L.E.K. helps business services providers create competitive advantage in a market focused on delivering both exceptional service to end customers and attractive ROI to shareholders. The business services sector is exploiting opportunities driven by globalization, consolidation and new technology. And new integrated offerings are forcing established players to develop scalable services that satisfy evolving regulatory and environmental standards. New technology platforms are also driving lower-cost models that are disruptive to incumbent businesses, but provide opportunities for new entrants and active players.

Our business services help clients take advantage of attractive opportunities, develop innovative business models and outperform their competitors. The sector is diverse, including professional services, education and training, and support services and outsourcing. Multinational organizations and specialist service providers need to analyze their critical performance drivers, evaluate contractual frameworks and continue to evolve service offering strategies that can provide a competitive advantage.

We combine in-depth industry understanding with deep technical expertise to enable clients to develop winning strategies for acquisition and divestment, service development, new market entry, regulation and political risk management, operational efficiency, and strategy activation. With our support, these clients have been able to develop new service offerings for an increasingly energy-efficient world, maximize ROI from strategic investments and execute detailed plans for international growth.

• Freight & Logistics
• Industrial and Professional Services
• Legal Ops and Tech
• Outsourcing and Support Services
• Properties and Facilities Management
• Recruitment and Staffing

Consumer products companies cover a vast array of product categories and come in many shapes and sizes. Strategic decision-making is often made challenging by the complexity of these businesses, which can have multiple brands or divisions, target consumer groups, geographies, channels of distribution, and so on. Consider the following market dynamics:

The marketplace is facing channel disruption on a dramatic scale, growing ecommerce penetration and the continued strengthening of Amazon, new and disruptive business models, demographic shifts and renewed spending priorities, highly informed and empowered consumers, and rapidly evolving technologies.

The changing channel landscape is forcing many consumer brands to restructure their go-to-market strategies to drive more productivity from fewer points of distribution, and to build direct-to-consumer strategies that require capabilities and expertise that don’t typically reside in-house today.

The role and influence of brands have also evolved. Today, consumers are increasingly looking for “specialty” brands that deliver on precise needs, and thus they grant brands less “permission” to expand beyond their core. The appeal of power brands has eroded, and the prevalence of private label and other value brand alternatives gives consumers many choices when they’re trading down, particularly in an hourglass economy. This makes it paramount for any branded consumer products company to take a hard look at its brand proposition and ensure it is sufficiently relevant and compelling.

L.E.K. Consulting combines deep industry expertise, fact-based insights and sophisticated analytics to identify solutions to complex issues and to build confidence among management teams so they can take informed strategic action. Consumer products companies partner with us to deliver strategies that drive growth, create competitive advantage, unlock profit and value creation opportunities, and mitigate risk. Our approach is highly objective and fact-based, but we also take extraordinary care to involve management teams throughout the process, as appropriate, to ensure full alignment.

How we help

Consumer products companies, from small emerging brands to large global enterprises, engage us to:

Accelerate growth. Our core focus is growth strategy, with a track record of guiding consumer products companies to prioritize the right growth vectors and align on how to activate the strategies necessary to realize tangible results. We can address this challenge by applying different lenses; for example, evaluating opportunities based on Edge Strategy® and Strategic Market Position principles, and grounding strategic options in deep consumer understanding — both psychographic and behavioral — and brand position to clearly define “permission” areas of highest strategic value, conduct rigorous market evolution framing, and perform business case and scenario analysis.

Define brand position and strategy. We believe that strategy should be consumer-driven — it must be grounded in a sound view of your core target consumer segments, what they value, how they behave along the purchase path, what motivates them to make decisions, etc. Positioning your brand squarely against the right consumers and in the right way follows from this. Deep analytics and years of expertise allow us to bring the right strategic frameworks and guidance to clients to focus their brands appropriately and allow them to unlock superior value.

Define the right channel strategy. We help clients navigate this very complex issue by clearly defining the roles, rules and related strategies for each channel segment. In doing so, we assist clients with many aspects of channel strategy, including deciding where and where not to participate, growing sales and profit productivity across points of distribution, restructuring distribution in light of legacy and digital channel evolution, refining distributor and marketplace strategies, building or recalibrating DTC strategies, defining holistic digital and ecommerce strategies, and more.

Execute value-creating deals. We support our clients at every stage of the deal life cycle — from evaluation to diligence to integration to growth planning. We have helped our consumer products clients execute billions of dollars’ worth of transactions, including mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, other partnerships, and divestitures.

Since the turn of the 21st century, according to Credit Suisse’s global wealth report, the world’s middle-class segment has seen the biggest growth, with population size nearly trebling during the 2000-2019 period. Meanwhile, the rate of internet penetration shot up from 16.8% in 2005 to 53.6% in 2019, according to the Telecommunication Development Sector (a special agency of the United Nations). Ready for one more statistic? According to a UNESCO-sponsored report, the global population of college students has more than doubled since 2000.

Increasingly affluent, connected and academically ambitious: That’s the modern world in a nutshell.

All this might seem like an ideal environment for growth in the education sector. The reality, however, is significantly more complicated. Public and private organizations alike face challenges in selecting the right geographical markets for expansion, creating the right educational offerings for each locality and making the appropriate digital investments for education delivery. The upshot is that in education, a robust strategy is more critical than ever.

Who we are

L.E.K. Consulting’s Global Education Practice (GEP) serves public, private nonprofit and private for-profit educational institutions. We also work with investors and foundations that are involved with the education industry. As one of the world’s foremost education consulting firms, we have led on-the-ground engagements in numerous countries and industry subsegments.

From Botswana to New Zealand, from China to the United Arab Emirates, from Poland to Paraguay, our 100-plus specialists travel around the globe to provide education-sector consulting services to investors, operators and philanthropists across various markets. We’ve led multiple on-site engagements in all education segments: early childhood, K-12 and higher education. We also offer specialties in English-language training, transnational education (TNE) and education technology (edtech).

We combine primary research with advanced analytics and strategy consulting to help clients realize growth opportunities in new sectors and geographies, including untapped developing countries. Our knowledge bank contains the lessons from over 700 engagements in 90 countries — lessons that we bring to bear in helping you formulate strategies of your own.

How we help

Clients engage us to:

Identify and characterize opportunities. With sustainable growth and profitability as strategic imperatives, we provide an aggregated overview of both regional and global education markets, local market demand, and the competitive landscape. This helps reveal commercial opportunities and relationships, which is an essential step in establishing and strengthening regional and global presence.

Assess potential investments. There’s a rapidly growing appetite for investment in the education sector, which has proved to be one of the most resilient industries. At the same time, more education companies are using acquisitions as a way to scale. We work closely with our private equity and corporate clients throughout the transaction cycle. Our support ranges from identifying attractive companies to performing commercial due diligence, as well as increasing portfolio company value growth and providing exit support.

Define winning strategies. We help clients transform insights into actionable, tactical initiatives that are in line with their goals and objectives. We accomplish this by conducting deep-dive market assessments, using powerful analytics and combining an understanding of local markets with an awareness of global trends in the education industry.

Evaluate key areas for potential growth. We assess opportunities for clients aiming to increase their offerings via expansion into adjacent education subsectors such as edtech. With our understanding of the education industry size and its magnitude, we also help clients create business plans for new opportunities, taking into account specific objectives and priorities.

Create value from the ecosystem. We tap into our partnerships across the education network — in innovation, talent, capital and impact. Our deep global network puts us in a unique position to support our clients in strategy development, private equity investments, mergers and acquisitions, and other areas.

The energy and environment sectors have become inextricably linked as companies around the world transition to more sustainable and socially responsible strategies for managing and safeguarding the world’s natural resources.

Companies competing in this space span the energy spectrum, from renewable energy technologies to alternative fuels such as hydrogen to conventional fossil fuels and power and utilities. Energy also incorporates the enabling technologies supporting electrification, a smarter grid and the transition to lower-carbon energy. On the environment side, key industries include consumer and industrial waste management and recycling, water and air quality management, and environmental testing, remediation and contaminant abatement.

It’s clear that the pace of change in the energy and environment sectors is accelerating rapidly. In response, the most successful and innovative companies are seeking out new growth opportunities, evaluating alternative business models, and leveraging technology and digital transformation.

How we help

Energy and environment companies partner with L.E.K. to develop and deliver strategies that drive growth, create competitive advantage, unlock profit and value creation opportunities, and mitigate risk. Our approach is highly objective and fact-based; we marshal our deep industry expertise and sophisticated analytics to identify solutions to complex issues and build confidence and alignment among management teams so they can take informed strategic action.

Financial services firms are facing an unprecedented range of strategic challenges, both from within and outside the industry. Consumer behaviors and financial needs are changing as a result of demographic shifts, social change and the acceptance of new technology as a means of delivering financial services. The availability of data and the resulting ability to understand customers better is increasing rapidly, inspiring a move away from product-centric approaches and toward more customer-centric models. Traditional business models are being disrupted directly by these trends, and by the emergence of the new fintech models they enable.

Political events such as Brexit, and (new and existing) restrictions on international capital flows, are likely to alter the natural evolution of global markets and change how international firms do business across borders. Regulation is becoming increasingly proactive and detailed in many jurisdictions.

A decade after the onset of the global financial crisis, its aftereffects persist in the form of historically low-interest rates and an ongoing lack of trust in the major traditional financial services brands. These challenges are forcing established companies to think strategically about where to invest and which new avenues of growth they may want to explore. They also create opportunities for disruptors that can offer customers both a new ethos and a new approach to delivering financial products and services.

How we help

Financial services companies of all sizes engage L.E.K. to help them develop practical, winning strategies for a dynamic market. We work in close partnership with senior executives and investors to resolve their most complex commercial challenges, committing significant senior time to every engagement. Our teams leverage both their deep sector knowledge and advanced analytical capability to develop the right approach to achieving clients’ goals:

Strategy review and development: We help our clients review, refine or develop their overarching corporate or business unit strategies. This starts from the highest-level goal setting, definition of vision and mission, and setting of risk appetite and other constraints and proceeds to support “where to play” choices in terms of industry sectors or product categories, geographies, stages in the value chain, customer segments and channels.

New market entry strategy, and new product and service development: We help our clients expand into new geographies and market segments. This includes mature and emerging geographical markets; consumer and business/commercial markets; mainstream and niche product areas; direct and intermediated markets; and new, innovative markets enabled by the rapid changes that are ongoing in financial services. Our market entry strategies for clients open the door to growth and long-term value creation, with a proven track record of success.

Identification and execution of value-creating transactions: We support our clients at every stage of the deal lifecycle, from evaluation to execution and integration, acting in both buy-side and sell-side roles. We create and deliver on innovative investment theses based on in-depth understanding of the underlying markets and their competitive dynamics, customers’ preferences and behaviors, and the specific differentiating characteristics of the assets under consideration.

Optimization of operations: L.E.K. works closely with clients to optimize processes, operations and organizational structures across the value chain. Frequent topics include commercial effectiveness, incentives and operating model design, including detailed assessment of the capabilities required to turn a “paper strategy” into practical success.

Advocate and protect their interests in litigation proceedings and regulatory matters: We have substantial experience in supporting clients in competition investigations and litigation situations, including in drafting formal submissions, and supporting or acting as expert witnesses. We employ a unique combination of commercial insight and analytical expertise to produce compelling arguments and evidence to withstand the detailed scrutiny and challenge inherent in these situations.

Countries around the world are facing common challenges and opportunities impacting the health of their citizens and their healthcare systems: aging populations, increase in chronic disease, healthcare cost growth outpacing economic growth, consumer access to health information, and unprecedented technological innovation (e.g., medical and pharmaceutical technology, information technology).

