Supporting Value Creation through insightful MI

Following a period of rapid growth and acquisition, we supported this multi-national, OEM supplies business in rapidly improving KPI management and reporting. We designed and led consistent customer product analysis across the business, enhancing commercial understanding and enabling more effective decision-making. Our close collaboration with the finance team gave us valuable operational insight and built strong rapport, which, combined with the impact of our initial work, also enabled us to assist management further with their forecasting on the new basis and led to a review and adaptation of the existing model.

Client Testimonial

“I just want to say that you guys have been fantastic. I know I was sceptical at the start but you’ve really helped us to move this along” – CFO

“You guys have really helped us to shift the paradigm in terms of helping the business to think strategically through the eyes of our customers about price and volume” – Managing Director EMEA and APAC

The Client’s Challenges

The company had expanded through multiple acquisitions, resulting in:

• Poorly Integrated Systems: Disparate systems and inconsistent reporting practices across business units and geographies (US, LATM and Europe).
• Lack of Consistent KPIs: No clear definition or alignment of KPIs, making it difficult to measure performance and support strategic decision-making.
• Opaque Existing Models: Legacy models were fragmented and cumbersome, resulting in inefficient and slow sensitivity analysis and poor scenario planning.
• Difficulty in Price and Volume Analysis: Sales processes and data structures made it challenging to analyse pricing and volumes. There was also a lack of understanding of how products mapped into the customer’s unit metrics, obscured by changes in customer demand forecasting and the bulk buying of spares. This limited market insight and commercial decision-making.

These challenges risked undermining the company’s ability to deliver its strategy, improve performance, and respond effectively to Board and management needs.

Our Solution

Identifying KPIs and Embedding Improved Processes

• Stakeholder Engagement: Conducted meetings with sales, finance, and operations representatives to identify the most useful KPIs for decision-making.
• Gap Analysis and KPI Recommendations: Analysed existing reporting processes, identified gaps, and suggested relevant KPIs to provide actionable insight.
• Consistent Reporting Templates: Built monthly reporting templates for each business unit, forming the basis for consolidated outputs and ensuring consistency across management and Board reporting.
• Process Handover and Support: Held handover calls with file owners, explained update processes, and provided ongoing support to embed the new reporting framework.

Implementing Price and Volume Analysis

• Market-Oriented Reporting: Developed methods to estimate customer product volumes and average prices, enabling comparison with external market analysis.
• Improved Forecast Assumptions: Helped the Board and management understand market share and improve forecast model assumptions by identifying proxy products.
• Historic Pricing Analysis: Analysed historic customer pricing by product to inform commercial decision-making.

Using Power BI to Enable Decision Making

• Profitability Analysis: Created Power BI outputs for product-level profitability, allowing management to drill down by year, customer, product family, product code, and item.

Existing Model Review and Adaptation

• Scenario Functionality: Management’s previous Model was opaque and difficult to apply global sensitivities to. We adapted the existing model to incorporate customer price and volume principles, streamlining scenario analysis and input flexibility.

Supporting the Finance Team in Embedding Price and Volume

• Data Extraction and Benchmarking: Developed a data extraction process and ran collaborative sessions with the sales team to benchmark figures against market knowledge.
• Upskilling Finance Team: Handed over files and provided training to enhance the finance team’s capability.

The Impact

• Greater Clarity and Decision-Making: Management and the Board gained clearer insights into performance, enabling more effective budgeting, forecasting, and identification of opportunities.
• Consistent, Reliable Reporting: Standardised templates and KPIs ensured alignment across business units and reporting levels.
• Enhanced Commercial Insight: Improved price and volume analysis supported strategic decisions and market positioning.
• Empowered Finance Team: Upskilled team members and embedded new processes