A Big 4 Australian bank was struggling with market share loss in the SME business sector, following a restructure of their customer engagement  channel which cost tens of millions in consulting fees and restructuring costs over 2-1/2 years.  Leading an ICG team of two, we worked with the executive team of the division over a 4-week period to diagnose the issues and apply internal best practice and external operations strategy insights to recommend an effective restructuring.  The plan to minimise employee disruption but re-engage the customer base, was targeted at improved retention.  The diagnostic also led to the discovery of significant latent value in single-product customers left behind by the prospecting tools developed in the previous restructure, leading to the opportunity to gain share on top of preserving and gaining share of wallet in the main portfolio.

A global payments company owned by private equity was expanding via M&A quickly, and had made a major acquisition in a new service industry vertical to drive larger and more frequent payments onto their platform.  The merger integration involved distinctly different cultures and operating systems and I was engaged to manage the process of integration and customer migration to the new payments platform, with a small client team from across three business units.  Working with both organisations and with major external clients directly, we quickly discovered the client had grossly underestimated the complexity of the end client needs from a payments provider, and therefore the degree of integration effort required across system functionality, client reporting, sales interaction, client onboarding and inter-company reporting.  Working to deadlines imposed by the M&A contract, we worked with the client executive to configure the integration team and work plan, specify and gain capacity from the client’s core development teams, establish a migration schedule with significant external clients and win their trust for their new payments provider, establish a reporting and prioritising cadence with the executive steering committee and manage the day-to-day project activity across three sites and multiple client functions. The project was brought in on time notwithstanding a significant increase in scope, and ahead of the revenue schedule.

A NZ Maori property trust sought to pivot its land use from dairy farming to other agriculture, including the potential for beef. They engaged me to investigate the potential for developing a grass-fed beef brand, including export markets, pricing and margins based on scale choices, breeds and genetics, competitive requirements, channels and partnerships, supply chain and business model. The study provided the executive with a profile of supply-demand by country, including the drivers of consumption and grade and a forecast of market development over 10 years. Analysis included 55 beef brand attributes aligned to a pricing and gross margin matrix by target country market, along a value chain continuum of choices from pre-conception through to end-user consumption. This analysis also profiled the key competitors along the continuum and their response capability based on analysis of their market position and business model. Supply chain and partner choice analysis by high-potential market identified niche opportunities. The analysis led to several investments along the grass-fed value chain for beef and other NZ-based animal protein opportunities.