Insights

Oliver Wyman’s automotivemanager is the new, regularly published industry magazine for the automotive industry. Manufacturers, suppliers and dealers can draw on the trends, opportunities and
solutions presented in this magazine as they conduct their daily business and determine their strategic direction. The topics covered in the magazine explore all aspects of the automotive value chain.

Virtually every communications, media, and technology (CMT) company now realizes that emerging markets offer enormous growth promise, and senior executives have been actively invest-ing in these markets. However, most western CMT companies have entered these emerging markets with their existing mature-market business designs and with a set of beliefs about the priorities for emerging markets customers.

Perspectives on Manufacturing Industries is a new periodical for senior executives of industrial products and services companies. Based on Oliver Wyman’s deep industry expertise and research capabilities, it will provide perspectives, ideas, and best practices to help industrial companies achieving profitable growth.

Abstract of the Oliver Wyman Perspectives Report on the Russian insurance landscape

As the electric and gas retail industry has continued to gain market share and acceptance, the level of challenges it faces has also continued to grow. New entrants and consolidation are changing the landscape. In addition, the renewed focus on energy efficiency, demand response and renewables are creating a new set of opportunities.

Telecom operators around the world have come under increasing pressure to improve profit margins, which in turn has sparked an aggressive pursuit of lean business models. Network sharing has taken hold as a way to substantially decrease CapEx and OpEx. Sharing has also sparked innovation by enabling operators to increase rollout speed, provide broader coverage, and introduce new applications.

Companies in the energy and utility sector face pronounced risks because of their relatively long investment and amortization cycles, exposure to commodities, and dependence on trading success. To ensure long-term value growth, they need to carefully assess whether projected returns from operational and strategic activities warrant taking the associated risks.

In the paper we examine the state of the financial services market and the pressures banks face to reduce costs without sacrificing long-term growth. To maintain their historical profit margins, US banks will have to cut their operating costs by over 15%.

Accounts receivable are climbing for many electric and gas utilities across the country, and rising commodity prices and seasonal cold weather are not the only culprits. A weak economy marked by sub-prime mortgage woes, slow growth, and more layoffs is also contributing to utilities' deteriorating collections performance.

Im Jahr 2007 setzten die Unternehmen in den Branchen Telekommunikation, Medien & Technologie (CMT) ihren Wachstumspfad fort. Ihr globaler Marktwert stieg auf 8,2 Billionen US-Dollar. Dies sind rund 14% des gesamten weltweiten Börsenwerts.

Die vorliegende Branchenstudie untersucht, wer zu den internationalen Top-Performern gehört, wo diese Unternehmen angesiedelt sind und was sie von den Wettbewerbern mit durchschnittlichen bis unterdurchschnittlichen Ergebniszahlen unterscheidet. Hierzu misst Oliver Wyman den Erfolg der 450 größten börsennotierten CMT-Unternehmen anhand des speziell entwickelten Shareholder Performance IndexSM.

As the pace of regulatory and market change continues to accelerate, energy and utility executives are facing increasingly complex and dynamic problems that cannot be addressed effectively by conventional means.

With global warming and climate change becoming more prominent in the national political and economic debate, a number of “green mega-trends” have emerged that impact energy and utility companies. These range from aggressive environmental commitments by leading corporations, to increased state and local regulatory intervention mandating specific renewable and energy efficiency targets, to interest in voluntary carbon offset trading, to construction of green-certified buildings.

Postal markets in most regions have remained "under the radar" - their potential to generate significant value over-looked. A case in point is the Middle East's postal market, where a range of social, cultural, and economic factors have created favorable conditions for postal companies to expand profitably.

Strategic risks have topped the list of management challenges in many industries. Yet as Oliver Wyman Director Adrian Slywotzky shows in his new book, The Upside: The 7 Strategies for Turning Big Threats into Growth Breakthroughs, the most daunting strategic risks also contain the most promising opportunities.

The paper highligths that product innovation is one of the biggest drivers of growth and competitive differentiation in financial services and what issues the firms encounter when trying to bring new products and services to the market.

Since June 2007, the global financial markets have been battered by a credit and liquidity crunch that is without precedent. The insurance industry has not escaped the turmoil. How should insurers act in this situation?