Against this backdrop, each region and country is confronting a unique combination of dynamics that challenge their healthcare systems to deliver better outcomes at a reduced cost burden.

United States

The U.S. spends more than $3 trillion (nearly 18% of GDP) on healthcare — two times or more dollars per capita than other developed nations, for quality and outcomes that lag these global peers.

For such a massive industry, most healthcare spending remains a local game. Constituents throughout the healthcare value chain face highly dynamic environments that are impacted by a number of key trends, including an aging and less healthy population; political and regulatory uncertainty; migration to value-based and accountable care models; integration across the care continuum; payer and provider consolidation; new and increased access to data, innovation and technology; increasing levels of consumer engagement and expectations; and increasing recognition of the role of social determinants of health. To make matters more complex, participants are migrating into each other’s spaces, and nonparticipants are entering the healthcare fray. For example, managed care organizations are buying providers; providers are offering health plans; and Apple, Google and other iconic brands are finding ways into the consumer engagement arena.

These and other challenges offer unprecedented opportunities for innovative and forward-thinking healthcare services companies to develop and deploy business models and solutions that reduce healthcare cost, improve quality and outcomes, and enhance the patient experience, while capturing value for shareholders.

Europe

In Europe, aging populations are placing significant burdens on healthcare delivery systems and payers to “do more, better, with less.” Providers are working to drive clinical excellence and consistency across their activities, and to create improved linkages across different care pathway settings. Ancillary service providers, such as diagnostic imaging, dialysis and pathology lab companies, are using operational best practices across their increasingly international networks to improve quality for lower cost. Clinicians are adapting to growing demands on their time by incorporating increasing levels of digitization in their workflows. And patients are looking to technology to inform their healthcare decision-making and, in some markets, paying for accelerated access to healthcare in response to lengthening public sector waiting times.

Asia-Pacific

The Asia-Pacific region has a wide-ranging set of healthcare systems with varied maturity profiles ― most emerging markets in the region have nascent public healthcare reimbursement systems, while established markets have a higher degree of universal coverage.

Healthcare systems across the region are rapidly evolving, with overall healthcare spending projected to surge to US$2.3 trillion by 2026. Aging populations and the rapidly growing burden from noncommunicable diseases — fueled in part by an increasingly urbanized lifestyle — are driving demand. Especially in Southeast Asia, private healthcare providers are capitalizing on this demand by addressing the systemic issues in public health.

The healthcare systems in many developing markets are constrained. For example, public hospitals are often overcrowded and plagued by a shortage of doctors, medical supplies and diagnostic equipment, which affects the quality of care. These strains on APAC’s health infrastructure present significant opportunities to reduce reliance on hospital-centric care. Models such as ambulatory surgery centers, home care and telehealth will therefore flourish.

L.E.K. Consulting works with senior healthcare executives to help solve their most complex challenges during this period of dynamic change. We partner with healthcare systems, payers, providers, technology and solutions organizations, distributors, and healthcare investors to improve business performance by unlocking new market opportunities, improving organizational agility, supporting higher quality outcomes at lower costs and increasing profitability.

How we help

L.E.K.’s senior executive team delivers the industry insight and strategic perspective required to address critical business issues. Our collaborative, project-based approach is designed to build client capabilities by providing senior executives with the knowledge, tools and support they need to address specific pain points and move forward with confidence. To complement the deep industry experience of our team, we employ seasoned executives from major healthcare enterprises who have “been there and done that” and lend real-world, hands-on perspective to relevant engagements. And our heritage as a strategic advisor supporting mergers and acquisitions (M&A) has been instrumental in honing our process that combines unmatched analytical rigor, detailed analysis and rapid execution.

Some of the ways we help leading healthcare services organizations include:

Enabling growth and new business development: We work closely with clients to assess new markets, prioritize strategic growth opportunities, develop business plans and commercial models, and codify implementation roadmaps to reduce costs and improve healthcare outcomes and quality, while creating shareholder value.

Developing strategies in response to changing regulations: We assist clients in developing unique solutions to address an evolving marketplace by leveraging our in-depth understanding of policy, empirical and fact-based insights, and a detailed analysis of a client’s capabilities and assets.

Driving innovation: We empower clients to transform ideas into new industry models. We demonstrate the ability to “move the needle” on quality and cost trends through thoughtful research, clear articulation and refinement of the value proposition, and a practical approach to integrating new solutions into the healthcare delivery value chain.

Enhancing social and healthcare delivery models: We collaborate with clients to define models for technologies, products and services to meet increasing demand for preventive healthcare in primary, acute, home and social care settings.

Capitalizing on the emerging healthcare “retail” market: L.E.K. supports clients along the value chain (including payers, benefit managers and care providers) to create robust strategies to enhance revenues, identify new market opportunities and provide consumers with innovative solutions. We combine consumer research with quantitative analysis of growth and profitability, modeling of adoption rates, and other market dynamics.

Improving operational effectiveness: Our hands-on expertise with payers, providers and other constituents enables us to work closely with senior executives and line management to diagnose issues and develop and implement performance improvement plans. We have deep experience across the healthcare value chain in functions such as sales and marketing, customer service and retention, revenue cycle, medical management and clinical operations, and finance.

Evaluating M&A opportunities: We have deep expertise in advising strategic and financial investors to identify high-yield investment opportunities. Our commercial due diligence efforts also feature post-acquisition strategy and integration services to optimize the value of portfolio companies.

The accelerated change that took place during the COVD-19 pandemic and the convergence of breakthrough scientific innovation, digital advancements and new business models have reshaped the life sciences industry. These advancements offer promise for substantial improvement in patient care and have opened up new opportunities for players across the life sciences market landscape.

However, this evolving and increasingly competitive landscape has also raised several new challenges, including increased pricing pressure, uncertain market access dynamics, evolving consumer behavior and disruption from nontraditional healthcare players. These trends are forcing life sciences companies to think strategically about which aspects of their current business they want to invest in and which new avenues of growth they will need to explore.

At L.E.K., we help life sciences and pharmaceutical executives develop practical strategies and plans to improve healthcare for patients and win in a dynamic global healthcare market.

How we help

Small, midsize and large multinational life sciences companies routinely engage us to:

Define and execute corporate strategy: We work closely with our clients to define and execute customized strategies to drive long-term, sustainable value. Whether it’s defining a new business model, driving growth beyond a first product, evaluating attractive adjacencies, determining how to scale the team or building franchise leadership, our team has a proven track record of helping our clients build winning strategies unique to their particular circumstances.

Expand into new markets: We help our clients expand into new geographies and market segments. This includes mature and emerging markets; prescription and consumer markets; primary and specialty care markets; chronic, acute and orphan markets; research, diagnostic and therapeutic markets; and new, innovative markets. Our market access strategies for clients open the door for growth and long-term value creation.

Execute value-creating deals: We support our clients at every stage of the deal lifecycle — from search and evaluation to execution and post-transaction integration. We have helped our life sciences clients execute more than $140 billion worth of transactions including in-licensing, out-licensing, strategic partnerships, M&A, joint ventures, divestitures and royalty monetization transactions.

Launch innovative products and services: We team up with our clients to develop commercial launch strategies in mature and emerging markets. We have demonstrated success in supporting leading pharmaceutical, biotech and device brands across all key regions. Our commercial planning and launch expertise includes pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical drugs, vaccines, life science tools, diagnostics, and life sciences enablers e.g., CROs/CDMOs.

Optimize operations: We work closely with our clients to optimize operations, organizational structures, financials and processes across the life sciences value chain. Our work for clients has increased productivity and contributed to top- and bottom-line growth at the corporate, business unit and operational team levels in a number of life sciences sectors.

New delivery platforms, new digital payment models and new competitors are blowing up existing profit streams for media, entertainment and technology companies. Companies are struggling to find new ways to engage and profit from today’s digital consumer. With hundreds of projects in each part of the ecosystem, L.E.K. Consulting advises clients in all areas of media, entertainment and technology. We help our clients grow profits and remain competitive amid market uncertainty.

How we help

We specialize in growth strategy development, transaction support and operations improvement. Our insights, clarity and advice achieve high-impact results for clients, including:

• TV sector (cable channels, national and local broadcast, satellite, OTT/over-the-top Internet video, IPTV, short-form-video, TV content production, post-production, etc.)
• Distribution companies (cable companies, satellite companies, IPTV, OTT infrastructure companies)
• Advertising (TV, digital, radio, newspaper, outdoor/out-of-home, cinema, etc.)
• Film (studios, cinemas, home entertainment, retail, production, post-production, etc.)
• Video games and VR
• Gambling
• Radio
• Live entertainment (sports, music, theater, etc.)
• Site-based entertainment (theme parks)
• Publishers (internet media companies, books, magazine, newspapers, magazines, etc.)
• Licensed consumer products

We help our clients meet the challenge of new technologies that are reshaping pricing, business models and competition.

We have undertaken a number of substantial projects for nearly every major movie studio, TV channel group, broadcast network and TV distribution conglomerate.

As the healthcare landscape continues to evolve and present new challenges, many companies are finding that growth is slowing and profitability is declining from existing products and traditional approaches. L.E.K. has experience across the entire medtech value chain (from contract manufacturing to distribution to the actual provision of care), helping clients overcome many of the key challenges they face today and take advantage of distinct opportunities that are presenting themselves. Some of these challenges and opportunities include:

• Slowing U.S. healthcare spending growth: Cost pressures on the U.S. healthcare system are manifesting into slowing growth for medical device companies domestically, forcing medtechs to look abroad for new avenues of revenue growth, particularly in high-growth, emerging markets. However, incremental growth from emerging markets is unlikely to be sufficient to satisfy shareholders’ growth expectations, thereby forcing medtechs to revisit other nontraditional growth pathways and to access new revenue pools. With less than 8% of overall healthcare spending devoted to medical devices, medtechs have opportunities to expand their solutions, particularly those that reduce other cost components (e.g., reducing the pharmacological cost burden of expensive patient segments, reducing labor inefficiencies).

• Increased focus on accountability and value-based payments presents both an opportunity and a challenge for medtechs, as providers are forced to consider the total cost of care and look for medtech partners to help take on a larger role in driving down costs. Additionally, increased focus on accountability is further driving providers to consolidate into large health systems in order to drive cost efficiencies and to seek participation across the care continuum; while this provider consolidation is leading to opportunities for medtechs to focus selling efforts on large health systems, it also presents challenges for suppliers that must deal with more sophisticated procurement and standardization needs as well as heightened competition for the largest accounts.

• Traditional lines blurring across stakeholders in the medtech value chain: Medtechs may also be able to realize opportunities by redefining the boundaries of their businesses. This is reflected in how many large medtechs are expanding their service offerings and, in some cases, even providing care (e.g., Medtronic buying Diabeter), distributors expanding their own portfolios of manufactured products and selling their own branded products (e.g., Cardinal Health), and, conversely, some manufacturers vertically integrating into distribution (e.g., Bard acquiring Liberator Medical). GPOs are likewise expanding their service offerings (beyond contracting), and contract manufacturers of medical devices are also moving into upstream functions such as product design and prototyping.
• Medtech supplier consolidation: Consolidation among providers and pressures to provide broad portfolios of products present smaller players with both challenges and opportunities to compete in an increasingly concentrated competitive landscape.

