Cleary & Co : : : Financial Services

Many consulting firms insist on a 3-5 month diagnostic to analyze expenses and metrics to develop a ‘comprehensive’ set of opportunities.The approach taken is to analyze all elements of expenses to deduce or uncover possible cost reduction opportunities, often in time-consuming ‘workshops’ with junior or middle management staff. Instead, by using benchmarks and proven processes to flag opportunities quickly, we skip most of these steps and go directly to the priority opportunities, by business and location. Virtually from day 1,
we form a clear view of the cost reduction opportunities, and how
they should be realized. In parallel, we typically find several large
‘quick hits’ that start to ‘ring the cash register’ in the early weeks
of the engagement.

One of the reasons why we are able to move swiftly to start saving, and achieve substantial results, is that we deploy seasoned staff who have done this type of work many times before. First, we deploy a much higher proportion of senior leadership than most other firms, who typically provide (and bill you for) an army of junior consultants in order to execute the unfocused analysis described above. Our seasoned leadership is able to detect, and focus the analysis on, the best opportunities rapidly and reliably. Second, even our junior staff also typically has cost reduction experience; they are not drawn from a ‘pool’ of generic analysts.

This seasoned staff, armed with a clear map of where the cost reduction opportunities lie, focuses on engaging senior management to lay out the particulars of the cost reduction and work with them to drive the cost reductions down into the organization. This is in sharp contrast to the more typical phenomenon of junior analysts working with junior client staff, documenting hundreds of small ideas. We simultaneously provide a ‘birds eye view’ as well as detailed analysis of each opportunity (for example, we can show the number of managers in a Business Unit or Function, by organizational layer, who have low spans of control and can name them if necessary). We find that engaging senior executives to address large opportunities very early in the process both increases the size of the ultimate savings as well as the speed and reliability of execution.

We use benchmarks and other well established methodologies to cut costs surgically

Over the years, we have developed many benchmarks and streamlined methods to identify cost reduction opportunities and to help pinpoint the focus of execution (in the example cited above, specific individuals with low spans of control in middle management). So while we engage senior executives to apply leadership and build momentum, we can work at a very granular level with their subordinates to flesh out the implementation details. We understand, and can respond to, the many detailed issues that arise at the implementation stage. We encounter very few such issues or concerns that we have not already addressed in other client situations many times over.

We describe our process as ‘surgical’ since we are especially careful near the sources of lifeblood for the organization – revenue generation and customer service being preeminent. For example, we take care to cut back or redesign high cost administrative functions which are adjuncts to the sales process without impairing
the sales results.

We take the mystery out of the cost reduction process by giving you a clear understanding of the scale of cost reduction available, coupled with clear rationale founded on penetrating analysis of your expense structure. You can have high confidence that the savings are real, and will get done, because of the experience level of our team as well as the rigor of the analysis. And you will know that the reductions are sustainable, since they have been carefully crafted to preserve the resources that drive sales and profits.