The Economist
Walk into almost any big supermarket in America and you will find a cornucopia of food. The mountains of fresh produce on display are a testament to shoppers desire for choice and freshness - and retailers desire to relieve them of their dollars. But behind the mouth-watering offerings lies a distasteful reality: billions of dollars' worth of food is dumped each year because of retailers' inefficiency.

With the restructuring of China's telecommunications industry, some analysts are betting that China Mobile will dominate. We take a different position: Dominance by any single player is not a forgone conclusion.

As U.S. nuclear fleets acquire assets and take on greater scale and scope of operations, the benefits of fleet-wide improvement programs become more valuable. Optimizing performance of fleet-wide resources, through implementation of industry best practices, represents an opportunity to drive improvements.

The paper highlights that product innovation is one of the biggest drivers of growth and competitive differentiation in FS and what issues the firms encounter when trying to bring new products and services to the market.

Private equity investors are showing strong interest in the aviation maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) market. But before the deals get sealed, both sides should be more systematic in mapping out strategies for success. This commentary discusses four specific strategies private equity investors may leverage in this industry.

Pundits debate whether digital distribution will erode value or launch a new stage of growth for the movie industry. Based on a consumer buying simulation of the anticipated 2010 marketplace, Oliver Wyman believes the right portfolio of video on demand (VOD)/Internet offers will increase annual U.S. consumer movie spending to buy and rent movies by $5-10 billion on a base of approximately $50 billion.

Oliver Wyman
This report provides an overview of the current state of co-operative banking in Europe, contrasting the different markets and provides insights on emerging trends, including current and emerging co-operative banking models.

Oliver Wyman released the white paper 'Batten Down the Hatches' in response to intensified pricing in the retail deposit market. The liquidity crisis still being endured by many of the mortgage lenders combined with pressure for commercial banks to find organic growth and the continued Federal Reserve rate reductions will significantly darken the prospects for profitable deposit growth in 2008. The paper both details the situation and lays out a potential path forward for our clients.

Reprinted from SNLEnergy Daily Gas Report, March 13, 2008 

Management's persistence is the key to getting whole-company trans-actions done in the utility space. Obtaining the necessary regulatory approvals requires resilience, given the amount of time and energy it frequently takes to close a deal. In addition, creating lasting value from a transaction "remains a tough proposition."

Welcome to Joules, which features articles written by Oliver Wyman's partners in the Energy/Utilities practice that are derived from our recent work with clients around the world.

Component maintenance can account for up to one-fifth of total maintenance costs for an airline, yet many airlines still purchase component repair services inefficiently on a part-by-part basis. This white paper details a more effective approach for airline executives, one that leverages supplier capabilities and thereby reduces costs and risk while also improving performance and reliability.

The resurgence of procurement excellence as a source of sustained competitive advantage.

This joint Morgan Stanley/Oliver Wyman research report explores the outlook and implications for the leading capital market banks, although has wider implications for a variety of financial institutions.

In 2007, the Communications, Media & Technology (CMT) industry’s global market value continued its upward trajectory to reach $8.2 trillion, which represents about 14% of the world’s total equity valuation.

To discover who the top performers are, where they are located, and what distinguishes them from average and below-average performers, Oliver Wyman created and analyzed Shareholder Performance Index^SM rankings of the 450 largest public CMT companies.

This report looks at the strategic drivers of value in the industry and at the levers that Private Banks can pull to improve value creation.

Despite many hurdles, merger and acquisition deals are getting done, as shown by National Grid/KeySpan, TXU, and WPS/Peoples Energy. However, obtaining the necessary regulatory approvals requires persistence and resilience, and creating lasting value from a merger or acquisition remains a tough proposition.

Tom Knighton
In this article published in Executive Journal Weekly, Tom Knighton shares findings from Oliver Wyman's recent research report, The Global Leadership Imperative: Building an Innovation Engine, and insights on how to lead innovation within an organization.

This paper outlines our approach to engaging people to drive execution. It describes the five critical underpinnings to successful engagement: CEO support, a clearly articulated vision and strategy, aligned culture and values, involved and supported leaders, and harmonized people systems.