• Increased focus on services and solutions: More so than with other types of suppliers to health systems, medtechs are particularly well-positioned to differentiate themselves as “solution” providers, solve key customer unmet needs and increase customer stickiness. There will be “losers” in the race to be preferred partners with leading health systems (that increasingly want fewer, deeper partners), but the benefits will be substantial as providers consolidate and worth the upfront investments to win the long game.
• Medtech commercial model evolution: Given the changes described above, medtechs are re-evaluating their approach to serving customers (e.g., through innovative gain-sharing models), and are also being forced to revisit their segmentation and targeting approaches to more effectively (and efficiently) serve customers that are changing in both their composition (e.g., increased administrator influence) and broader needs (e.g., dealing with growing accountability).

• Medtech evolution in pricing and contracting: Given the evolution in the provider landscape, medtechs are finding it more and more important to upgrade how they segment/tier their customers, as well as how they price their products and contract with their customers. Historically, high product margins and the dominance of fee-for-service reimbursement enabled medtechs to send armies of sales reps to sell to individual physicians with minimal focus on contracting strategies and pricing discipline. Although medtechs could “afford” GPO fees and pricing inefficiencies historically, they cannot anymore. As a result, medtechs are increasingly looking for ways to provide tiered pricing and service to customers, re-evaluate their existing GPO relationships and increase focus on direct contracting approaches with large health systems.

Given the above opportunities and challenges, we believe that changes in the healthcare landscape open new and profitable opportunities for companies that can successfully evolve. In this environment, medtechs must endeavor not only to maximize returns from their existing business but also to use their core competencies as the foundation for new sources of growth and opportunities.

There are several different growth vectors that medtechs can pursue, but which one is right for your company? As a growth strategy consulting firm, L.E.K. has proven experience helping medtech companies navigate these questions, and employs deep research and sophisticated analytics to solve complex issues, distill key insights and, ultimately, deliver high-impact results.

Our diverse service offerings cover all avenues of growth strategy, and can be customized to help you pursue one or more of the strategic options that best fit your growth objectives and potential.

How we help

At L.E.K., helping clients grow their business and drive enhanced shareholder value is in our DNA. Our approach is customized for your unique situation and our team brings proven experience helping companies determine the best growth strategy. Our MedTech practice includes deep experience across all major product segments of the industry, including Consumables and Supplies, Medical Equipment, Procedure-Specific Devices, Healthcare IT and Drug Delivery Devices. Some of our core offerings across these segments include:

• Customer segmentation and targeting: Given the rise of consolidation, integration and increasingly varied provider models and needs, medtechs must understand the key distinctions between large, integrated payer-provider health system customers and the smaller, less sophisticated community hospitals; larger health systems may be seeking more long-term partnerships, whereas smaller hospitals may only be seeking a transactional relationship. We can help medtechs navigate this complex landscape, bringing to bear insights from our proprietary database of hospital systems, as well as our annual L.E.K. Hospital study.
• Service and solution expansion: Medical device companies are not only expected to provide innovative devices but are increasingly expected to do so as part of a broader solution that addresses a specific problem/need, whether clinical or operational in nature. Solutions should ideally incorporate the three elements of products, services and data and, ideally, should include ways to measure/track performance (if not explicitly linked to payments). We have extensive experience in helping medtechs expand into services and solutions across many hospital departments (e.g., OR, pharmacy, lab) and care settings (e.g., ASCs). We can help develop integrated solutions by prioritizing customers’ unmet needs and then defining the range of technologies, services and data required to address them. Moreover, we have deep experience in defining and implementing the organizational changes required to effectively deploy these new solutions.
• Commercial model optimization: In order to succeed in today’s healthcare environment, your organizational structure and commercial model must be customer-centric and well-aligned to the evolving needs of leading health systems. We understand the needs of these health systems and what they are looking for from their medtech partners. More important, we have advised medical device companies across all stages of development, helping them build out the organization and commercial infrastructure required to win in today’s market, which often includes redefining of commercial roles and rebalancing selling resources.
• Pricing strategy and value articulation: As healthcare moves to an outcomes-driven model, medtech pricing models are also shifting. To optimize market access and utilization, your pricing strategy and value articulation plan must be as precisely calibrated as your products. Our team supports the entire process, market by market, helping you effectively communicate the value of your product, anticipate and respond to payer reactions, and arrive at a clear strategy that pinpoints the right pricing levels and market entry strategy for maximum returns. Once products are in the market, we can help articulate the value of discrete products or broader solutions and/or help improve internal pricing strategies and associated processes.
• Transaction support: Large strategic companies (e.g., Medtronic, Stryker, BD, Abbott) have been particularly active over the past three years. Although some deals have focused on expansion within existing capabilities (e.g., Zimmer Biomet), most recent deals have been focused on acquiring new capabilities (often to enable migration toward more holistic “solutions” as described above). We are a leader in transaction support, helping both corporate and private equity clients. As a leading transaction support advisor, we have helped our clients execute more than $120 billion in life sciences and medical device deal value. We provide support at every step of the process, including M&A and partnership strategy, acquisition screening, commercial due diligence, negotiation support and post-merger integration. With respect to commercial due diligence, our reputation is second to none in delivering top-notch assessments of medtech target companies (both on the buy side and sell side) within extremely tight time frames.
• Product/market evaluation: Whether you are projecting revenues for your current product portfolio or weighing options for assets you might acquire or markets you might invest in, an independent, unbiased and evidence-based evaluation will provide you with the confidence required to make winning decisions. We apply a disciplined approach to product evaluation that combines quantitative analyses with qualitative research, and proprietary benchmarks, arriving at accurate projections that help you prioritize assets, allocate R&D investments and make rational go/no-go program decisions.

What does private equity (PE) need from a consulting partner? Increased confidence, reduced risk, easy access to insights and experts, all in support of positive outcomes — successful bids, tangible growth plans and maximizing returns on exit.

For three decades, L.E.K. Consulting has worked alongside our private equity clients to provide comprehensive support across the full transaction cycle. Our support ranges from identifying attractive companies to commercial due diligence, portfolio company value growth and exit support. Today we are one of the largest and most experienced strategy consulting firms serving private equity firms.

Our work with PE draws on our expertise in business strategy consulting, performance improvement advice, global reach and deep industry knowledge. We deliver forward-looking strategic insights with the singular aim of helping clients achieve superior investment returns.

Private equity firms typically require fast turnaround in short timeframes, and our ability to consistently deliver robust, analytically informed insights in fast-moving market conditions sets us apart from other consulting firms.

Our transaction support includes exceptional responsiveness and support across a range of transactions from multibillion dollar deals to mid-market and growth capital investments. We work with a wide range of PE clients and they tell us that they value our ability to provide rapid access to insights based our experience in strategy work in the relevant industry and perspective from other related markets around the world.

Private equity firms across the world engage L.E.K. Consulting on more than 400 projects each year, providing us with experience that benefits not only our private equity clients, but their investors, financing sources and management teams.

The retail industry is undergoing tremendous change. Increasing ecommerce penetration and the continued strengthening of Amazon, proliferation of brand direct-to-consumer strategies and new business models, demographic shifts and renewed spending priorities, highly informed and empowered consumers, rapidly evolving technologies, and massive restructuring of major legacy channel segments, to name a few, are creating major disruption.

Achieving top- and bottom-line growth is a challenge for many, and for some, long-term viability is in question. Today, retailers need to objectively evaluate their roles and value propositions, and prioritize the strategies ― both refinements and bold moves ― required to win in the future. L.E.K. Consulting combines deep industry expertise, fact-based insights and sophisticated analytics to identify solutions to complex issues and to build confidence among management teams so they can take informed strategic action. Retailers partner with us to deliver strategies that drive growth, create competitive advantage, unlock profit and value-creation opportunities, and mitigate risk.

How we help

We work with clients across a variety of strategic issues to deliver actionable insights that lead to high-impact results.

Technology firms are facing new challenges with navigating through the digital revolution. From facing the uncertainty of new digital payment models to headwinds from new competitors, security concerns and disintermediation, today’s leading technology players must find new ways to engage with customers.

With hundreds of projects in each part of the ecosystem, L.E.K. Consulting advises clients in all areas of technology. We serve both corporate and private equity firms, synthesizing our commercial knowledge, access to technology decision-makers, and client perspectives to develop strategies that make an impact.

Our experience covers a diverse range of product and service segments, including companies across hardware, software, services, components, ecommerce/digital as well as private equity investors considering investments in the technology space.

We have conducted numerous projects across growth strategy development, transaction support and operations improvement. As a result, clients are able to grow profits and remain competitive amid market uncertainty.

Some of our practice areas include:

• Consumer electronics: Our consumer technology practice spans projects focused on go-to-market/demand generation, understanding customers and transaction services. We advise clients on matters including sharing economy apps, consumer electronics, internet portals, mobile video/OTT and ad tech.

• Enterprise application software: Spending on enterprise application software is increasingly being put toward modernizing legacy platforms and transitioning applications to the cloud. We advise clients considering investments in areas including workflow automation, collaboration, human resource management, healthcare IT, business intelligence, CRM and ERP software.

• IT services: As services increase in importance, we advise clients seeking to grow through taking advantage of emerging market trends, understanding market dynamics or anticipating competitive actions.

• Technology infrastructure: We advise clients seeking to optimize the delivery of IT solutions and services to employees, partners and/or customers, including network performance management, network security, data integrity, communications, video conferencing, services/staffing, data centers and the Internet of Things.

• Telecommunications: Our telecommunications engagements span a diverse range of corporate and business unit strategic issues including corporate strategy, tactical business planning, new business economics, improving shareholder value, mergers and acquisitions, licensing, joint ventures, operations, cost reductions, startups, and many other areas. Our communications clients are global and include industry leaders in both the service and network infrastructure segments.

The travel and transport sector is undergoing profound change. Ten years from now, it will look nothing like it does today. There are numerous contributing factors:

• Competing crosscurrents of globalization and protectionism
• Large shifts in global wealth distribution and an explosion of disposable income in various emerging markets
• Major changes in the travel purchase behavior of both consumers and businesses
• Consolidation in many supplier markets such as airlines and hotels
• Rapid realignment of the travel distribution landscape
• The rise of Big Data and its potential to reframe travel and transportation planning
• Disruptive technologies such as personal device ubiquity, the Internet of Things (IoT), augmented reality (AR) and the “new mobility” of ride-sharing, autonomous vehicles, electrification and transport drones
• Increasing attention to, and associated regulation of, factors contributing to climate change

The impact will be felt in all the travel and transport industries: airlines and airports, hospitality, travel and tourism, maritime, rail, mobility, and freight and logistics — all the services that exist to connect the world by moving people and goods from one place to another and accommodating them on the way.

Industry leaders must plan for these significant macro challenges and for the specific, complex demands of their own domains. What will be the shape of travel and transport one decade from now? How will these trends transform the ability to make the world more connected for businesses and consumers? Who will the winners be, and how exactly will they prevail?

How we help

Leaders in the travel and transport sector are asking:

• Which of these dynamics will have the greatest impacts on my industry and my company?
• How will these create dislocations in my competitive landscape? Where are new threats emerging? In my own industry, or in other areas like technology?
• In the face of so much uncertainty, how can I formulate effective short- and long-term strategies?
• What capabilities should I grow organically? What capabilities should I acquire? What capabilities should I shed?
• What alliances should I be considering, both within and outside my industry?
• How should I organize and what new skills must be emphasized on my leadership team?

As a travel and transport industry thought leader, we help our clients navigate, or fundamentally reshape, the changing economics of their respective industries. Whether it’s driving airline industry consolidation or partnerships, introducing new ancillary revenue, optimizing travel loyalty programs, privatizing airports or improving the guest experience at hotels, our work fundamentally changes industries for the better.

