Strategic Cost Improvement

Cost improvement initiatives can quickly and sustainably recoup spend by following a proven methodology:  

• Align with C-suite on the strategic vision 
• Conduct benchmarking, spans and layers analysis, activity surveys, and non-labor spend analysis 
• Prioritize cost optimization opportunities with functional and business leadership 

We typically uncover 30%+ G&A and 10%+ OPEX opportunities – then deliver the staffing, process, and technology solutions necessary to expertly realize those savings. 

Companies often tackle organizational design by taking a top-down tactical approach, cutting equally across all functions. This leads to incremental improvement that doesn’t necessarily improve the quality and output of work produced. We take a more intuitive, bottoms-up approach to organizational design that:  

• Contains optimal spans and layers 
• Is more cost effective 
• Puts more resources into areas that add value to the bottom line
• Moves transactional activities to low-cost centers

To avoid technology bloat and redundancies, start with transparency into technology spend. Our team works collaboratively with functional and business leads to identify systems with overlapping capabilities and unnecessary customization, delivering an actionable plan to migrate core digital tools into a simpler, integrated future state. We support across the full lifecycle of systems implementations, ensuring your architecture works for you, not against you. 

Automation opportunities exist throughout key business processes, yet the ability to integrate automation remains a hurdle for many organizations. Using tools like Alteryx and UiPath, our data analysts, developers, and engineers enable you to eliminate wasteful activities and automate analytics in, among others:  

• Record to Report 
• Order to Cash 
• Procure to Pay 
• Hire to Retire

We also train your teams on how to use automation tools, allowing you to embed a continuous optimization mindset within your company. 

Functional and departmental budgets are often created through an annual copy-and-paste exercise, with slight adjustments. When looking to optimize costs, companies set targets (e.g., 10%) and ask leaders to find the money. This approach can generate cash, but incrementally. Our zero-based approach starts from cash and challenges companies to think differently with their spending. We help you design a budget that’s materially lower (30%+) and based on what you really need to enable the strategy. 

Companies without adequate transparency into their third-party vendor spend or that lack strategic sourcing capabilities don’t see expected savings reach the bottom line. By appropriately categorizing and rationalizing spend, we provide clean data that empowers faster, better-informed decision-making across the organization, which subsequently generates insights into cost reduction opportunities. To strategically plan, track, and optimize third-party spend and vendors over time, we instill risk-resilient, future-ready processes and capabilities into your organizational structures and culture.