Oliver Wyman recently conducted a survey of the advanced payments market. According to our findings, 57% of new ventures in advanced payments believe that the industry will reach the critical mass necessary for their business model to take off economically.

In this report we look under the surface of top-line growth over the last business cycle and discuss respective business model implications for custodians, prime brokers and market infrastructure.

Value Sourcing in Financial Services is the response to the tough market environment for the industry which will continue to compress margins over the medium term. As a result, cost reduction will remain a high priority for senior executives through 2008 and into 2009.

Implications of recent moves by Google and industry leaders

An increasingly volatile issue

While no leader welcomes the prospect of significant organizational downsizing, the process can bring significant upside if approached, managed, and communicated in the right way. Part of this involves leaders approaching downsizing from an opportunistic perspective. This paper addresses the question: If a reduction in force is required, then how can the organization make the most of it?

Our paper recognises the use of hub and spoke models to enhance the front office to back office interaction of shared services.

From an organizational perspective, economic downturns represent one of the more difficult versions of major change. By communicating effectively, CEOs and other senior leaders can go a long way toward managing some of the disruptive dynamics that inevitably accompany a soft economy. This paper outlines some general principles and practical guidelines that can help leaders communicate effectively, both within their companies and to outside audiences, during troubled times.

Retail and restaurant chains that need to achieve greater differentiation or a stronger competitive position often devise major changes to product lines, customer service strategies, or operating procedures. But large-scale change can encounter stiff resistance among the people who are most critical to the effort: site managers and seasoned employees. As a result, many change efforts die on the vine or fall well short of expectations.

Steve Krupp

With energy prices at record highs, oil and gas exploration and production companies have grown complacent about long-term growth. It's time to get serious about strategic planning in order to map out the high-priority initiatives that will drive the next wave of value growth.

The Mass Affluent customer segment – fourteen percent of US households which control half of all US deposits and investments and one quarter of mortgages today – creates immense value for retail financial institutions.

The majority of nonfinancial institutions have at least touched upon ERM in their strategy, yet many would currently be classified as ‘adequate’ or “weak’ if they were rated today by S&P. This paper discussed the benefits of sound ERM practices.

When managed effectively, downsizing can yield significant economic and organizational benefits. However, leadership also faces significant challenges in the process: addressing the needs of those employees who are asked to leave, as well as those who stay behind; mitigating the risk that the process used to make reductions in the workforce may itself constrain the organization's potential for future growth; and ensuring that layoffs are communicated and carried out in a way that is consistent with the company's values and core beliefs.

Falling margins, higher credit losses and tougher regulation point to a more challenging environment ahead for consumer finance in Europe. Players need to adapt their strategy and operating model.

A company's ability to develop leaders who can successfully implement new strategies is the single most critical factor for success in today's complex business environment. Many CEOs tackling change find they simply don't have enough leaders who can meet these new challenges. This paper outlines eight steps for top leaders to build the ability to drive change, achieve new business goals and help accelerate the development of younger leaders.

Shareholders in insurance companies are showing an increasing preference for cash today rather than promises of value tomorrow. This paper examines the steps that we believe CFOs need to take to ensure that investor confidence is restored.

This annual report delivers a forward-looking snapshot of key industry trends and developments, based on qualitative insights and objective performance analytics related to shareholder value performance within financial services.

The business of owning and managing airports, once considered a safe haven, is challenging even the best managers. Higher fuel prices and an economic downturn that started in the United States and is spreading to other countries are reducing demand for air travel and causing airlines to make deep cuts in capacity. While the impacts of these trends vary widely by airport and region, one thing is clear: Fewer passengers mean less airport revenue.

Innovation Management in the Automotive Industry

Barring significant innovations in automobile design, the concept of individual mobility for all will be endangered. Auto makers need to practice carefully balanced innovation management, in order to ensure that tomorrow's cars are not only attractive to customers, but also affordable to broad segments of the population and compliant with the increasingly strict statutory requirements. Key success factors include long-term innovation visions, intelligent business models, customer-centered innovation marketing and low-cost development processes.