When it comes to identifying growth strategies and investment opportunities that reflect passenger and freight market developments, or through cost saving and operational performance improvements in network and logistics businesses, we have the industry knowledge and expertise to give our clients a competitive edge.

L.E.K. Consulting’s Aerospace & Defense practice has a 30-year legacy of working with clients to drive innovation and growth across all aspects of this large and diverse industry sector. Public and private aerospace equipment, aerospace aftermarket, defense industrial base and defense procurement organizations rely on our strategic counsel to identify and exploit new opportunities, improve existing operations, and develop strategies and processes to secure successful positions in highly competitive contracts.

We assist clients with their strategic planning, mergers and acquisitions, product development strategy, contract economics, commercial bid and procurement strategies, procurement systems reform, and global market evaluation. Our work results in accelerated decision-making for our clients across diverse segments of the aerospace and defense industry, serving organizations involved in aerospace equipment, the aerospace aftermarket, the defense industrial base and defense procurement. We are also the No. 1 strategic advisor to the aviation industry worldwide; we have completed more than 500 air-transportation projects across aerospace and defense, airlines, airports, and travel.

We help clients address their needs in the following areas:

Aerospace aftermarket consulting

Our strengths in financial modeling, negotiation support and contract pricing guide maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) service providers and senior executives in the aerospace industry to reduce costs and to price contracts effectively for a competitive advantage. We also advise clients on how to expand their aftermarket activities to enhance their topline growth and market reach.

Aerospace equipment consulting

We have a well-deserved reputation for providing quality analysis that helps aerospace equipment companies develop portfolio strategies that drive growth. We also help our clients improve their manufacturing performance and develop new businesses.

Defense industrial base consulting

We are a trusted advisor to governments as well as public and private clients on projects involving industrial assets that are of direct or indirect importance in the manufacturing of equipment to provide critical national military capability. We combine strategic analysis with operational, financial and risk modeling to empower our defense clients to respond to rapidly changing market forces and requirements.

Defense procurement consulting

Defense expenditure is a major commitment of public money in many countries, but processes to convert spending to effective outputs have proved very difficult to achieve. L.E.K. has been called upon to undertake high-profile and impactful assignments in the defense industry —including reviews of government spending as well as evaluations of major changes in the structure and operation of defense agency procurement. Our work has also focused on improving the effectiveness of the interfaces among the armed forces customer, delivery agency and industry tasked with developing and delivering capability.

Examples of our work

To learn more about how we help clients create value in the aerospace and defense sector, please refer to these additional insights and case examples:

• A major Asian carrier commissioned L.E.K. to improve the efficiency of its maintenance process. We re-engineered the airline’s internal MRO practices, which resulted in a net recovery of three aircraft in each maintenance cycle.
• A niche landing-gear manufacturer engaged L.E.K. to develop a strategy to supply the commercial, business aviation and helicopter markets. L.E.K. also assessed opportunities in adjacent segments such as hydraulic systems and identified and analyzed acquisition targets.
• L.E.K. scoped out the design-and-build strategy for a class of naval combat ships on behalf of an industrial client. The factors included overall demand, capability and build-strategy assumptions, site options, purpose and activities, investment options, decision criteria and phasing, and organizational design.
• A government ministry and munitions manufacturer employed L.E.K. to conduct an independent review of its contract to supply medium-, heavy- and small-arms ammunition at a benchmark price. L.E.K.’s analysis uncovered assumptions in the contract that resulted in a misunderstanding of the agreed price, and helped negotiate a new agreement between the two parties.
• An MRO provider engaged L.E.K. to support the renegotiation of a long-term MRO service agreement for maintenance and supply to a major European government’s defense department. Working with L.E.K., the client demonstrated that its costs were competitive, and that productivity targets could be achieved within the existing contract structure. The client successfully renegotiated its contract, worth over $100 million.
• In a separate engagement, L.E.K. devised a business plan to grow the international air-traffic-control business of a U.S. aviation agency based on its assessment of the global and regional trends in this sector.
• L.E.K. worked with an industrial client to identify how a consortium bidding to deliver military technical training can modernize the curriculum and facilities to provide better integration, responsiveness, alignment and cost-effectiveness.
• L.E.K. supported the U.K. Ministry of Defence and Bernard Gray in a wide-ranging and independent review of defense acquisition with the intent of making “recommendations to secure better value for money in major acquisition programs.” Working with the review team, our experts provided high-quality, objective and independent analytical work that helped the review meet its brief.
• In partnership with the world’s largest aerospace company, L.E.K. assessed the Middle East MRO marketplace and developed a business plan for support services and a joint-venture operation.
• L.E.K. helped a major general aviation OEM identify a gap in the personal-/business-aircraft market and design and launch a new aircraft based on an existing platform to target this gap. The new aircraft was a major success for the company, becoming one of its leading products and profit centers.
• L.E.K. examined the structural attractiveness and competitive dynamics of the aerospace ERO sector for a U.K. aerospace/automotive client and assessed the dynamics of individual engine component repair opportunities (plasma arc welding, brazing, etc.).
• A major tier 1 supplier asked L.E.K. to help develop a new system concept to support a supply-contract bid for a new wide-body commercial airframe program. Leveraging our deep experience working with airline clients, we helped the company define new features and capabilities for the system as well as quantify the incremental value creation these capabilities would offer. We also supported the company in developing its negotiation strategy for the contract.

L.E.K. helps leading companies across the global automotive value chain develop and activate customized strategies for growth and success. Our deep sector expertise is built on broad project-based experience working with companies and investors across key market segments, including:

• Light vehicle component manufacturers
• Heavy and commercial vehicle component manufacturers
• Parts and vehicle distributors
• OEMs
• Aftermarket parts and brands
• Aftermarket retailers and service providers

We help clients tackle the most critical issues facing the automotive industry today, including:

• How are consumer and regulatory changes affecting the future requirements for success across the automotive industry, and what strategies are operators using to grow/remain relevant?
• How should suppliers and OEMs respond to regional shifts in manufacturing supply and demand driven by growth in developing markets as well as recovery in North America and Europe?
• How is M&A reshaping the automotive full value chain, and what are the likely implications for suppliers of OEM and aftermarket parts?
• Where should parts and components suppliers look for growth in core versus adjacent markets, and what are the most viable growth pathways to consider?
• How can aftermarket parts and service providers take advantage of the ongoing shift from DIY to DIFM?
• How are changing needs in industrial end markets likely to impact demand for heavy vehicles, including trucks, construction equipment, agricultural machinery and numerous other specialty vehicle segments?

Examples of our work

L.E.K. is committed to providing our clients with insightful, meaningful and actionable results. We back up our recommendations with rigorous analysis and have a highly collaborative work style. The examples below provide more insights into how we’ve helped some of our automotive clients meet key objectives and achieve their goals:

• We helped a leading distributor of parts and supplies to the aftermarket service provider landscape create a strategy to overcome channel convergence in the industry and protect EBITDA margins. Industry research and analysis as well as workshops with the client’s management team helped build consensus around the facts and the best path forward.
• A major U.S. aftermarket service retailer engaged L.E.K. to create a “turnaround playbook” after recent margin erosion and stagnant sales. We identified the key strategic imperatives for the business and developed a set of core strategic initiatives and returned EBITDA to historical levels, thereby providing a foundation for growth.
• We worked with a provider of light repair services to the dealer channel to identify, prioritize and develop plans for growth into market adjacencies such as new service lines, a D2C model and an insurance product.
• A leading supplier of cast and forged parts to various heavy vehicle and industrial equipment end markets engaged L.E.K. to help develop a robust assessment of the company’s future growth opportunities in advance of a capital-raising transaction.
• We assisted a private equity-owned producer of branded automotive appearance and performance chemicals in reinvigorating growth across its portfolio. Our recommendations enabled the client to focus its efforts on the most critical areas, which included protecting the core, driving growth domestically and expanding internationally, thereby positioning the company well for a subsequent sale.
• A leading private equity firm engaged L.E.K. to help assess an online auto sales lead generator. Extensive primary research in the space indicated limited growth prospects for the target, and the client did not execute the investment opportunity.

The chemicals sector is one of L.E.K.’s primary areas of expertise. We understand the competitive nature and volatility of the chemicals market, and the issues and challenges that impact performance.

Leading chemicals firms around the globe benefit from the depth and breadth of our industry expertise. Through a deep knowledge of market forces, the changing competitive landscape, and customer needs, we help clients grow and invest successfully. Our expertise is shaped by our extensive project portfolio across key market segments, including:

• Specialty chemicals
• Commodity chemicals
• Fertilizers and agricultural chemicals
• Industrial gases
• Chemical distribution
• Integrated oil and gas (petrochemicals)

We help leading chemicals firms manage today’s critical issues and the impact on their businesses, including:

• The renewed competitiveness of North American producers arising from the unconventional oil and gas boom
• The changing nature of feedstocks, including bio-based alternatives
• Continued demand growth from emerging economies
• The rising competitiveness of Asia-based chemical players
• The most attractive market segments to invest in (e.g., where is innovation driving margin, what geographies/sectors have attractive demand characteristics)

Examples of our work

L.E.K. is committed to providing our clients with insightful, meaningful and actionable results. Read the results stories below to learn how we’ve helped clients realize their objectives:

• L.E.K. developed a pricing strategy, tool and implementation plan for the client to improve its profitability in North America. The final impact was more than $80 million per annum in incremental revenues in five years. In addition to repricing its key accounts, our client is utilizing the pricing model to inform a wide range of strategic decisions (e.g., refining contracting strategy, modeling the impact of potential changes to the competitive landscape).
• L.E.K. delivered a strategic assessment of the flavors and fragrances market for a leading North American player experiencing threats to its core business from production in emerging markets. The client gained a deep understanding of the likely evolution of feedstock development over the next several years, the competitive position of emerging-market producers and an effective strategy to handle this emerging threat.
• L.E.K. developed an expansion strategy for one of the world’s largest chemical distributors, including prioritization of potential acquisition targets to accelerate further expansion in the region.
• The client was focused on developing and commercializing renewable feedstocks and hydrocarbon substitutes by utilizing a proprietary technology. L.E.K. valued each of the major applications currently in development, assessed the total value of the portfolio ― including the optionality of yet-to-be-developed applications ― and identified and evaluated the relative attractiveness of various funding alternatives. The company has successfully transitioned from a startup to a commercial-scale leader in its field.

The industrial world is in the midst of significant transformation. The rapid proliferation of automation technology and industrial internet of things (IIoT)-enabled solutions has enabled new revenue streams and profit pools while introducing new actors and competitors to traditional industrial markets. Amid these rapid changes, manufacturers and suppliers of industrial equipment are faced with a multitude of new opportunities and disruptive threats to their established business strategy.

• Companies operating in the industrial equipment and technology market face a number of challenging strategic questions:
• What IIoT applications and automation technologies are being adopted in our core markets, and how should we adapt our product development strategy and overall solution offering?
• Given rapid technological development, how is maintenance and operation of industrial equipment evolving, and how can we drive more aftermarket parts and service revenue for our products?
• What new high-growth, high-margin industrial end markets are addressable with our products, services and solutions, and which should we enter?
• How should we gain access to innovative technologies — build, buy or partner?
• What companies are ideally positioned for growth in the industrial equipment and technology industry, and how should we deploy our investment resources?

