Business Strategy and Operations
Business Strategy
A successful business/corporate strategy creates shareholder value by producing products and services for less than the cost of providing them; capturing value from all parties, including competitors, customers, and suppliers; competing successfully for market shares and cooperating selectively to enlarge the potential market.
The Management recognizes this but doesn’t always know how to systematically leverage the strategy choices of other players to ensure their own strategic methods.
MFK assists in making the business worth more than the sum of its parts. We work with clients to monitor operations, allocate resources, and coordinate shared functions.
MFK assists in making the business worth more than the sum of its parts. We work with clients to monitor operations, allocate resources, and coordinate shared functions.
At MFK, we assist our clients in formulating strategies that take advantage of the opportunities present in highly uncertain business environments—while at the same time managing the risks. Scenario planning works best when it focuses on areas of greatest uncertainty. This approach yields a divergent set of scenarios that represent plausible future alternatives. For each scenario, MFK will help the client to develop early-warning indicators and to identify a number of strategic options.
Business Plans
A detailed business plan forms the basis of both every external acquisition of capital (equity capital, external funds, public funding) as well as of the internal planning, management and control of all operating business activities.
We support our clients by reviewing their business plans and conducting an operational analysis of business models and processes including a capital market-oriented presentation of the equity story, optimization of business planning and stipulation of financial requirements. In this respect, our services comprise: capital requirements, budgetary planning and funding strategy, market positioning and sustainability, investment, liquidity as well as personnel planning, plausibility and assessment of the risks involved, marketing initiatives and, last but not least, scenario and sensitivity analyses for the planning model.
Growth Strategy
Companies are targeting aggressive growth strategies in response to structural shifts caused by new technologies, changing regulations, evolving customer needs and sector convergence.
However, encompassing growth is extremely challenging – with the majority of organizations unable to achieve and sustain their growth ambitions.
MFK’s approach to driving step-change growth and top-quartile performance addresses issues such as:
How to access new and unmet revenue and profit pools
How to profitably enter new markets and segments in a short time frame
How to develop and commercialize innovative products in order to grow
How to attract new customers and enhance loyalty
Our approach is based on identifying and implementing a prioritized set of growth platforms that will enable clients to achieve their growth ambitions.
Connect related opportunities by driving internal collaboration and efficiency:
Build up insight and enable scaled investment over time, as one opportunity leads to another.
Provide multiple strategies to achieve targets and mitigate the risk of setbacks with diversified portfolios of opportunities – if one idea falters, the platform remains strong.
Provide a realistic business plan, accounting for the required talent and skill-sets, time horizons and limitation for risk.
Enable sustained growth by institutionalizing growth as a capability in the company’s DNA.
Set up ongoing management of new growth opportunities as a portfolio of investments with specific metrics to maintain momentum and progress.
Operations Strategy
With ever-increasing customer expectations, rapid market and technological change, disruptions from new entrants, increasing levels of regulation and reputational risk as well as growing shareholder scrutiny on performance, business leaders are being forced to continually re-evaluate their business models and seek for ways to create additional value from their day-to-day operations.
We support clients in identifying, quantifying, prioritizing and delivering a rapid step change in business performance.
We target the key value levers in the business, leaving no stone unturned in our pursuit of top line revenue growth and cost savings to enhance bottom line profitability.
There are a number of internal and external triggers which can cause businesses, investors and government agencies to pursue dramatic changes in value, including:
significant changes in market, competitive dynamics, and/or business strategy
M&A activity
performance and funding gaps
complex and inefficient operating model structures that aren’t aligned to the business model
technology or regulatory-driven change.
We help our clients to generate value by successfully transforming their operations to meet and exceed their strategic ambitions, this can typically involve:
How can we stop losing market shares?
How we can change the cost structure?
Which are the optimizing topics?
How can we generate cash to fund our operations?
How can we focus on the most viable parts of the business moving forward?
Enterprise Transformation
In today’s dynamic market, organizations must be willing to transform. Enterprise-wide transformation is driven by:
absence of a clear financial ambition.
misalignment between stakeholder interests
unrealized synergies or significant inefficiencies within and between business units in the portfolio
disruptive external forces impacting both business and operating models
Transformation is rarely straightforward and can encounter significant organizational resistance.
We help organizations determine whether or not and to what extent transformation is genuinely required
The answer may be to innovate, refresh or accelerate along the company’s existing trajectory. However, it may instead require a step change or pivot in direction, which is where enterprise-wide transformation comes into play.
Bringing strategic thinking and hands-on skill sets to deliver on transformation, our approach is distinctive in its ability to enact, rather than merely design or plan for the enterprise-wide change. We help organizations address the following questions in designing, planning and implementing their enterprise-wide transformations.
How strong is the company’s readiness to execute transformation and what challenges likely await on that journey?
What are the intended and unintended consequences to the wider whole of decisions in each unit or in one part of the business or operating model?
How to manage the portfolio and improve the role of the corporate center?
How to improve internal/external perception of the business and alignment between the ambition, business and operating models?
What is the strategic response to digital disruption and enablement, including whether there is an imperative to create digital business models, a new operating culture and form partnerships with accelerators?
How to refresh or shift the company’s strategy, given recent changes in the market dynamics?
Our approach provides the overarching framework for multi-year strategic planning, capital allocation, portfolio and synergy assessments, scenario planning, corporate center redesigns, and other modulated enterprise-wide services.
Our approach to enterprise-wide transformation connects a clear ambition to actionable results. It takes a holistic view on value creation, draws on rich data and insight, and applies strong commercial rigor alongside stakeholder-centric design. This delivers a clear path from today to realize the strategy and aligns the organization to deliver it.
Turnaround Advisory
We can validate an existing turnaround plan or develop a new one tailored to a client’s specific circumstances. By combining our deep industry experience with the proven tools of crisis management, we create lasting impact — fast!
These are some of our key client service areas:
Turnaround Management. MFK coordinates the various parties involved in a restructuring to meet key deliverables and milestones. We lead the progress and ensure rapid execution.
Operational Cost-Out Programs. MFK will design and execute a plan for rapidly reducing costs throughout operations.
Turnaround Planning. We provide the strategic inputs necessary for the turnaround plan, including a comprehensive industry analysis and portfolio implications.
Stress Diagnosis. MFK’s proprietary diagnostic tool identifies the sources of financial stress, pinpoints areas for improvement, and estimates the magnitude of the necessary changes.
Our turnaround approach focuses on the most important operational, strategic, organizational, and financial levers in order to ensure a comprehensive recovery.
Companies in financial distress face a unique set of challenges. They must ensure short-term survival while preparing for long-term success. If bankruptcy is unavoidable, a robust reorganization plan that addresses the needs of all stakeholders is imperative. To thrive again in these difficult times, companies must answer critical questions such as these:
How can we focus on the most viable parts of the business moving forward?
How can we generate cash to fund our operations?
Which are the optimizing topics?
How we can change the cost structure?
How can we stop losing market shares?