Tobias Eichner, Hans Georg Gemünden and Thomas Kautzsch
The authors of Oliver Wyman's Private Equity Practice (in joined effort with Technical University Berlin) developed a framework to quantify the value of a company's managerial flexibility, modeled according to the "real options" approach. The article is based on a High-Value Divestment consulting case in the high-tech industry. It shows that under given circumstances neglecting such real options will lead to substantial undervaluation. While conducting a precise valuation may remain complex without professional support, the authors assert that executives at least need to understand the basic properties of their inherent real options to actively manage them and extract their hidden value.

John Swain, Michel Buffet, and Astrid Thomas
Successful onboarding of new executives is one of the major talent management issues organizations face; recent studies have uncovered persistent high turnover rates and significant costs to a failed external hire. In this article originally published online by Talent Management, the authors discuss the importance of a rigorous approach to creating an effective onboarding process.

Andrew Patterson
As utilities compete their retreats from unsuccessful deregulated ventures of the late 1990s, their financial statements contain less debt and suggest a higher-quality earnings outlook. Divesting assets identified as "discontinued operations" has shored up earnings across the sector. In fact, the power and gas sectors currently trade at historically high price-to-earnings multiples.

Reprinted from Electric Perspectives, Sept./Oct. 2007

It may be time for European railroads to take another look at wagonload service. Wagonload, because it involves assembling, sorting, and multi-point distribution of wagons for individual customers, generally has been seen as less cost efficient and more operationally complex. Oliver Wyman believes, however, that by developing "mixed train" services that meld the economics of trainload with the greater geographic coverage of wagonload, railroads can actually gain a new source of strategic control and competitive differentiation.

Oliver Wyman recently conducted in-depth discussions with senior executives at leading mobile operators in order to identify the opportunities, challenges, and risks that network sharing presents.

David Nadler
Scripting a successful tenure

Adrian Slywotzky
How Coach learned to know, not guess, what customers want

Oliver Wyman recently completed a broad-based study in order to identify best practices in forging and executing network-outsourcing arrangements. This study included in-depth workshops with senior executives at more than 80 operators around the world. Our findings on network outsourcing trends, their implications for telecommunication executives, and steps executives can take to anticipate and mitigate risks are summarized in this paper.

In recent years, strategic threats have surged to the forefront of management challenges in many industries. A key characteristic of successful companies today is their exceptional skill at anticipating and managing such threats.

Accelerating growth and globalization are forcing organizations to identify and nurture leaders who can operate effectively across the organization and, in many cases, across borders. For some organizations, the key challenge is immediate: aligning current leadership with the business strategy. Other organizations struggle more with "bench strength" issues - finding and developing the leaders of the future. Many organizations face both of these leadership challenges, and almost all struggle with ensuring smooth leadership transitions. This paper is based on an executive roundtable series that Oliver Wyman - Delta Organization & Leadership and its sibling company Mercer conducted with Harvard Business School Publishing in the US and Europe.

As the demographic profile of Europe changes, it becomes apparent that in order to address the 50+ market effectively, Financial Services firms must think in cross-sectoral terms and create innovative approaches that combine elements of wealth/asset management, retail banking, insurance and securities. Although there has been a lot of talk about responding to these demographic changes, our research shows that most firms have made only minor adjustments to their product offerings, marketing strategies, and distribution mechanisms. The paper discusses the steps that the Financial Service industry needs to take to address the 50+ market effectively.

What does MiFID mean for the securities industry? Our research shows that MiFID will reinforce and accelerate pre-existing trends. Yet these trends, and the direction in which MiFID will nudge them, are strategically significant. Rather than simply comply with MiFID, financial institutions must understand how it will accelerate change, and how they can take advantage of the emerging opportunities and address new threats.

Professionalisierung im Handel muss weitergehen

Nach wie vor ist der Handel ein Markt mit erheblichen strukturellen Problemen wie Standortüberhang, sinkender Flächenproduktivität, unzureichender Sortimentsdifferenzierung und mangelhafter Kundenorientierung. Zudem sind die steigenden Rohstoffpreise eine Bedrohung. Deshalb muss die Professionalisierung im Handel weitergehen. Innovative Methoden und Tools gibt es dafür genug. Die Branche muss sie nur konsequent nutzen.