L.E.K. Consulting supports leading industrial companies and investors as they navigate the rapidly evolving market for industrial equipment and technology solutions. We advise a diverse range of businesses, including original equipment manufacturers, component suppliers, service firms and private equity investors. Our experienced professionals have a deep understanding of key issues in the major underlying end markets — such as energy, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, food and beverage, mining, transportation, automotive, aerospace, and general manufacturing — that are heavy users of industrial equipment and technology. We bring a unique combination of objective analysis and insight, leveraging knowledge gained from decades of experience with leading industrial companies and investors in this space.

We help businesses create sustainable and differentiated value for their customers, their shareholders and the broader stakeholder environment. Our work focuses on several areas: 

• Market evaluation and strategy development: Market assessments, corporate and business unit strategy development, innovation support, sustainability strategy, capital allocation 
• Mergers and acquisitions: M&A strategy, target screening, transaction support/due diligence, post-merger planning and integration, alliances and joint venture planning, dispute resolution and litigation support services
• Commercial excellence: Customer strategy and segmentation, go-to-market and channel strategies, sales force effectiveness, pricing strategy, new product development 
• Performance improvement and operational excellence: Organizational effectiveness, cost out, operational and supply chain excellence, digital transformation, program management
• Data and analytics: Commercial decision support, analytics and data strategy, advanced analytics enablement

With the slowing of China’s mineral commodity demand growth comes a refocus on operational excellence, and of capitalizing on the age of automation and digitization to drive productivity. But even though a relentless focus on cost-efficiency is critical to maintain profitability while the race down the cost curve continues, an eye on shifting industry supply, demand and technology dynamics is critical to ensure commodity portfolios remain relevant to tomorrow’s consumers.

For mining service suppliers, principal challenges revolve around the impact of disruptive technologies on their service and product offerings enabled by automation and digitization, and being first to target growth adjacencies in a market where customers are more discerning and price conscious than they were a decade ago. L.E.K. Consulting has helped many clients successfully navigate these complex challenges.

Having delivered hundreds of successful engagements in the mining arena across the Americas, EMEA and Asia, L.E.K.’s natural resources team has deep expertise in helping clients solve their most difficult challenges, providing clients with end-to-end support to help answer key strategic questions.

Resource company clients ask us to help them solve key issues including:

• How do we deliver sustainable productivity improvement at the coal face?
• How do we capitalize on the IoT revolution to lower our costs and improve our product quality?
• How should we structure our mine portfolio to maximize value creation?
• Are the fundamentals for commodity X attractive, and how should we enter that market?
• How do we position for and participate in the shifting commodity trading dynamic?

We challenge our mining and mining equipment, technology and services (METs) clients to answer important questions such as:

• Where are the growth opportunities, and how can we refine our value proposition to win them?
• Which commodities/regions/customers are most attractive to serve, and how do we enter those segments?
• What adjacencies are appropriate to pursue for sustainable growth?
• Where and how can we gain greater cost-efficiency in our organization?
• How do we activate change to deliver our strategy or reduce our cost base?

Examples of our work

L.E.K.’s work has had a meaningful impact in driving financial outperformance for our clients, including how we:

• Restructured and drove productivity improvements at a large integrated coal mine and power station, delivering more than $110 million of cash benefit inside a two-year time frame
• Created a survival plan for a major coal producer facing significant financial losses and the threat of industrial action, which enabled the producer to return to profitability and sustain operations
• Devised a gold resource replacement strategy for a global mining major to underpin a decadelong run of total shareholder return outperformance
• Developed a growth strategy to double the value of newly acquired Australian mining assets, which facilitated outperformance of the original acquisition investment thesis
• Provided commercial support to an African nation renegotiating long-term marketing and sales agreements for mineral output, which assisted a major global producer and user of explosives to identify and deliver $100 million in cost reductions across the organization
• Assessed the attractiveness and potential entry strategies into adjacent mining services segments for a mining equipment rentals firm, which informed the business’s growth strategy for the following five years

L.E.K. brings substantial experience to the diversified agricultural sector, which we have developed by advising leading players across the Americas, Europe, Australia and Asia on a range of strategic, commercial and operational issues. Having completed hundreds of engagements within the diversified agribusiness sector, we understand the unique dynamics and economics of agricultural markets across the industry value chain, as well as the critical issues and challenges facing operators seeking to grow and elevate their performance.

L.E.K. works with agribusiness industry players and investors across virtually all segments of the commodity/specialty crop, animal protein and aquaculture value chains, including agricultural inputs, equipment and machinery, large-scale cultivation, processing/milling/refining, logistics, and distribution. Our deep agribusiness sector expertise and growth strategy development capabilities enable us to deliver uniquely rich insights that lead to meaningful impact to our clients. Core areas of focus include:

• Growth strategy development
• M&A strategy and transaction support
• Go-to-market commercial strategy and execution
• Business performance improvement
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Key questions and challenges

Based on our expertise in the agribusiness space, we support our clients in addressing critical issues such as:

• How to best respond to global growth trends and opportunities in agribusiness as the global demand for food ― particularly proteins ― continues to rise
• Where to seek growth opportunities ― both organic and inorganic ― beyond core geographic markets and in adjacent sectors
• How to develop an M&A strategy and roadmap that prioritizes growth pathways and targets
• How to win in existing and new markets versus established competitors
• How to integrate acquired companies more effectively to optimize performance and attain strategic goals
• How to develop more effective commercial capabilities and align with customer needs and preferences

Examples of our work

One of the best ways to understand how we can deliver insights with meaningful impact to your business is through the results we generate for our clients. Some examples include:

Agricultural inputs

• Defined a biotechnology company’s global commercialization strategy for a genetic modification technology platform in crop science, enabling the company to achieve a faster path to profitability
• Developed a strategy for a leading agrichemical company and helped improve profitability across its portfolio of herbicides and fungicides
• Assessed the manufacturing and distribution operations of a client’s recently restructured fertilizer business and evaluated future operational improvement initiatives for the business to drive performance improvement
• Conducted commercial due diligence of a manufacturer of harvesters for a specific agricultural crop across five geographies, enabling the client to fully understand the underlying market growth outlook and likelihood of the target company achieving its plan

Agricultural processing & logistics

• Conducted a detailed feasibility study for an “ABCD” agribusiness operator evaluating an investment in a greenfield oilseed crush plant in an emerging overseas market, enabling the client to invest with greater confidence
• Developed an operational blueprint for a grain logistics network, including investigation of site rationalization, identification of network efficiency improvement opportunities and financial assessments of potential options, to help guide the client’s investment decision-making
• Assisted a global poultry leader in defining its overall growth strategy and developing a pragmatic activation plan for execution of the new strategy
• Assessed a suite of possible operations expansion options for a global milk processor seeking to exploit growth opportunities, providing a clear picture of priorities and key areas of focus

Food and feed ingredients

• Conducted a strategic review of growth opportunities for an international food ingredient manufacturer in order to help it achieve its strategic goals and objectives
• Conducted commercial due diligence of a global flavor and ingredient and pet food company on behalf of a potential buyer to better inform its investment strategy
• Assisted a global agribusiness conglomerate in developing an M&A-led growth strategy for one of its food ingredient business units
• Reviewed the global malt industry structure and market dynamics and assessed the outlook for growth and profitability across key global malt markets to guide a client’s growth strategy
• Developed a business plan and valuation for a joint venture formed to use unique technologies to produce oils from sugar; L.E.K. determined the value of each party’s contributions and the structure of the preliminary agreement

Participants in the residential and commercial building and construction industry are routinely faced with increasing competition, pricing and margin pressures, labor shortages and uncertain construction cycles. These issues impact stakeholders throughout the value chain, including manufacturers, distributors and contractors, and across segments. A leading advisor to the building and construction sector, L.E.K. Consulting leverages its deep industry expertise to help companies navigate these dynamic and critical issues, capitalize on trends, and focus on high-potential growth initiatives to realize significant value.

We have spent more than 25 years advising building products and materials clients across every aspect of their business. Clients turn to us for expertise that covers the full spectrum of building and construction products and materials, including building materials, building products, distribution, and engineering and construction services.

We are uniquely positioned to advise building and construction clients because we constantly have our finger on the pulse of the industry. Our practice leaders in each region have both a deep local knowledge and an understanding of the commercial and operational dynamics of industrial companies. Every year we conduct a survey of more than 850 residential and commercial contractors. Furthermore, we maintain a proprietary database of views on industry drivers gathered over the course of hundreds of client engagements. These enable us to identify where we are in the economic cycle for residential and commercial construction markets and to forecast future movements.

Our track record in providing deal support for the building and construction sector is widely acknowledged, and our work has been endorsed by leading independent industry associations and spotlighted in various publications. We are recipients of both ACQ Global Awards and International M&A Awards. We also are sponsors of the Building & Infrastructure Conference, the only annual conference focused on M&A and growth issues within the industry.

L.E.K. Consulting is the leading global advisor to the packaging sector, with hundreds of projects completed around the world. We understand the packaging market across the entire value chain — from raw material suppliers and compounders to equipment and form, fill and seal (FFS) suppliers to converters to brand owners — and we are an ideal partner for companies seeking to grow or invest successfully in this sector.

We have broad packaging experience working for leaders in the sector. We help clients around the globe grow and invest successfully, focusing on M&A support services, growth strategy development, post-merger integration, operational improvement and market evaluation work. For example, we help clients develop customized strategies that increase share and capitalize on new markets and market segments.

Our deep expertise is shaped by our extensive project portfolio across the full spectrum of packaging sectors, including:

• Primary and secondary packaging
• Rigid and flexible packaging
• Substrates (plastic, paper, metal, glass, etc.) and recycled/sustainable packaging substrates (PLA, degradable molded fiber, etc.)
• Packaging products (caps and closures, labels, bottles, pouches, induction seals, etc.)
• Equipment (FFS equipment, injection molding, blow molding, thermoforming, extrusion, lamination equipment, hot runners, molds, consumable products, etc.)
• Value chain participants (raw material suppliers, graphic designers, printers, etc.)
• Packaging used in specific end markets (medical device packaging, pharmaceutical packaging, personal care packaging, cosmetics packaging, etc.)

Key questions and challenges

Our experienced professionals have a deep understanding of key issues faced by our clients, for example:

• What are key strategic packaging trends affecting specific sectors, and how can we take advantage of these trends to increase growth and profitability?
• How is the value chain changing, and what are the implications for channel participants?
• What are attractive sectors to invest in (e.g., where is there material conversion, where is innovation driving margin, what geographies/sectors have desirable demand characteristics)?

Leveraging data as a strategic asset can help make better decisions, forecast business outcomes and build a smarter enterprise. L.E.K. provides organizations with effective ways to analyze and model business events using internal and external data. We do so by applying advanced analytics capabilities through the lens of our extensive strategy and industry experience. The upshot is a common-sense approach to solving hard business problems with data science that’s firmly grounded in your industry.

Services include:

Commercial decision support

Get data-driven answers to your toughest business questions. You’ll end up with an improved understanding of your business and market dynamics, knowledge of where the opportunities are and what interventions are really working, increasing the ability to respond to market shifts and evolving customer needs.

Analytics and data strategy

Create a strategy to maximize the opportunities to apply data and analytics to your business. A robust strategy helps you gain consensus on key commercial issues and performance questions. You’ll benefit from a much clearer understanding and greater confidence in seizing the new opportunities created by data analytics and big data. This will accelerate your progress in developing new, improved products and services, as well as operating more efficiently and effectively.

