Oliver Wyman Journal Archives

In this issue:

• Raising the Odds of Success in Developing New Products and Services
• The Great Dying
• The Credit Crisis: Correction or Catastrophe?
• Beyond the Sub-Prime Crisis
• Bench Strength
• Leaping Tigers, Roaring Dragons
• A Retailer’s Recipe for Fresher Food and Far Less Shrink
• Aviation Maintenance: The Next Place to Land for Private Equity Investors
• Embracing Climate Change in Financial Services
• How the Weak Dollar Is Reviving U.S. Manufacturing
• Enhanced video on demand, rethinking the utility distribution model, a new equation for China sourcing, and more

In this issue:

• The Upside of Strategic Risk
• Act II for CEOs
• Before You Run for Cover
• Predictive Customer Segmentation for B2B Markets
• Unlocking the Value of a Technology Portfolio
• Cars That People Want to Buy
• The Innovation Imperative
• When I’m 64
• Closing the Talent Gap in the Energy Sector
• Coming of Age for Corporate and Institutional Banking in Asia
• Lean Management Secrets, Airlines and the Next Recession, The Credit Downturn, and more

In this edition:

• Performance Anxiety: Is It Me or My Business Design?
• The New Economics of Customer Loyalty Programs
• Head, Heart, and Guts: Unpredictable Times Call for Mature Leaders
• Retail Customers Want a Consistent In-Store Experience
• 13 Steps to Stronger Governance of Executive Compensation
• How Airlines Can Create New Revenue Streams
• Health Care and Financial Services: the Case for Partnership
• Improving the Odds for M&A Success in China
• Rail Transit and the Security Challenge

In this edition:

• The CFO takes On a More Complex Role
• So You Want to Get Lean
• For Vaccines, a Structural Shift
• A Blueprint for Building Better Boards
• Workforce in Motion
• Realigning Risks and Rewards in the Energy Sector
• Algorithms to Run the Trains on Time
• Simplify and Automate
• Natural Gas in Flux

In this edition:

• Are You Enjoying Globalization Yet?
• Just in Case
• Stop Competing Yourself to Death
• Bringing Brand into M&A Discussions
• Putting an End to Ad Hoc Pricing Management
• Can Lean Maintenance Help Save the Airlines?
• European Bank Border Crossing
• Business Model Innovation in Emerging Markets
• Learning to Live with Paradox

In this edition:

• Brand Investment Traps
• Hidden Risks of Outsourcing
• Total Employment Rewards Redefined
• A New Vroom for China's Auto Market
• Moving Beyond Instinct in Customer Experience Management
• Future Scenarios for Financial Services
• Transport Delivery Jam

In this edition:

• Uncovering the Hidden Drivers of Demand
• Outsourced, But Not Out of Mind
• Unlocking Profitability in the Complex Company
• Industry Focus: Mission Success in the Field, Struggling at Home
• Maximizing Returns from Brand Spending
• Diamonds in the Rough
• The Case for Consumerism in Health Care

In this edition:

• Rethinking Risk
• Finding New Growth in Tough Consumer Markets
• Strategic Planning Redux
• Building a Brand on the Touchpoints That Count
• Customer Churn
• Engaging the Board in Corporate Strategy
• Fair Pay, Effective Pay
• Industry Focus: North American Regional Airlines
• Industry Focus: European Telecommunications
• Industry Focus: Automotive 2015 Study
• Industry Focus: Financial Services and Risk
• Briefs: Energy delivery, Myths of global logistics
• China manufacturing, natural gas marketing, and more

In this edition:

• Finessing the Discount Price Challenge
• Interview: Contentious Debate? It Works for Philips
• Why Senior Executives Should Care About Sourcing
• Case Study: Tapping the Hidden Value of People
• See the Forest and the Trees
• Monetize Your Intellectual Property
• Choosing the Best Next CEO
• Strategic IT for Financial Services
• Perspective: Management as Parallel Processing
• Briefs: The HUMMER brand, In-licensing, and more

This issue of Mercer Management Journal features eight in-depth articles and ten briefs addressing a wide range of management topics.

In this edition:

• Economics' Gift to Marketing
• The Path to Enlightenment
• Selling for Profit
• Unlocking the Last Asset
• The Personal Economics of Consumers, Decoded for Growth
• CEO Evaluations that Work
• DVD Hits the Big Time
• Sustainable Development
• Briefs: Post-merger savings, auto retailing, and more...

In this edition:

• Making New-Growth Initiatives Work
• After the Boom and Bust: Recovery in telecommunications
• Stop Thrashing Your Suppliers
• Driving Change Through Advocacy: The executive-advisor connection
• Profitable Retailing in a Zero-Sum Game
• Creating a Just-in-Case Supply Chain for the Inevitable Next Disaster
• Briefs: Media companies, low-cost airlines, and more

One of the few constants in this world of shifting profit zones is Wall Street's expectation of sustained growth. Yet, surprisingly few firms have a clear agenda for how to meet these expectations.

This edition of the Mercer Management Journal is devoted to the concept of the value growth agenda, and to five categories of opportunities that are often found on the agendas of winning companies.

Identifying the best opportunities, setting a value growth agenda, and making it the driving force of the enterprise is the most pressing responsibility of business leaders today.

Once, a brand was simply a mark stamped on a product to identify its maker. Its fortunes depended on product quality and advertising.

Today, with the explosion of the Internet and the flood of new options for customers, the basis for brand strength has dramatically shifted: Creating a compelling customer experience is increasingly what makes or breaks a brand.

Such a challenge involves the entire organization, including senior managers. It requires fresh approaches and quantitative tools that can identify the brand-building investments with the greatest financial returns.

At its most successful, this new approach blurs the lines between commerce and community, with customers literally branding themselves - a true mark of experience.

Companies face numerous types of risk, and they hedge or insure against them in a variety of ways.

However, the largest potential risk to a corporation--strategic risk--must be borne directly by managers and shareholders. They face the consequences if a company's shareholder value collapses, stagnates, or becomes dwarfed by a competitor's.

Pattern thinking can help managers both foresee risk and identify new profit opportunities that will lead to sustained, above-average value growth.

Mercer Management Consulting research has described thirty patterns that, over the past two decades, have drastically shifted profit and power in numerous industries.

The ability to identify strategic patterns helps managers see beneath the surface chaos of today's business environment to the underlying drivers of customer and economic behavior.

Once, business leaders who increased revenue, decreased cost, fielded technically superior products, and expanded their market share could expect to reap enviable increases in shareholder value.

No longer.

Achieving sustained value growth requires a strategy framework that reflects today’s marketplace of rapidly shifting customer priorities.

It requires the discipline of Business Design, which helps companies find and capture tomorrow’s “profit zones.”