Traditionally, shared services have been seen as a back office cost cutting measure, however, we have found that some leading practices reveal a new generation of shared services providing front office revenue benefits. The key difference lies in the areas that are being shared. This paper recognises the use of hub and spoke models to enhance the front office to back office interaction of shared services.

Innovationsmanagement in der Automobilindustrie

Ohne wesentliche Innovationen in der Automobilindustrie ist das Konzept der individuellen Mobilität in Gefahr. Die Automobilunternehmen müssen daher mit einem ausgewogenen Innovationsmanagement dafür sorgen, dass die Autos von morgen nicht nur attraktiv für Kunden sind, sondern auch für breite Schichten bezahlbar bleiben und die immer strikteren gesetzlichen Auflagen erfüllen. Die Erfolgsfaktoren, um künftig zu den Innovationsführern zu gehören, sind langfristige Innovationsvisionen, intelligente Geschäftsmodelle, ein am Kunden orientiertes Innovationsmarketing und kostengünstige Entwicklungsprozesse

Investors in financial services had a great year in 2006. With shareholder returns of 26%, the industry reached a record $10.7 TN in market value. In this, our 10th anniversary State of the Financial Services report, we explore how companies can successfully navigate a changing marketplace to join tomorrow's winners' circle.

The 3rd issue of the Commentary includes the following articles on:
- A new strategy for a changing landscape
- Riding the credit cycle
- Improving cost efficiency by examining operating models
- How to compete while retaining healthy profits
- The IT challenge for credit risk management
- Coming to grips with market risk

It is no longer a secret that the aging US population has created the potential for great opportunity within the financial services and healthcare sectors. Most of the major financial services and healthcare companies have already established business units, or at the very least, segment heads to go after these opportunities.  Oliver Wyman has worked with a number of companies that are trying to reap the rewards on the "retirement opportunity", and has seen a wide range of approaches. We believe that the winners in this aging population opportunity will be those who can transcend the traditional boundaries among banking, insurance, healthcare and asset management. The New Retirement Landscape: Reaping the rewards is designed to stimulate thinking that breaks away from historic industry paradigms and challenges individuals and companies to develop compelling solutions.

The Risk Management Association and Oliver Wyman conducted a survey of the current state of the operational risk management discipline in financial services. This report summarizes the survey results, and draws conclusions aimed at guiding both practitioners and senior management in the next steps of operational risk program development.

North American freight railroads have experienced spectacular growth in intermodal and bulk traffic over the past several years, leading to an increase in capacity issues across their networks. In response, railroads have made unprecedented investments in assets, including turning to third parties to finance and provide needed new freight cars and locomotives.

Traditionell werden Shared Services als eine Methode zur Kostensenkung im Back Office angesehen,  einige führende Unternehmen haben jedoch eine neue Generation der Shared Services eingeführt, die im Front Office die Erträge steigern.  Der Hauptunterscheid liegt in den Bereichen die als Shared Services betrieben werden.

Predictive segmentation examines examining how customers might respond to changes in an offering, channels, pricing, and so forth. The predictive approach uses the market's response to these forward-looking moves, in combination with past behaviors, as the basis for segmenting. It also gives users a high degree of confidence in their decisions about what to do differently for each segment, because potential moves have been "pre-tested."

Alex Wittenberg and Mark Robson
An optimized insurance program is the best policy.

The number one risk to your business strategy is a weak leadership pipeline. By taking a systematic approach to implementing an executive talent strategy tied to the CEO agenda, driven by the business strategy, and based on accurate data, you can manage that talent risk and help your organization achieve its goals.

Managers of technology-driven businesses have traditionally had one major innovation cycle to worry about - the product innovation cycle. Several principles drive success: anticipate the next technology wave or new product opportunity, get to market first, achieve relative market share leadership in order to lower production costs, "cross the chasm" from early adopters to mainstream customers, and profit will follow.

Reuben Chaudhury
Telecom equipment executives expect moderate growth over the next few years. From 2007 to 2008, our analysis suggests that worldwide operator capital expense (CAPEX) spending will rise from roughly $225 billion to about $240 billion - a 7%-10% increase overall. However, we think this growth will have limited longevity. Beyond 2008, Oliver Wyman forecasts a slightly declining CAPEX spend, and a corresponding shrinkage of the telecom equipment sector's revenues.