Advanced analytics enablement

Run custom-built analytics on your own. Our advanced analytics toolkit includes models and data sets that are tested and proven to work in your specific commercial setting. You’ll acquire an ability to exploit data and create insights as your team members become highly capable users of a leading edge toolkit. You’ll also reach your analytics goals more efficiently, see higher adoption of your advanced analytics systems and tools and mitigate the disruption of emerging artificial intelligence technologies.

Join the next wave of growth with real-world insights that bring your data to life.

The digital revolution is reaching beyond simple ecommerce to recast business models and turn entire industries upside down. Whether it is in consumer sectors or media, the life sciences or industrials, the pace of change is only picking up. Already, business leaders are confronting the next phase of technology as robotics, artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT) make their way into the mainstream.

To capitalize on digital opportunities and avoid digital threats, businesses must proceed based on knowledge — not guesswork. We help clients assess and then act on digital opportunities in six key areas: digital strategy and transformation, digital evaluation, channel strategy, customer experience, supply chain and production (Industry 4.0), and digital ways of working.

Digital Strategy & Transformation

Success in the digital age requires proper analysis and planning. Critically assessing how digital trends will impact your market, customers, internal organization and supply chain is the first step in developing a clear strategy and transformation roadmap. Next is understanding how digital products, offerings and business models may differ from traditional constructs, yield different economics and signal different strategic priorities. Analyzing these fact bases in light of your corporate objectives, investment and risk profiles, and other factors will bring clarity to a complex set of strategic choices and reveal the priorities, investments (including potential acquisitions) and organizational evolution it will take to succeed.

Digital Evaluation

Your digital “footprint” is your go-to-market approach, the strength of your digital distribution and expression, your digital and data product portfolio, and your enabling assets and capabilities. Comparing this footprint with customer expectations and your competition will give you an improved understanding of where your digital capabilities and offerings stand today and whether there are particular gaps that may need attention. You’ll measure the opportunities and risks, which will inform near-term and longer-term digital priorities.

Channel Strategy

Developing the right channel ecosystem is complex, given the many direct and indirect digital and physical channels available to businesses today. Many companies are evolving their ecosystem from legacy channel strategies and investments, which further complicates the path forward. Creating an omnichannel strategy, including an effective plan for digital, and optimizing channel-specific tactics are essential for maximizing sales and marketing reach and profitability, and for managing inherent conflicts.

Customer Experience

A superior user experience takes into account all major touchpoints along the customer’s journey, delivers on core needs and ideally exceeds expectations. Whether you are a consumer-facing retailer or an industrial component supplier, the digital age is bringing about entirely different customer preferences for how they interact with vendors and what defines quality service. Understanding these evolving needs and executing accordingly can not only drive satisfaction levels up, but also create real competitive advantage that leads to customer loyalty.

Supply Chain and Production (Industry 4.0)

The fourth industrial revolution is upon us and it is rapidly changing the way we manufacture and supply goods. Automation, AI and real-time analytics are just a few of the technology advances that are transforming supply chain and manufacturing operations. Understanding both the art of the possible and the risk of value chain disruption brought about by these new capabilities is critical for a business as it considers its broader strategic choices and weighs future investment decisions.

Digital Ways of Working

In addition to impacting a company’s product offering and delivery model, digital innovations such as augmented reality (AR)/virtual reality (VR), analytics and data visualization tools, and digital twins are having a profound effect on management practices, decision-making and the way work is done in general. Applying a range of digital best practices — where organization and process are often more important than the technology itself — can unlock meaningful new potential, establish differentiation and position a business for sustained success in contested markets.

Major capital project stakeholders — owners, sponsors, bidders and operators — face complex strategic and operational challenges throughout the project delivery value chain and in optimising their capital projects portfolios.

L.E.K. Consulting’s Major Capital Projects Advisory (MCPA) team deploys multidisciplinary teams with deep industry knowledge and substantive capital project experience to provide project advisory services at any point in a major project life-cycle — planning and executing large scale programs for clients in the transportation, industrial, energy and technology spaces.

We specialize in developing and executing sustainable solutions for complex and troubled projects and combine our experience with a proven approach to review and optimise major capital project portfolios.

Our MCPA methodology integrates world-class strategy with focused, nimble execution to deliver value through capital expenditure and operations

What we do

Our Major Capital Projects Advisory team works with clients to deliver on:

• Capital strategy, capital allocation and portfolio optimization
• Project feasibility, delivery strategy and value improvement
• Operational strategies that achieve value for money (VFM)
• Identifying and mitigating project risks
• Managing stakeholders and regulatory requirements
• Establishing and managing procurement processes
• Designing project organisations, governance, and technology platforms
• Improving efficiency of asset maintenance

How we help

Our client-engagement models are proven and tailored for every project. We partner with our clients to deliver rapid diagnostics, project module combinations, or time and materials projects.

These engagement models enable us to provide focused advisory services quickly at key stages in the life cycle to make sure major capital projects run more smoothly and stay on budget, and on schedule, or to intervene on projects to address specific operational issues.

We work with our clients throughout the entire major capital project development process, including:

• Planning – We will help in any stage of the planning process and can act as an impartial third party to ensure that all planning steps are logical and thorough
• Program management — We work with clients to embed effective program management from project inception — but we are also experienced in intervention at any stage 
• Project management — We evaluate each major capital project’s unique requirements to determine the time, effort and resources necessary to deliver an on-time and on-budget project 
• Contract strategy and contracting — Our thorough understanding of the optimal use case for each contract model helps ensure risks are appropriately managed for each project 
• Capital expenditure optimisation — Our methodology for optimising capital expenditure ensures designs and operating parameters are fit-for-purpose and operations-focused 
• Risk transfer — We actively consider the risks in major capital projects and examine optimal ways to transfer or mitigate them 
• Procurement — We assist our clients in establishing procurement functions that optimise capital spend, control costs and ensure budget compliance across the program 
• Stakeholder management — We have deep experience with engaging internal and external stakeholders on capital projects

L.E.K. Consulting helps companies optimize their marketing and sales strategy to drive profitable growth. We do this by drawing together insights from your customers, markets, business environments and internal organization. Then we model the economic implications of these insights and compare them with what’s working for other companies. From there, we work with management to embed change in the organization’s practices and processes. The result? Value-creating commercial strategy that is unique to your business — right down to individual products, programs and customer segments.

Our marketing and sales capabilities span the entire commercial journey.

Brand strategy

Position, develop and invest in your brands to differentiate and drive growth. You’ll gain a clearer perspective of which customers a brand (or portfolio of brands) is serving. You’ll also understand each brand’s points of difference better, acquiring the insight to grow share, improve positioning and build clearer targeting of customer segments. All this points to higher revenues and profits from improved alignment with customers and distribution channels.

Loyalty & customer experience

Increase customer traction by providing the seamless experience they want. This involves grasping customer needs across your portfolio of brands, products and channels — and, through this, defining the important characteristics of customer experience. In return, see higher profitability and increased loyalty by focusing on strategies to address pain points and create customer advocacy. You’ll also improve your ability to serve targeted customer segments and develop differentiated customer experiences with high return on investment.

New product consulting

Bring a customer focus to developing new products and services. Assume a customer-centric lens as we develop new offerings. A key part of this is developing an understanding of customer needs — both met and unmet — from your own product offerings plus those of your competitors in order to identify new opportunities.

You’ll increase revenues and reduce the risk of failed product launches. You’ll also surface untapped product and service opportunities, and improve efficiency and speed to market, all via our customer-centric approach to innovation.

Pricing strategy

Maximize overall profit while increasing margins and/or market share. Getting pricing right is one of the most critical commercial decisions for any business. It can lead to significant increases in top-line results; the bottom-line effect is even greater. Our approach allows you to develop the optimal initial pricing framework and sales incentives and to see ongoing benefits from an analytical pricing framework informed by customers, market conditions and the competitive environment.

Channel strategy

Make the most of your channels to market by being in the right places in the optimal way. An adroit strategy is essential to winning in a rapidly evolving, digitizing channel landscape. We can help you develop this optimal strategy through an understanding of the customers’ journey and their likes and dislikes, combined with channel requirements, incentivization levers and cost to serve. The outcomes will include greater reach, strategic differentiation between channels and outsized share in growing channels — all translating to more revenue and profit.

Marketing strategy

Speak to the right customers in the right way at the right time. The marketing landscape is changing more rapidly than at any time in the recent past, with digital, social and mobile technologies making traditional models of engagement obsolete. To develop marketing strategies that will direct your resources more effectively, we combine our commercial expertise in advanced data analytics with a game plan that gets your message in front of the audiences you need to reach. You’ll stimulate sales and strengthen your market positioning, thanks to a strategic view of the marketing mix that ties in more effectively with sales and product strategy.

Go-to-market and commercial organization

Define the optimal go-to-market strategy and commercial organization that will deliver against revenue growth or profit improvement objectives. In both nascent and mature markets, companies need to make complex choices around their go-to-market strategies, considering both direct and indirect models. In nascent markets, the relevant channel infrastructure may not be available, and a business may need to invest independently or in partnerships to build new routes to market. In mature markets, the distribution landscape may be evolving or consolidating. A business needs to select carefully the go-to-market and commercial models that would effectively and efficiently get its products or services to the customers, while allowing the business to capture the maximum value across the distribution chain.

Commercial excellence

Reinvigorate revenue growth and optimize sales and marketing spend. Commercial Excellence comprises a series of steps that an organization can take to define its target customers and plan the delivery of its value proposition to them, supported by excellent sales and marketing execution. Commercial Excellence is key for businesses that seek to establish a new go-to-market model to enter new categories or markets, and also for established businesses that aim to gain a competitive advantage and target incremental growth in mature, highly competitive categories. In our experience, Commercial Excellence initiatives can yield concrete financial benefits in terms of revenue growth and/or substantial SG&A savings through optimized resource allocation.

Customer targeting and value proposition

Identify the highest-priority customer segments to target, and define value propositions tailored to the needs of those segments. Many companies struggle with how best to understand, segment and prioritize customers — and how to optimize the economics, from both a provider and a customer perspective — leading to a “one size fits all” approach for allocating resources and investment. We rely on external research and rigorous quantitative analysis of sales data to inform customer groupings and determine the appropriate segments to pursue with the right value proposition. Our customer targeting capability provides clients with a clear focus on the “best fit” segments where the business can drive revenue and profit growth.

Sales force effectiveness

Improve and accelerate sales performance by determining the right processes and enablers to maximize the commercial team’s effectiveness. To realize sales gains, sales and marketing processes need to align with the customer strategy and go-to-market model throughout the sales cycle. Sales enablers, such as compensation scheme for the team, key performance indicators, systems and tools, and training programs, must also be established to ensure that the sales team has the best support. We advise and support management teams on establishing the right infrastructure to root out sales productivity drains, align incentives and ultimately drive sales growth.

For more than three decades, L.E.K. has advised corporate and private equity clients in how to create value from a business acquisition, combination or separation. We also help clients plan joint ventures, alliances and other alternative structures.

Our approach is research-intensive, unbiased and confidential. We combine data and financial analysis with industry knowledge to help you realize the true value of an opportunity. We also have a global presence, which provides the local insight and language skills required to orchestrate complex multinational M&A transactions.

We share our M&A expertise by supporting the Kellogg School of Management’s comprehensive Merger Week program — one of the oldest and most successful programs of its kind. The program takes participants through the intricacies of strategic mergers and acquisitions. From identifying target companies to post-merger integration, attendees learn the latest frameworks and tools to ensure their company’s success, as well as how to avoid the common pitfalls of M&A failures. L.E.K. Managing Director Peter Walter is co-academic director of the program.

