In these trying economic times, companies are increasingly looking to the Finance function to not just control costs but to transform the underlying cost structure of the business.  Most CFOs have been delivering on initiatives to control costs such as “zero operations growth” (ZOG) or “negative operations growth” (NOG) for years, so much of the “low hanging fruit” of cost savings has already been addressed.  The goal now is to take cost reduction to the next level without sacrificing the ability to support future growth.

Finance is the logical function to drive the transformation of enterprise costs to help their firm survive the current downturn and support growth as economic times improve.  We help senior F&A executives with responsibility for corporate-wide cost reduction by applying advanced data-driven, fact-based analysis to target lasting improvements in fundamental cost structures, especially in corporate functions, with projects like:

• Supply chain optimization
• SG&A model redesign
• Rightsizing
• Shared services
• Make vs. buy decisions
• SG&A process optimization
• Strategic sourcing
• Root cause analysis of post audit claims and process improvements

Most important, our team includes former retailers in F&A, logistics, merchandising and IT that can cut through internal politics to the core of complex issues in achieving cost reductions.