A key driver of bottom-line performance, SG&A productivity is a strategic imperative for many large and complex organizations. Kaiser believes that true optimization involves not only identifying SG&A savings opportunities, but also uncovering potential areas of re-investment to help drive of long-term growth.
For most leading companies, recognizing the power of SG&A Optimization is not the struggle. Rather, the three primary challenges most companies face are:
- Identifying detailed, actionable and targeted improvement opportunities, instead settling on arbitrary or "across-the-board" cost cuts
- Understanding how much to improve in those areas, based on objective data and "apples-to-apples" comparators
- Capitalizing on opportunities, especially if previous efforts have failed to deliver results
Kaiser Associates helps clients answer these challenges by applying a unique and powerful benchmarking approach, comparing SG&A performance and drivers at multiple "levels" of the organization and through two distinct "lenses."
Quantifying SG&A spend for both the client and comparable benchmark companies is a fundamental first step in identifying how much to improve. This step enables us not only to size opportunities, but also to begin prioritizing those opportunities and create a call to action within the client organization.
It is equally important to understand how qualitative factors (per "level" and "lens") drive performance…and can be leveraged to improve performance. In fact, our approach to SG&A Optimization focuses as much on "the how" as it does on "the how much," helping to contextualize quantitative variances and reveal optimization "levers."
Kaiser's SG&A Optimization approach provides several critical pieces of insight, including:
- How clients' performance compares to peers and/or the "best-in-class" at a detailed level
- Why performance variances exist, and how they can be addressed to achieve optimum productivity
- Where clients should invest less, invest differently and—in some cases—invest more to achieve both near-term savings and long-term performance
- Reasonable improvement targets and performance levels
We have helped some of the world's largest and most renowned organizations optimize their SG&A investments, measurably improving bottom-line performance. SG&A Optimization clients include:
- Fortune 25 Consumer Goods Company
- $85 billion Health Product and Services Company
- Leading U.S. Retail Company
- Multinational Restaurant Holding Company
Read Kaiser's whitepaper on SG&A Optimization Services.