We support your efforts through every stage of the transaction lifecycle:

Target identification

Find good companies to invest in. Use L.E.K.’s impartial guidance to profile optimal acquisition targets. You’ll expand your options for potential M&A candidates and improve the odds of finding good opportunities that are off the radar of any other acquirer.

Due diligence

Look under the hood of your acquisition. Test and quantify the variables that inform the rest of the deal process and validate the critical assumptions of your theses. Along the way, you’ll get advance knowledge of key issues with the target company. You’ll also benefit from proprietary insight into the perspectives of key customers, suppliers and competitors.

Joint ventures & alliances

Team up under an alternative structure that works. Gain advance knowledge of the partnership’s potential costs and benefits plus a fact base for negotiations. You’ll also head off issues and misunderstandings with the decisions and buy-in you achieve upfront.

Post-merger integration

Creating a combination greater than the sum of its parts. Preparation is key to creating (and not destroying) value in an integration. L.E.K.’s global post-merger integration (PMI) specialists work with our sector teams to ensure you receive a seamless service across the deal life-cycle, from large-scale, global deals to mid-market and smaller transactions, resulting in a smooth deal close and the development of a combined entity that is worth more than the sum of its parts.

Exit support

Plan for a fast, clean and worthwhile break. Besides managing the risk of a sales transaction, you’ll position the business to flourish after a sale and realize the highest possible value from whatever divestitures you make.

How a business is structured and operates is a key dimension of successful strategy. Deploying the right core capabilities, optimizing their efficiency and effectiveness, and ensuring successful execution are all critical elements of success.

L.E.K. Consulting’s Organization & Performance practice addresses these challenges by focusing on five capabilities:

• Organizational strategy — enabling strategy through supportive operating models, organizational choices and governance
• Performance improvement — optimizing cost and functional performance, supported by high-impact performance management arrangements
• Commercial excellence — improving the performance of commercial functions, from go-to-market model through to organizational and salesforce effectiveness
• Post-Merger integration — creating value through pre-acquisition planning and post-acquisition integration and synergy realization
• Value activation — a structured approach for activating your commercial choices, from solution design through to delivering results — the L.E.K. Consulting way for “getting stuff done”

Performance Improvement that lasts

As markets, industries and business models continue to evolve, many organizations face margin pressures on margin and struggle to deliver shareholder. A strong focus on cost competitiveness and operational performance is essential to remaining relevant and competing in the new economy.

Organizations embarking on "cost and performance" projects typically assess business units spanning multiple functions (operations, go-to-market, back-office, etc.) in order to uncover opportunities for value creation. However, undertaking cost and performance improvement initiatives can be difficult for business leaders who are faced with the day-to-day operational challenges inherent in the business.

That’s where L.E.K. comes in. We identify the right areas to focus on, reconfiguring and strengthening the organization and building the right capabilities so that inefficiencies do not creep back in. We use a proven performance improvement approach, leveraging powerful industry and functional knowledge to design, plan and deliver robust cost and performance improvement.

We recognize that no organization or situation is exactly alike. That’s why each program considers the specific needs of our clients in relation to pace, tone, organization culture and the degree of capability development required. L.E.K. has consistently delivered savings in the range of 15-25% using this approach.

Our approach to performance improvement

Five key elements make our cost and performance improvement approach highly distinctive:

• Recognition that not all costs are equal: Costs should be actively managed and treated as a portfolio of investments that provide a return to the enterprise. Some costs can be reduced aggressively without harming strategy, while others which should be protected. Although lowering total overhead cost is one, often appropriate, organizational goal, significant value can be created by shifting the mix of overhead investments away from "utility-like" costs and into core capabilities that support strategy execution.

• Philosophy of evidence over opinion: While previous experience informs the starting point, the correct solution is deduced from the data. The evidence base is collaboratively built and shared with the client.

• A delivery plan with implementation support: We use our findings on improvement opportunities to develop a delivery plan. Our extensive experience in improvement programs takes us beyond planning to actual implementation.

• Collaborative but challenging: We understand that achieving results requires engaging with those who do the work. We do the vast majority of our work at clients' sites, and with the client, but we remain objective. We will be respectful but challenging.

• Track record of success: We have successfully delivered multiple organizational cost reduction transformations, with savings consistently in the range of 15-25%.

We are able to leverage this robust approach across a broad range of client scenarios, drawing in complementary capabilities and expertise, as needed, including:

• Commercial excellence – ensuring your commercial engine is firing on all cylinders
• Dynamic performance improvement – identifying the critical, controllable value levers in your business
• Cost optimization – systematic review of opportunities for sustainable cost-out opportunities
• Growth & edge strategy® – effective strategies to drive sustainable incremental growth
• Organizational strategy – creating a fit-for-purpose organization to enable high performance

Preparation is key to creating, rather than destroying, value in an integration. L.E.K.'s global post-merger integration (PMI) specialists work with our sector teams to ensure you receive a seamless service across the deal life-cycle, from large-scale, global deals to mid-market and smaller transactions. The result is a smooth close and a combined entity that is worth more than the sum of its parts.

How M&A can go wrong

Winning acquirers put the right M&A strategy in place, get the acquisition price right and use a structured post-merger integration approach to capture revenue, cost and capital synergies. However, on average, mergers and acquisitions tend to destroy shareholder value. This can be due to a variety of missteps, including:

• Not defining a clear objective: It’s important to be clear about why you’re doing the deal in the first place. Is it to drive growth? Harness the capabilities of the combined entity? Optimize cost and scale? The objective is the launching pad for the overall strategy

• Insufficient planning: Embarking on a deal without preparing your organization ahead of time can have a whole range of negative ramifications

• Overpaying: Paying a price that is not grounded in market or operational realities can end up defeating the purpose of the deal

• Underestimating what it will take: The complexity and timing associated with achieving synergies can be substantial

• Lack of discipline: Not instituting a disciplined, structured post-merger integration approach focused on deal value drivers

• Overlooking key competency: Failure to capture the learnings and developing a competency in M&A

Our merger integration tools and services

L.E.K.’s PMI practice has deep experience with successful acquisition integration. This includes assessing revenue and cost synergy potential, "Clean Team" support, negotiation support, pre-close planning and analysis, post-close integration support, carve-out strategy and approach planning, and the creation of transition service agreements. We advise our clients across a broad range of activities to ensure they have the best available insights heading into a deal. We combine these with the appropriate planning and a structured approach that is aligned with each client’s key success factors.

Our suite of proven tools, as well as our deep sector expertise and proven Organizational Design and Value Activation methods allow us to accelerate any integration project:

• Synergy realization: We combine deep industry expertise with world-renowned analytical capabilities and robust tracking tools to assess deal synergies.

• Functional planning and execution: To get our clients up and running quickly, we have developed industry-specific functional integration playbooks.

• Organizational structure and talent retention: Tapping into our Organizational Strategy practice, we bring the latest tools and techniques to help clients develop an effective, combined organization, while holding on to their critical resources.

• Program management: Leveraging a cutting-edge, cloud-based toolset and robust Value Activation approach, we ensure our clients deploy a disciplined and structured approach to integration.

• Change management and communications: Using our well-established communication program, we can ensure internal and external stakeholder concerns are addressed.

Our global post-merger integration team advises on a wide variety of transactions, from large-scale, global integrations to mid-market, carve-out and PE-backed deals, across all our sector verticals.

• Large cap deals: Our experts understand the complexities of integrating companies across regions and countries and can deploy global, coordinated teams to support our clients’ needs.

• Mid-market deals: We bring added structure, focus and speed. We deploy deep strategic, commercial, organizational and operational expertise to help integration teams identify and evaluate synergy opportunities and develop the integration plans to realize transaction value.

• PE-backed deals: Whether it’s a 100 Day plan for a single acquisition, integration of “buy and build” assets or a carve-out, we can deploy a fit-for-purpose approach that focuses on rapid value creation and long-term capability development.

L.E.K. Consulting has been advising organizations and senior executives on strategy for over 30 years. We provide insights that help our clients make integrated strategic choices, achieving exceptional results. In all cases, we work closely with our clients to collaboratively design solutions that fit their needs and fulfill their strategic ambitions.

Our strategy consulting services help you answer the following questions:

What are our goals? This includes not just your vision, mission and values, but also how big you'd like your enterprise to be and how much money you intend to make. Non-financial goals – things like corporate social responsibility, brand and market position – are part of the equation as well. We temper all of these objectives and goals with consideration of the resources available to you and your appetite for risk.

Where do we want to operate? Besides the goods and services you have to offer, there’s also the matter of what industries or sectors you’d like to appeal to and the geographical regions where you plan to operate. You’ll also need clarity about customer segments, sales channels and your own role in the value chain.

How are we going to beat the competition? You may have chosen what to sell and where, but you will need a compelling value proposition, potentially tailored to different customer segments, at the right price, sold the right way within the channels you’ve selected to use. Choices around the role of innovation strategies and inorganic options (acquisitions, partnerships, JVs, etc.) may also be important.

How should we configure? Resources you have at your disposal need to be coordinated correctly to support the choices you’ve made around what, where and how. This includes ensuring you have the right mix of capabilities, a clear and effective operating model and the right level of resourcing. In addition, ensuring that incentives are aligned with behaviors commensurate with your strategy is also critical.

How do we make all of this happen? As a final step, you need to make sure you have a robust plan, with clear accountability, meaningful targets and practical work packages or initiatives. This will need to be supported by realistic budgets and investments, particularly of employees’ time, and a disciplined change process that upholds accountability and ensures transparency.

Successful strategy requires an integrated set of choices and strong commitment to change across all levels of the organization. We help our clients make these strategic choices throughout the Strategy Cascade.

We address the critical choices facing senior executives and develop blueprints for growth and increased shareholder value. Our understanding of market trends and drivers, along with deep industry expertise and analytical firepower, enables us to provide the evidence-based analysis executives need to make informed decisions, whether that involves realigning overarching corporate strategy or identifying how individual business units can make the greatest possible contribution to the entire organization.

Our deep experience in Organizational Strategy allows us to support our clients in configuring their businesses in a way that fully supports and unlocks the value of their strategies. In addition, our heritage in shareholder value management is an asset to our clients’ ability to build value.

Once you have made these choices in a coherent way, you’re in a better position to carry them out. With world-class capabilities in Performance Improvement, Value Activation, and Mergers & Acquisitions, we are able to ensure our clients develop and deliver actionable strategies that create measurable long-term value for organizations.

In all cases, we work closely with our clients to collaboratively design solutions that fit their needs and fulfil their strategic ambitions.

We can support your strategic goals across a wide variety of needs:

Business unit strategy

Sustain a competitive advantage over industry rivals. Taking control of your business’ destiny will yield higher revenue and improved margins while tightening alignment with corporate strategy and other business units.

Corporate strategy

Manage your businesses for maximum combined value. Results include more powerfully focused business choices, better allocation of capital and a clear view on how the center can create value for the businesses — through both value-adding capabilities and synergies.

Growth strategy

Seize good opportunities for expansion. You’ll see sustainable growth rates increase, more stable profit margins and a reduction in the risk of failed initiatives. Another benefit: a larger pipeline of vetted growth opportunities.

New product and service development

Bring a customer focus to developing new products and services. We bring a customer-centric lens to the development of new offerings. A key part of this is developing an understanding of customer needs – both met and unmet – from your own product offerings plus those of your competitors in order to identify new opportunities. You’ll increase revenues and reduce the risk of failed product launches. You’ll also surface untapped product and service opportunities, and improve efficiency and speed to market, all via our customer-centric approach to innovation.