Stefan Stern
"Every day this newspaper reports on winners and losers of the business world: those who speculated and won, and those who played it safe and lost. This running commentary seems to confirm what everyone knows: risk and reward are closely related..."
Reprinted with permission from The Financial Times:

For more on risk and reward, please visit: www.oliverwyman.com/theupside.

The European Financial Management and Marketing Association (EFMA) and Fortis commissioned MOW to undertake a study looking into European mortgage distribution. With the growth of remote and intermediary channels and improvements in technology and consumer sophistication, this is an area that is undergoing significant change. The report presents a comprehensive picture of the market today, how it is changing and how financial institutions involved in the mortgage industry can best adapt to the new landscape.

Does the continued drive for micro-granularity in actuarial pricing produce better performance? In markets where there is a relatively low level of pricing sophistication, increased granularity can provide a technical edge. However, leading players in sophisticated markets would benefit from broadening the lens away from a narrow view of pricing as a statistical exercise towards optimising the wider customer relationship.

John Seeliger
Many companies embarking on Lean efforts find that their organization is too rigid and top-down to support the management principles of Lean and Six Sigma. How to create the needed flexibility? Start by redefining the role of middle managers, transforming them from enforcers to enablers and mentors of front-line workers. Not only does this new role help the organization succeed with its Lean Six Sigma efforts, it also strengthens the leadership pipeline.

Capital management has become an increasingly complex and challenging discipline. Given its potential impact on an organisation’s bottom-line performance, banks require a more cohesive and dynamic capital management process. This report discusses the challenges, the industry responses and looks at how institutions can advance their capital management capabilities.

With the new Basel II rules less than one year away from becoming a reality, many players are increasingly interested in turning these costs into benefits. While the new Basel accord was designed to incentivize banks to enhance risk controls, many institutions have yet to fully identify benefits beyond pure regulatory compliance. This whitepaper reviews the different stages of benefit realisation and the strategies for Basel II payback.

Randall S. Cheloha and Colleen P. O'Neill
From the Second Quarter 2007 issue of Directors & Boards, the authors ask two top leaders for lessons learned and key factors in making executive transitions successful.

Over the past 10 years, Oliver Wyman has seen strategic risk surge to the forefront of management challenges for our clients across many industries. Increasingly, we are finding that one of the key characteristics of successful companies is that they are exceptionally skilled at not only recognizing, anticipating, and managing strategic risks, but in converting such risks into meaningful growth opportunities.

Internet video is being hailed as the next big new media growth opportunity - and a major threat to the traditional players' business models. Billions of dollars are being invested in Internet video and Web TV offerings. Succeeding with these new online video ventures presents significant challenges and risks, and often places the participants in direct conflict with their traditional partners. Winning players will craft compelling business designs around six critical areas in order to create an online video business that is differentiated in an increasingly competitive and crowded marketplace.

Utilities can redirect spending, up to 15% of O&M and capital, to needed infrastructure and reliability improvements by creatively rethinking their entire distribution operating model.

In the fast-moving world of technology, risks abound. But while most companies manage financial, operational, and hazard risks fairly well, the biggest peril in the high-tech industry-strategic risk-remains poorly understood and rarely managed.

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Oliver Wyman believes there is an opportunity to increase CIAC collections, minimize the utility's potential for disallowances, and reduce customer complaints associated with inconsistent treatment and the economics of cross-subsidization.

Steve Krupp & William A. Pasmore
It takes time and effort to build effective talent management practices into an organization's culture. Whereas the phrase "the top tells the middle what to do with the bottom" might once have characterized the standard approach to talent management, today the CEO must make a personal investment in talent at the top.

Many utilities are experiencing a decay in customer satisfaction scores and an increase in elevated complaint calls related to new business construction. Addressing these issues "requires a significant improvement in the overall customer experience - not just tweaks to the organization."

With transmission and distribution infrastructure growing older and cash flows remaining constrained, many utility executives feel like their system reliability is "decaying," which poses real challenges in managing T&D operations. This Mercer Perspective discusses how utilities can free up funds and choose high-impact initiatives to provide the greatest reliability benefits, while still meeting earnings targets.

