Business Unit Strategy

Our business unit strategy approach focuses on driving a specific business to full economic potential–whether through an annual planning process, a transformation effort or full turnaround. Such efforts are all about making strategic choices and driving change. The ultimate goal is rapidly to create a proprietary set of actions that serve customers better than the competition.

Bain envisions the components of a good business unit strategy as a pyramid. Our strategy pyramid is built upon a solid fact base about the company's current position and performance, as well as the identification of the "burning platform"–or case for change. The ambition for the future tops the pyramid, under which lies a layered supporting structure firmly based on an organization that is mobilized and equipped to deliver results.

Just beneath the guiding ambition are the twin decisions of where and how to win. How those questions are answered directs the actions necessary to drive the company to full potential. These building blocks support the creation of long-term value through leadership in specific markets and segments.

Bain's research shows that sustained value creators turn in stronger performance before, during and after a downturn. They do this by:

• Building a strong core business
• Devising a path to achieve leadership economics
• Targeting a large and growing profit pool
• Focusing on the customer and developing "hidden" and untapped customer assets
• Building a repeatable formula, based on a company's differentiated approach that can be replicated in closely adjacent markets

Bain's approach to business unit strategy is geared to rapid results by considering options and mobilization efforts early on in the process. Indeed, from day one choices are weighed as the fact base is being developed and potential roadblocks to implementation are examined and addressed.

We use several lenses to help our clients develop creative and innovative strategies. Ideas may be generated from an assessment of changes in the "rules of the game," differentiation via different competitive models, new trends, deep consumer insight, and the expansion of repeatable models, along with the mining of underutilized assets or platforms, or "hidden assets." To foster creativity further, Bain uses its BothBrain® approach, which helps clients harness the creative and the analytic capabilities within a business to revolutionize the ideation process.

We help clients to develop dynamic decision-making capabilities, which aid strategy development amid uncertainty. Scenarios are developed by extrapolating macro, industry and competitive trends to determine likely end states. However, since the expected scenario may not be the one that plays out, organizations also need a process to develop robust and adaptable strategies, to monitor actual scenario outcomes and to accommodate course corrections as needed.

Mobilization efforts are focused on evaluating challenges to implementation and results by addressing risks, constraints, people and capability gaps from the beginning of the strategy process. Critical to this process is communicating early to key stakeholders to ensure buy-in and effective feedback loops that allow management to monitor execution. Mobilization, in short, is the process through which we help our clients convert a strategy into realized results.