mixed-inflation markets we can expect in years to come. It’s highly targeted and enables managers to base prices on each product’s true, current costs and each customer’s true, current profitability. Traditional across-the-board price increases, which treat all costs and customers the […]
The (uncomfortable) truth of HR and leadership development
19/01/2022
Quackery and pseudoscience can be very dangerous. Not only in medicine but also in human resources. Alarmed by the nonsensical ideas of Transactional Analysis, Patrick Vermeren set out on a mission to reveal the truth about the many HR theories, models and questionnaires. The academic literature revealed that most HR practices (in recruitment, assessment, development, […]
Achieving supply-chain resiliency amid disruption
12/01/2022
While current headlines about product shortages and empty shelves have highlighted the importance of the supply chain, that process began in early 2020. Companies that had labored to create a lean global supply chain needed to scramble to adjust to the effects of the pandemic. Beyond that, sustainability has also become a top priority on […]
The new marketing model for growth: How CPGs can crack the code…
01/11/2021
After a year like no other, consumer packaged goods (CPG) marketers face a hard question: how to power above-average growth in the next normal. E-commerce penetration is still 35 percent above pre-COVID-19 levels, and more than one-third of consumers are continuing to switch brands or retailers. 1 1. Tamara Charm, Becca Coggins, Kelsey Robinson, and […]
Mastering change: The new CFO mandate
28/10/2021
One trend about CFOs that we’ve confirmed after years of research: the finance leader’s role is ever evolving. That has never been more true than it is today, during an era of dramatic change—with, for instance, the COVID-19 pandemic, increased attention being paid to social and environmental issues, and the accelerated adoption of technology to address […]
Research: How to Position a Luxury Brand as Sustainable
06/10/2021
A 2018 global survey by Accenture Strategy of 30,000 consumers in 35 countries indicated that nearly two-thirds of them (62%) find brands with high ethical values attractive. That’s potentially a problem for companies in the luxury sector, because people often see luxury goods as a wasteful self-indulgence and potentially damaging to the environment, especially if […]
‘Back to human’: Why HR leaders want to focus on people again
16/06/2021
For years now, human-resource leaders have found themselves on a cost-efficiency treadmill that applies analytics and big data to existing HR operating models. Their departments have lived by a worthy but uninspiring mandate: to optimize labor costs, reinforce compliance using standardized measures, and support the adoption of technology beyond IT. Even in the areas of […]
How procurement can boost business growth post-COVID-19
26/01/2021
As economies begin their transition to the next normal, crisis management is evolving into recovery, with a few signs of growth starting to return. Our conversations with procurement leaders have identified a common theme: of newfound energy to apply hard-won lessons learned from an extraordinary time. These executives’ new focus is on reimagining the procurement […]
7 Ways HR Can Build a Fairer, Data-Informed Culture
26/11/2020
People data and analytics is now one of the hottest, most in-demand skills for HR professionals and ranks as one of the most important human capital trends for organizations today. Companies are looking at data to inform decisions and answer questions such as: Who will leave and when? How do our capabilities compare to competitors? […]
Now Is the Time to Shake Up Your Sales Processes
04/11/2020
Major sales force changes such as restructuring or downsizing are disruptive to how sales teams work and to the systems that support them. A poorly-orchestrated change can damage customer relationships, hurt the top line, and threaten salespeople’s sense of control and self-esteem. Not surprisingly, leaders often wait to implement major changes until a significant event […]
How CPG companies can adapt their digital marketing in the next normal
15/10/2020
At many US consumer-packaged-goods (CPG) companies business has been turned on its head. Even for companies in categories that experienced rapid growth, the past several months have been dizzying. A historic drop in US consumer confidence was accompanied by pantry loading for essential items such as household supplies (up 76 percent in March) and packaged […]
An Innovative Way to Prevent Adversarial Supplier Relationships
09/10/2020
Nick Dolding/Getty Images The economic impact of the pandemic and the uncertainty about what lies ahead are having a major impact on relations between companies and their suppliers. For procurement professionals at large multinational companies, the temptation is to use their company’s clout to pressure suppliers to reduce prices. And when the supplier has the […]
Companies Need to Rethink What Cybersecurity Leadership Is
27/07/2020
Jorg Greuel/Getty Images For businesses today, cyber risk is everywhere. Yet for all the investments they’ve made to secure their systems and protect customers, companies are still struggling to make cybersecurity a vibrant, proactive part of strategy, operations, and culture. The root cause is twofold: (1) Cybersecurity is treated as a back-office job and (2) […]
How supply chain transparency can improve decision-making
23/06/2020
Faced with major disruption events, decision makers need to get their heads around the why and when to act (the reaction) before working out how best to mitigate the impacts (the response). The speed of reaction and the efficacy of response will decide the ultimate outcomes for people and the environment. With COVID-19, this process […]