Case Studies

What does cross-functional execution actually look like? Here's the work.

Market Strategy

Aircraft manufacturer accelerated growth and profitability

    • Applied machine learning to customer behavior data

    • Determined price and product feature elasticities

    • Worked with operations to set new pricing and develop and introduce new product features

    • Repositioned brand

    • Restructured sales and customer service processes

    • Rigorous customer and competitive analysis

    • Coordination and upskilling across operations, finance, marketing and sales

    • Product quality and on-time delivery supported demand and drove loyalty

  • Aircraft became #1 selling airplane in the world within two years and has sustained #1 market share; Company achieved enterprise valuation of over $1B

Market Strategy

Global turbine manufacturer expanded customer base

    • Led customer and competitive analysis

    • Developed winning features and cost

    • Implemented market strategy

    • Upskilled executive team to better meet market needs and sustain revenues

    • CEO owned the project, ensuring cross-functional engagement

    • Data and information shared across sales and operations allowed agile adjustment of product features, service and prices that met client needs at appropriate price points

  • Within two years, secured long-term new customer sales contracts for more than $500m at full margins, plus ongoing additional revenues

Stakeholder Strategy

Utility scale energy developers sited and permitted projects

    • Led stakeholder marketing orchestration

    • Secured support from regulators, communities, elected officials, media, investors, and potential customers

    • Mapped, managed and tracked stakeholder ecosystem

    • Integrated stakeholder orchestration with operating functions to ensure product market fit

    • Conducted ongoing analyses to ensure promises about capacity, pricing, and operation could be delivered

  • Sited and permitted multiple utility-scale clean energy projects; Secured ongoing support from all key stakeholders; Secured grid connections; Secured favorable regulatory and tax treatment for both producers and developers; Projects operating

Complexity Reduction 

Precision components manufacturer improved quarterly results

    • Led rigorous analysis of customer and product SKUs by revenue, margin and working capital requirement

    • Engaged sales, product management, operations, supply chain and finance to capture cross-functional insights

    • Aligned full team on complexity reduction plan that cut low-value, high-cost SKUs, and freed resources to boost sales and profit

    • Each function had insights unknown to others that were invaluable to define an executable complexity reduction plan

    • Effective cross-functional program leadership enabled strong collaboration & team commitment

  • Company significantly increased quarterly throughput capacity and revenue, reduced variability in executing its "P&L commitment", and improved profitability

Gross Margin Improvement

Med-tech company achieved multi-year gross margin improvement

    • Broke down all elements of gross margin, from price to costs of goods sold, and assigned annual and multi-year improvement targets

    • Established line item definitions and drove data alignment across all BUs

    • Held detailed quarterly variance reviews and exposed BU leaders to “friendly competition”

    • CEO and CFO strongly supported program and cascaded goals in performance targets and compensation incentives

    • Program engaged cross-functional leaders in operations (including production management, manufacturing and quality engineers), supply chain, finance, product management and sales

  • Company increased gross margin by more than 1% per year over three years, and achieved a cumulative GM improvement of 4% which added $35M in incremental gross profit

Supply Chain Reset

Semiconductor equipment leader optimized supply chain performance

    • Led cross-functional team to define shared understanding of most critical vendor performance requirements

    • Integrated vendor scorecard with multiple datasets both inside and outside company; established workflow process and automated data inputs

    • All functions had a voice and better understood cross-functional needs

    • Data integration and automation slashed work required to generate scorecards and improved accuracy

    • Suppliers gained consistency and transparency in customer requirements

  • Vendor performance improved sharply in cost reduction, quality and on-time delivery.  System enabled continuous improvement and was sustained over multiple years and called “best in class” by Intel.