Die Bevölkerung in Europa wird immer älter. Die europäische Finanzdienstleistungsbranche reagiert jedoch nur halbherzig auf den demographischen Wandel. Mit einem übergreifenden Ansatz könnten sie den lukrativen Markt weit besser erschließen.

Pipeline & Gas Journal Interview with Bob Orr
A detailed Q&A with Mercer's Bob Orr on the topic of the firm's talent strategy and aging workforce study in the energy space. The study indicates the employment challenges facing companies and gives some indication of the steps they are taking to master the challenges.

Europäische Versicherer verschenken 100 Milliarden Euro, da sie ihre Kunden nicht emotional überzeugen können. Oliver Wyman hat in einer aktuellen Studie analysiert, wie Versicherungen diesen Verlust vermeiden können. Der Schlüssel zum Erfolg: Modernes Versicherungsmarketing und ein gefühlsbezogener Umgang mit den Kunden.

Alex Wittenberg and Tom McDowell
Numerous companies' attempts to engage directors in risk management have failed either because those attempts themselves were not properly conceived or directors, and the companies, lacked specific tools to meaningfully involve directors. The authors advance three highly practical and effective tools that will enable boards to make that meaningful contribution to the risk management discussion in this article from the March/April 2007 issue of the Ivey Business Journal.

General managers in charge of new product launches may face a number of vexing questions: Why were we beaten in the market by competitors with inferior technology? Why are our newly commercialized technologies producing weaker than expected financial results? Why do our technology successes seem increasingly fleeting?

Es ist wieder die Zeit des Jahres, in der Banken ihren Geschaeftsbereichen die Ziele fuers naechste Jahr gesetzt haben. Diese Ziele sollten dann an die einzelnen Bereichs- ueber die Produktleiter bis hin zum einzelnen Kundenberater weitergegeben und umgesetzt werden. Unabhaengig davon, ob es um den Privatkundenberater einer Filiale, den Private Banker oder den Firmenkundenbetreuer geht, kann bei der Zielvorgabe an den Vertrieb viel richtig aber auch viel falsch gemacht werden. Richtige Vorgaben koennen massgeblichen Einfluss auf den Verkaufserfolg bzw. die Performance im Vertrieb haben.

A new survey by Oliver Wyman reveals that aircraft maintenance infrastructure continues to shift toward non-airline maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) providers, and the acceptance of globalization and global fulfillment networks is driving the adoption of new maintenance solutions.

In this paper, we describe some of the key steps that senior management should take to ensure that their bank is well prepared for the looming credit downturn. Firstly, banks need to put in place effective credit risk management structures that enable senior management to steer a bank through a credit downturn. Secondly, we make seven specific senior management recommendations aimed at ensuring that levers for managing credit risk exposure are effective and used appropriately.

Executive Coach David Nadler von Oliver Wyman ist einer der 25 einflussreichsten Berater in den USA. In den vergangenen drei Jahrzehnten arbeitete er für 80 amerikanische Konzernlenker. Mit CAPITAL sprach er über die Gründen von Scheitern und Erfolg großer Unternehmenslenker und die häufigsten Fehler im Vorstandsbüro.

Andy Patterson
For utility procurement teams facing a sellers’ market, a portfolio of change initiatives can prevent purchased goods and services from becoming the highest-growth cost center. Five strategies can be used to cope with turbulent supply markets: (1) Build Out and Integrate Your Supply Market Intelligence Function, (2) Diversify the Supply Base to Foster Competition and Improve Security of Supply, (3) Identify and Realize Specification Changes to Offset Escalation, (4) Establish Strategic Supplier Alliances, and (5) Consider the Power of Outsourcing.

The past ten years have witnessed dramatic changes in the financial services sector around the world. Yet the full magnitude of these changes and their implications for the future can be appreciated only if they are put in a longer-term perspective.

by Adrian J. Slywotzky

Strategic risk is the major business challenge today. Yet conventional wisdom offers no solution. Risk is considered a fact of life, like the weather, and everyone knows you can have high returns or low risk - not both. But what "everyone knows" is not always true.

