Framework for Increasing Profits?

Hello there!

The structure depends on the type of the business evaluated and its context that should be clarified with upfront questions.

1) Clarifying questions:

- Why is that important right now? E.g.: Has China entered this market with lower prices? Have the competitors starting using AI and streamlined their operations making a greater volume of products? Have shareholders complaint about the efficiency of this company? Has the market increased interest in this companies products/ services? Does the company has a successful product and wants to build something on top of that? Etc.

- What is the target vs current profits? By how much has the client grew its profits in the past years? This will give you an idea of the size of the challenge and a clear goal. If it is an aggressive one, you will probably have to think in more aggressive strategies and deprioritize low impact ones.

- What is the timeframe to achieve it? Again, if the time is short, that will constraint some of the ideas. E.g.: if the client wants to grow profits by an aggressive amount in one year, launching a product from scratch to increase revenues will probably be a non-efficient focus.

See that in your question, you first mentioned that all is fine and after that your structure started by trying to find an issue, that only makes sense if the clarification questions indicated that there is one, otherwise it doesn’t make sense. Risks seem to be just thrown there too, why would that be relevant?

2) Business context:

If the company just wants to be more profitable, that means the first layer should be revenues and cost related + other buckets that may be important depending on its situation. You’ll deep dive / prioritize the levers based on the clarifying questions AND on what makes more sense to that business. E.g.: it doesn’t make sense talking about increasing price for a mining ore industry or a commodity based company (if the product remains the same). 

To summarize, your goal is to make a personalized structure depending on additional data and the business itself. There won’t be a one size fits all approach for such a prompt. That doesn’t make it harder, it’s a matter of common and business sense and that can be developed!

If you want to learn how to demonstrate business sense and how to build personalized structures based on logic, count on me. That is KEY to an optimal performance - which you will need to ace a MBB or T2 case interview.

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Best,

Mari

Hi there. 

Topics you would want to cover (several of which you mention): 

1. Context: Where are we making money today? Where are we growing / shrinking? Where is our market position improving? What are key competitors doing? 

2. Path 1: Grow the core: Increase price / volume; improve product mix; lower cost in the core business 

3. Path 2: Grow into adjacencies: Adjacent products (or services), adjacent geographies (e.g. Apple selling AirPods is an example) 

4. Path 3: Enter new markets: New geography (Facebook entering China would be an example), new product (Chinese tech companies starting to make cars is an example), new customer segment (Starbucks selling coffee beans through supermarkets is an example)    

For each of the above you want to assess capabilities (can we do it?) and how high is the risk? (as you mentioned). 

Upfront in your clarifying questions, you should try to get more information on the objectives and context of the goal which should help narrow the scope of the case (e.g. Path 3 is not a consideration). 

Drop me a note, if you want to discuss. 

Cheers,

Andreas

Hi there,

Do you have the total case prompt to share? 

Otherwise it's a bit of fishing in the dark since the prompt might contain more hints on what to focus on, what to leave out, what the current situation is (industry, geography,...), etc.

Cheers,

Florian

A few key comments:

1.Your first point "where are we making or losing money" is a very shallow way to ask this. You need to segment the business and then understand where the profitability is higher 

2. You need to understand a) current business model (previous point); and 2) the business revenue and cost drivers. Without these, you won't get anywhere.

3. If you don't look at the market nor at the competition, you are blind regarding where the opportunities are and how big they are.

4. You are adding capabilities and risk without any stated purpose. No need to have those buckets, unless you have a very specific reason

Last, but should be first point: you need to have a better understanding of context (what is happening in the market?) and project goals (what is your target / objetive?)

Hi there,

I would be happy to share my thoughts on your question:

• First of all, I think the structure needs some content adjustments. If the question is not about the current or past situation, there is no point in a step like "Where are we currently making/losing money?".
• Moreover, the structure requires much more depth. It would not be enough just to mention increasing revenues or decreasing costs.
• Lastly, I would therefore advise you to consider working with an experienced coach like me case study structuring. I developed the "Case Structuring Program" to help exactly such candidates like you.

You can find more on this topic here: How to succeed in the final interview round.

If you would like a more detailed discussion on how to best prepare for your upcoming pre-interview assessments and/or interviews, please don't hesitate to contact me directly.

Best,

Hagen