Shareholder value management

Focus on long-term value creation. L.E.K. Consulting is a pioneer in shareholder value management expertise.

The challenges

Corporate leaders face growing expectations to build sustainability into their business model, incorporating clear environmental, social and governance (ESG) goals, particularly net-zero commitments and time frames for delivery.

However, leaders are challenged by various trade-offs: How can the organization carry out its sustainability agenda without impeding other strategic initiatives? How can management balance the competing demands of technological change, shifting customer preferences and ongoing regulatory developments?

• Prioritizing sustainability issues
• Targets and time frames (e.g., net-zero milestones, science-based targets)
• Climate risks facing the business

At the heart of establishing a sustainable business is an appetite for change through ways of working, developing talent, embracing and leveraging new technology, and establishing new, agile operating models.

Early movers — those who drive to put sustainability at the center of their strategy — are creating commercial advantages.

L.E.K. Consulting works with clients throughout their journey to establish thriving sustainable businesses. Through our Sustainability Centre of Excellence, overseen by an Executive Board of Partners and led by L.E.K.’s Vice Chair of Sustainability, we develop intellectual capital to provide nuanced perspectives on complex topics.

We support management teams in setting targets, developing the plans and roadmaps, transforming organizations, and growing their businesses organically and by way of acquisition. We work with investors to review potential transactions, develop new business plans, and support implementation and value creation.

We have highlighted five specific areas of sustainability-related support.

Deep sector knowledge

Our sector teams around the world are putting their deep expertise to work in helping clients tackle the critical sustainability issues affecting organizations. Some of the most topical areas include the following:

Industrial companies face both challenges and opportunities from the energy transition, together with a drive to establish resilient and sustainable supply chains. They also consider the requirements of a just transition through their aim to ensure diversity and inclusion in the workforce and adopt strong work practices around the globe. Other driving forces include energy efficiency, sustainable packaging, automation, decarbonization in construction and building materials, achieving net-zero emissions, earning a social license to operate, and more.

Consumer-focused businesses are leading in circular economy initiatives, and are responding to increasing demand to provide products with strong sustainability credentials while maintaining the functionality and costs consumers are asking for. Top of mind for consumers and companies serving consumers are recycling and reverse logistics, regenerative and resilient food systems, and sustainable-forward products.

Healthcare companies are innovating in the “social” areas of ESG, such as value-based care models, personalized and precision medicines, social determinants of health, and novel patient engagement. Meanwhile, life sciences companies are confronting the environmental impact of manufacturing, packaging and waste management; issues of affordability; and the gap between high- and low-income countries in their access to medicine.

Energy companies are focusing on two angles to sustainability. On the conventional side, capital is flowing to decarbonizing the operations of the traditional oil and gas players, which are also investing in emission control and carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) technologies. On the other side, the rise in renewables and solutions, such as electric vehicles, is driving demand for storage (e.g., battery technology) and further innovation in new technologies (e.g., green fuels and hydrogen).

Travel and transportation companies are wrestling with the challenge to fund the move to more expensive zero-emission fleets in an environment of increasing government regulations and requirements. While travel and transport are notoriously difficult to decarbonize, sustainable aviation fuel and other types of sustainable fuel will help companies reach net zero.

Financial services and insurance institutions are tasked with evaluating and managing transition risk (e.g., stranded assets, technology), decarbonizing their portfolios, and accelerating access to green financing. These firms face challenging questions around recruiting ESG-skilled talent, the impact of carbon markets and pricing, various climate scenarios, and the changing landscape of disclosure standards.

Cutting across sectors, we can also help you create value through the adoption of the leading-edge organizational practices surrounding ESG talent development, organization design, board governance frameworks, human resources strategy and more. Companies are scrambling for engaged talent, especially talent that is well skilled and well versed in ESG. An intentional approach to recruiting, employee engagement, retention, professional development, and diversity and inclusion remain critical to building up the sustainable workforce of tomorrow.

It’s the moment when the rubber meets the road: you have made the strategic choices, or refreshed your operating model, or set ambitious performance improvement targets. It is time for action, but regardless of the choices you’ve made, it all comes down to the critical question of how best to activate change? Frankly, what is the best way to “get stuff done”?

We see clients confront this dilemma almost every day. Our journey with clients encompasses hard-fought wins and painful mishaps, and through these experiences we have developed a structured and disciplined approach to Value Activation.

“Getting stuff done” is hard. It often means working against the inertia of an organization that has stalled. It requires a series of balancing acts: between an inspiring end-state and challenging targets; between central coordination and democratization of the change; between creativity and discipline; between detailed planning and agile response. It must also balance pressure for results with collaborative design for lasting capability and change.

L.E.K.’s Value Activation approach is based on seven elements. Each element is important in its own right, but the greatest value is realized when they work in concert.

Key success factors

• End-state. A simple narrative that articulates why change is needed, but importantly also describes how the organization will “look and feel” when change has been successful. Executives need to use the same language consistently and be visible in the activation program. 

• Targets. Targets are required to provide focus and to stretch the organization. Targets need to be challenging, aligned and linked to remuneration. 

• Governance. A model that provides a clear line of sight from the executive level to the lowest level of the activation program. Executives should have a formal and active role in workstreams, rather than simply sitting in judgment on a steering committee. The real “stars of the show” are at the lowest levels of the governance hierarchy. 

• Initiatives. A structured and “gated” process for initiative ideation, design and execution. A larger number of smaller initiatives and initiative owners involved in the program democratizes change throughout an organization and increases the likelihood of sustainable results. 

• Rhythm. Compulsory weekly review sessions, where workstreams and initiative owners speak to their efforts and challenges. This rhythm must be sustained over a prolonged period – true change takes time and repetition. Executives attend these weekly reviews – as both part of the activation office and also as workstream owners where they are subject to full scrutiny. 

• Program management. An activation office is critical to create the end-to-end transparency necessary to coordinate the overall activation program. It must provide “one source of truth” in terms of priorities and progress. The activation office should function as a force for simplicity (e.g., a consistent toolset adopted across the program). 

• Collaborative design. Executives and initiative owners will push back against change that is imposed on them, but will embrace change that they can contribute to structuring. Collaborative design, supported by selective coaching, can ensure high-quality output, drive momentum and enable sustainable results by building capabilities deep into the organization. 

Achieving a balance across these critical elements is at the core of our Value Activation method. Every activation program will have its nuance. But our experience is that all the elements of our approach remain relevant and can be applied with proper appreciation of the circumstances to get things done in all kinds of companies with all manner of activation challenges. And when all these elements work together in concert, it provides the best foundation for enabling enduring change.

Pricing is a deceptively simple but particularly challenging opportunity to realize. What, for example, is the trade-off between price and the other value attributes of a product or service? And how do you measure elasticity without the interference of noise from other factors that influence demand, such as competitor promotions or discounts? Getting pricing right really matters to the profitability of a business, as it can be the single biggest driver of sales and margin. 

While optimizing price is important to all businesses, every industry and company, whether B2B or B2C, has a unique answer to how to arrive at an optimal pricing structure and level. And it doesn’t matter if what’s being sold is software or soft drinks — pricing is also closely tied to product strategy, as it requires deciding how many different variants of a product should be sold as well as how they should be priced to maximize total profit. 

L.E.K. Consulting believes that pricing decisions cannot be made in a vacuum; they must be centered on the needs (and behaviors) of customers and how well the products being sold meet those needs. That means an industry-specific, customer-led approach to pricing that is tied to strategy, product, marketing, sales and finance and builds organizational buy-in, from the C-suite to front-line sales. 

When L.E.K. helps clients with pricing, we use a combined team to bring an intimate knowledge of industry dynamics and the target customer gained through our extensive commercial and strategy work and a deep pricing toolkit with expertise that draws on best practices from within that industry and beyond. 

We can be an end-to-end partner, or we can provide support for specific needs, starting with pricing diagnostics to understand the opportunity through all aspects of pricing strategy and ultimately to supporting execution, change management and operating model evolution. Our only imperative in working with you is to use pricing to grow your total profit pool and increase the long-term value of your customers.

• B2B SaaS Pricing
• Consumer Pricing
• Healthcare Services Pricing
• Industrials B2B Pricing
• Media & Entertainment Pricing
• Medtech Pricing
• Pharmaceutical Pricing and Market Access

We can help you develop and execute pricing strategies across a range of different industries and contexts. That includes pricing to consumers/customers, to retailers and more, and doing so in particular channels and value chains. We do this by establishing the links between pricing and the attributes valued by different strategic segments. As part of this process, we can: 

• Clarify the market and competitive dynamics that affect pricing decisions 
• Determine which attributes of a product or service deliver value 
• Ascertain what goes into the cost of a product or service to ensure that price structures deliver the required levels of profit contribution 
• Model the effect of a given price on profit and/or volume 
• Identify improvements in the way prices are set and delivered to the marketplace 
• Compose a process for consistently enforcing pricing policies 
• Create processes, governance and incentives to focus the sales force on contract and account profitability 
• Match pricing with the value that the customer expects to receive 
• Uncover causes of margin leakage by analyzing historical sales data at the transaction level 
• Link pricing strategy to product portfolio management 
• Develop integrated pricing strategies across channels 
• Design analytical tools to sustain improved pricing capabilities for the long term 
• Support the implementation of a pricing program 

Your benefits

• A clearly defined pricing architecture and, where applicable, approach to yield and/or revenue management 
• Greater understanding of the value attributes that should be communicated to each customer segment 
• Optimized margins or market share 
• Improved profit and volume predictability 
• Greater insight into transaction, customer, segment and channel profitability 

Contact us for more on how L.E.K. can help you use pricing to improve your profits and customer lifetime value.

Many industries vigilantly manage their internal cost structure (e.g., people cost, infrastructure, etc.) but do not exercise that same diligence on external costs. These external costs comprise direct materials, indirect materials, and necessary services to provide for their end customers. Strategically managing these costs has a direct impact on the P&L and enables business expanding investments.

For some companies, this requires building a procurement capability that is aligned with the company strategy. Even organizations that have the capability may still be leaving considerable value in the hands of their suppliers versus their shareholders. How? Suppliers are driven to expand margin too which is often is at the expense of the buyer.

The consequence is uncompetitive cost structures (price of goods/services), trapped cash (less than industry payment terms), and potentially forcing the buyer to cut their own people cost to remain profitable. Deploying a targeted procurement action can help restore value back to your enterprise.

L.E.K has a proven approach to accelerate cost reduction and sourcing capability expansion.

Our approach to procurement is characterized by:

• Rigor: We deploy a 7-step sourcing process that is designed to be client engaging, data based, and focused on areas of greater opportunity and importance. 
• Strategic: We combine efforts with our clients to get the tactical items done and structural, long-term value.
• Speed to value: We emphatically believe that some categories of spend lend themselves to quick wins and should not wait until the end of the engagement to deliver value.
• Tool agnostic: The use of tools is selected based on the client situation and we can recommend tools or use existing platforms the client is more comfortable with. 
• Self-funding outcomes: Our sourcing delivery is designed to offset any costs to achieve and provide a meaningful multiple of return.
• A delivery plan with implementation support: We use our findings on improvement opportunities to develop a delivery plan which can be executed by the client or with L.E.K support.
• Track record of success: We consistently generate savings in the range of 10-20%. 

We drive procurement solution in the areas of:

• Procurement organization & operating model – Assessing current state and developing the future state design
• Cost take-out – Reduce cost of direct and indirect spends through specific sourcing levers
• Supplier risk & life cycle – Develop programs to maintain supplier risk and overall supplier performance