This report presents perspectives on the market context, identifies emerging opportunities and challenges, and prescribes strategic and operational imperatives for local and foreign banks in the region.

In summary the paper highlights that the senior home equity products offer a continued opportunity for financial services institutions. Its primary focus is the North American market.

Jamen Graves
In an article published by Consulting Magazine, Jamen Graves brings attention to employee engagement, a critical topic often absent from the CEO's agenda. Graves notes that CEO involvment in defining, measuring, and fostering employee engagement can directly impact organizational effectiveness.

Transmitting signals over a distance for the purpose of communication is sometimes disparagingly called a "dumb-pipe" business. Certainly, this term doesn't do justice to one of the most successful business designs of all time, or to an industry that makes up approximately 4 percent of the gross world product. However, the phrase frequently serves as shorthand to explain how telecommunications companies are losing control over the services delivered via the very connections and bandwidth that the telcos provide.

Boasting $30 billion in revenues, the on-demand market is growing at about 11% per year—twice the growth rate of the traditional software licensing market. The reaction from traditional software vendors has been either to replicate the business design adopted by upstart software-as-a-service (SaaS) vendors such as Salesforce.com, by offering a stand-alone product, or to ignore the phenomenon in the hope that it remains contained within the customer relationship management (CRM) and human capital management (HCM) sectors. Oliver Wyman's recent work in this software domain suggests that neither of these two approaches may be optimal.

This report maps out for financial institutions the strategic and operational implications in the event of climate change. We found that the best positioned institutions will derive a growing source of competitive advantage by focusing as much on the emerging upsides of changing demand as on protecting themselves against the erosion of value in the long term. Moreover, firms across the industry should work together to assume a leadership position on this issue.

Failing to innovate can put global organizations at risk and diminish their ability to gain or sustain a competitive advantage. Oliver Wyman – Delta Organization Leadership and the Economist Intelligence Unit took an in-depth look at the challenge of leading and organizing for innovation through a survey and interviews with senior executives.

Capital management has become an increasingly complex and challenging discipline. Given its potential impact on an organisation’s bottom-line performance, banks require a more cohesive and dynamic capital management process. This report discusses the challenges, the industry responses and looks at how institutions can advance their capital management capabilities.

Andrew Watterson and John Seeliger
Are airlines really prepared for the inevitable next recession? The traditional levers for surviving a downturn, such as taking on debt and lowering wage rates, will not be available this time.

Electric and natural gas utilities can mine hidden assets within the Transmission and Distribution (T&D) sector. With T&D infrastructure and generation capacity shortages now forcing many utilities to confront a major new build-out cycle, global competition for natural resources means this cycle will occur at a time when construction costs are high and still climbing.

Adrian Slywotzky
Learn more about the ideas in Oliver Wyman's new book, The Upside, through this 8-page brief.

Despite the fact that insurance deals with inherently emotional events (life, death, disaster...) insurers are, paradoxically, at the back of the pack in customer engagement. The resulting lack of emotional engagement has cost the sector up to 100BN. Oliver Wyman has undertaken a global study to identify best practices and argues that there is plenty that insurers can and should do for their customers and indeed ultimately for themselves.

David A. Nadler
David Nadler discusses how the best CEOs master the ability to reset their goals and reinvigorate their agendas every few years in this article from the January 2007 issue of the Harvard Business Review.

Strategic risk is today's biggest management challenge. There are more risks with the potential to destroy your business design today than ever before. Hear an interview with Adrian Slywotzky, author of The Upside, about strategic risk in this 15-minute Harvard Business Review IdeaCast.

Peter Walsh, John Seeliger
Airlines Have Not Yet Realized the Full Benefits of New MRO Supplier Relationships.

A Real Options Case Study on Technology Carve-Out Venture Valuation.

John Calhoun, Krishnakumar Davey, and Mark Wohlfarth
In fast-changing markets, greater confidence in the best next move

Bob Orr, Bridget McVerry, and Camilo Serna
Tailored strategies for work force development

Bob Orr and Bridget McVerry
Over the next decade, attracting and retaining skilled workers will be one of the biggest risks to industry success.

Matthew Austen
Ten years since the crisis, fertile conditions for growth and challenges of scale and talent