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High Speed Cost Diagnostic

With experience from more than 5,000 engagements, our performance improvement consultants understand how to target new sources of profit and design pragmatic, quick-hit improvements. High Speed Cost Diagnostic is a diagnostic tool that draws on Bain's benchmarking expertise, quick analysis and collaborative approach to identify operations opportunities that can be implemented swiftly to boost the bottom line.

The High Speed Cost Diagnostic has the ability to identify and deliver cost reduction and cash improvement opportunities that can be implemented quickly for results within the fiscal year.

While not intended to replace a full cost evaluation and detailed action plan, Bain's High Speed Cost Diagnostic can be used as a first step diagnostic toolduring early opportunity-identification stages to offer a comparison of company performance against key indicators and best practices. Combined with Bain's expertise and collaborative approach, the assessment offers a means for informing decisions on improvement opportunities.

Our assessment draws on four sources of insight:

Benchmarking

We benchmark performance in the vast majority of our performance improvement engagements and our approach begins with a clear understanding of what works best when it comes to benchmarking:

Inputs: Cost and performance indicator benchmarks are understood as one input among several in identifying opportunities.
Scope: Specific questions to be answered during the benchmarking exercise are defined before kick-off.
Topical expertise: Topical experts advise teams on the intricacies of the benchmarks and the specific levers for improvement.
Savings opportunity: The range of the potential ‘size of the prize’ is calculated in concert with functional leaders.
Implementation: Benchmarks are understood to help functional leaders focus their bottom-up efforts to size the prize and launch initiatives to capture value.

Our benchmarking consultants also use proprietary materials, partnerships and external sources that add context and depth to our process. In some cases, Bain can also act as an unbiased third party to benchmark peer companies in various industries.

Our Approach

Our process goes beyond benchmarks and numbers to build a well-founded opinion on performance improvement opportunities.

We work jointly with client teams to assess opportunities across ten levers of performance spanning revenue enhancement (pricing, sales effectiveness), cost improvement (product complexity, purchasing cost, manufacturing, supply chain, G&A and IT), and balance sheet (net working capital, capex management).

The assessment is designed to build agreement as we work together to quickly establish the large areas of opportunity and prioritize those for further analysis or immediate implementation.