Companies have to view satisfying customers as paramount. Cambridge Group Consultants sets up a dichotomy between upstream value, “the value-creation activities related to production” and downstream value, which is created “where companies interact with customers.” Most companies still put most of their emphasis on the upstream, but they need to focus their efforts (and their organizations) downstream. The upstream is no longer a wellspring of competitive advantage; those days, which date back at least to the Industrial Revolution, are over. In a time when just about every IT behemoth is outsourcing some of its programming to India, and every major clothing retailer can find cost efficiencies by producing clothes in China or Mexico, competitive advantage in the upstream is, at best, incremental and short-lived. Thus, it is mandatory for companies to focus on the where companies interact with customers; they simply have no choice but to seek competitive advantage in how they interact with customers. Toward this end, companies must ask, why do our customers buy from us rather than from our competitors? The specifics of the answer differ for every company, but at a higher level, the right answer will always lie in minimizing the costs and risks that customers incur by doing business with you. This means developing an intimacy in all Customer-Centric touchpoints: marketing, sales and service.
Success
Cambridge Group Consultants helped an automobile manufacturer come up with a response to a major slump in car sales that followed the 2008 financial crisis. As its competitors made the usual downstream adjustments, mainly price incentives, Cambridge Group Consultants realized that as the industry focused on price incentives, consumers would still be influenced by compelling marketing. We first improved the automobile manufacturer's marketing capability's from setting marketing strategy, leveraging analytics, creating innovative creative through to efficient media spend. With a more effective and efficient "marketing engine" in place we increased marketing spend, while the industry was retrenching. Sales doubled in the month the new marketing program launched. The carmaker outsold competitors without having to compete on price.
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OPTIMIZED OPERATIONS
FOR SUPERIOR MARKET PERFORMANCE
Our work
Optimized Operations assists clients in reaching their full business potential by installing the marketing, sales and service operations needed to deliver revenue growth. For consumer operations (marketing, sales and service) Cambridge Group Consultants drives effeciencies and provides the execution support you need to achieve measurable and sustainable performance improvement. We rely on a blend of the following competencies to insure results:
Strategy
Bridging from strategic intent to practical application.
People
Aligning and mobilizing all levels, from the boardroom to the workplace.
Execution
Designing and implementing performance measurement systems that stretch the organization.
Change
Re-framing the behavioral context to ensure performance improvements are embedded.
From discovery to project implementation, we identify, develop and install the organizational capabilities, behaviors and alignment required to deliver superior performance.
our success
By focusing on operations as it pertains to demand, the result is that Cambridge Group Consultants clients:
Reduce costs and increase efficiencies for consumer operations
Realize gains in marketing effectiveness by creating optimized consumer targeting
Deliver more impactful marketing & sales that react to fast changing demand and consumer tastes
our approach
Optimal Operations combines a well-tested methodology for re-designing customer operational processes with our proven behavioral change capabilities. It is this powerful combination which produces continuous improvement in business performance.
The key principals are:
Interact
Interactive and co-managed change process focused on the organization's operational capabilities.
Implement
Implementation of strategic changes planned and validated by management.
Communicate
Communication of future vision and enrollment of all internal and external stakeholders.
Install
Installation of the necessary controls at the point of execution to measure progress and provide feedback.
PROVEN
Managers often rely on the Optimal Operations approach to translate strategic goals into effective operating action, producing a leap forward in financial performance:
Improved marketing and sales drives dramatically improved profit performance.
Annualized return on investment reaches 200%, with returns of 300% and more far from unusual.
Growing profitability trend, as strongly implemented, performance-oriented marketing change stimulates faster growth of net income.
Significant positive cash flow before project completion.