Eli Diament  shares an article that identifies how market research can be used to inform and improve business strategies. Primary market research and B2B surveys are a crucial tool for business strategy and decision making. Done well, they provide data-driven insights into market dynamics, new sources of growth, customer and competitor behaviors, and the drivers of purchasing decisions. They also enable companies to define and quantify opportunities—and craft actionable ways to pursue them. Unfortunately, the market research landscape is dominated…

Umbrex is pleased to welcome Martijn Thierry with Martijn Thierry Strategic Results. Martijn spent seven years at Bain in London and Amsterdam. He was part of the Bain team that set up the Amsterdam office and left as Senior Manager.  Prior to Bain, he gained his PhD on circular business at Erasmus University Rotterdam and published a leading article. Martijnhas been running his own consulting firm for over 15 years. He has particular expertise in business strategy development, ESG strategy…

Umbrex is pleased to welcome Marcus Sandberg. Executive with strong experience from top-tier management consulting Bain & Company and corporate executive roles in media and technology. Deep experience from strategy development and execution across a range of industries and situations, combined with very strong Private Equity experience across the full deal cycle (due diligence, operational value creation and exit). Strong track record of delivering results by leading, working with and influencing teams across all levels of the organization. Significant experience…

Geoff Wilson shares an evergreen post that explains the issue of an uninspiring strategy. What’s the purpose of your strategic plan? The possibilities are endless.  Some might say that the sole purpose is to “enhance shareholder value.”  I’d argue that this old trope is no longer the gold standard.  Some adhere to the stakeholder model…which might be closer.  Regardless of the “concept,” a given business strategy has to appeal to a lot of people. Strategy, inasmuch as it deals with…

Belden Menkus shares a practical post that summarizes how to rebuild your business strategy process for a post-pandemic world. Covid-19 has caused broad acceleration of existing trends. So, what does this mean for strategy – particularly how organisations develop and implement them?   This is the second of three articles in which I explore the impact of Covid on strategy. The first is at: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/when-picture-blurred-change-frame-belden-menkus In several months we have seen change across multiple areas that we might have expected to…

In this article, Luiz Zorzella explains how understanding the net interest margins will better inform your business strategy.   If you are a bank executive and want to manage the bank’s business strategically, you must understand the key drivers of your bank’s profitability and the trade-offs they imply. For example, to some extent, banks can trade the cost of deposits for efficiency ratio by making it more convenient for clients to make deposits. At the same time, the equilibrium of these…

Marja Fox shares key tips on building strategy. In a previous post, I laid out the signs that your small- or medium-sized business might be ready for a new strategy. Those signs include evidence that your current strategy may not function well to define your choices and align your organization but also outward triggers that suggest the time is ripe for investing in long-term thinking. After all, the tangible benefits of a great strategy are real: from aligning your team…

Umbrex is pleased to welcome Mats Hugossonn with EpikOne Sweden AB. Mats has a passion for solving complex industry and business challenges in an international context. He has a background as a management consultant at McKinsey, CEO and business unit manager with a focus on developing new business and generating growth. He is very hands-on and goal-oriented with a strong track record in strategy / business development, sales leadership and creating results. His industry expertise is mostly from business services,…

Umbrex is pleased to welcome Jaime Preusche. Jaime is an independent consultant in the process of setting up his practice, leveraging his experience with the public and private sectors in the Americas, with an MBA from the University of Virginia, and over 10 years of experience, including a two-year stint at McKinsey. Jaime has helped start-ups get off the ground, large corporations design strategy turnarounds, and worked with the largest LATAM e-commerce company doing product management with a strategy consultant…

  Barry Horwitz explains why developing strategy is even more important when instability and uncertainty are the norm.  ‘There has never been a time in which managers did not invoke the idea that the world is changing faster than it’s ever changed before.’ Nitin Nohria, just-retired Dean of Harvard Business School Pandemic, rampant unemployment, economic uncertainty, climate change, political upheaval. And that’s just what you’ll find above the fold in today’s newspaper. Given all the turmoil and confusion across the…

  Aneta Key shares a helpful video and a few doodles that gives insight into the story of strategy development projects. Enjoy! After a final client workshop, I was inspired to hand draw a couple of characters, outline a comics-like dialogue, digitize my doodles, animate sequence and put to music for a fun retrospective prompt.  This ~2 min video served as a great opener for the project retrospective and a fun project capstone.    If you’ve ever been involved in a…

Umbrex is pleased to welcome Luka Repansek.  Luka Repansek worked as a management consultant in the financial institutions practice at McKinsey and gained experience in a number of European markets. He was Fellow at the McKinsey Global Institute in San Francisco were he conducted research on global capital markets. After McKinsey, Luka spent several years as a strategy and M&A advisor at large European financial institutions including KBC Group in Belgium and Sberbank in Austria. Luka has particular focus on…

  Luiz Zorzella takes a leap into the arbitrary world of luck to explain how unforeseen forces should be considered when shaping strategies.  8 months ago, I drafted an article explaining why you should do a sensitivity analysis of your strategy to luck. I was planning to publish it in March of this year, because of St Patrick’s. That draft started with “Now is the time to be bold.”. I pointed out that the largest Canadian banks were trading at…

  From the archives of David Bernal’s company blog, timeless advice on how to build a competitive intelligence function that responds to business needs and informs an effective  strategy. Recently, I had a discussion with the VP of strategy for a major multinational retailer. Even a company with vast resources and highly capable management struggled with a common issue for top management: the lack of actionable, timely and relevant competitive information to make appropriate corporate strategy and performance-improvement decisions. Many…

Umbrex is pleased to welcome Sumeet Sanghani.  Sumeet Sanghani is a proven growth achieving sales and P&L leader in the outsourcing and shared services space, who is looking for a role in which he can amplify and accelerate growth for a fin tech company. Sumeet brings the ability to advise and influence senior client executives to embrace solutions which can help them digitally transform their operating and business models for breakthrough performance. He combines advisory and consultative selling skills from…

Umbrex is pleased to welcome Astrid Marechal with Paraty 22 SA. Astrid Marechal began her career as a Tire Designer at Goodyear Technical Center in Luxembourg.  Later, she  was an Associate Principal at McKinsey & Company where she worked for ten years in North America, Brazil, Russia and Western Europe. Astrid has extensive expertise in strategy development, transformation and go-to-market solutions across multiple B2B industries, including industrial, technology and materials sectors. She has held several interim management positions as P&L…

Umbrex is pleased to welcome Lindsey Pitt. Lindsey Pitt started her career as a strategy consultant at McKinsey, largely in retail, CPG and media; some strategy work, some implementation work.  She subsequently joined Strategos, a boutique consultancy focused on organic growth in blue-chip organizations, where she collaborated with clients to design insight programs and develop and pitch opportunities for investment (think Shark Tank or Dragons’ Den).  In contrast to McKinsey strategy work, these projects were mostly handled by clients themselves…

Umbrex is pleased to welcome Zac Peake with Constratego Ltd.  Zac Peake has broad consulting and corporate experience, with work that spans strategy development, growth planning, performance improvement, cost reduction, organisation design, and transformation / change for a mix of consumer and retail, financial services, and private equity clients. Zac has worked at Booz & Company (Consumer and Retail practice), The Parthenon Group (commercial due diligence) as well as independent consulting. Zac’s previous corporate work includes roles as strategy director…