The current economic environment is characterized by uncertainty: international trade tensions, geopolitical instability and Brexit, to name a few. In addition, consumer expectations are changing, and regulatory requirements are constantly increasing.
Globalization and digitalization are putting the value chains of industrial companies under pressure as they face an increase in customer requirements regarding quality and availability and environmental constraints. They also need to innovate and differentiate themselves in order to continue to perform well against competitors, whether the competition is historical or due to new players. Consolidation movements are underway, as part of a race for critical size to finance ever-larger investments.
In this context, and more than ever before, the industrial sector is facing major performance and transformation challenges and must, therefore, adapt itself to cope with these developments and uncertainties.
Challenges
Industrial companies must be both flexible enough to finance their investments or external growth operations and able to continuously strengthen their capacity for innovation in terms of products and services while maintaining economic performance levels in line with expectations.
This depends on increasingly optimized and controlled operational performance across the entire value chain, from suppliers to customers, support functions and time to market.
How we can help
Argon & Co assists industrial clients in improving their operational performance in the following areas:
- Optimization of customer processes and service strategy: pricing, contract life cycle, invoicing, cash flow improvement, customer relationship and service, multi-channel and digital development, service rate improvement
- Cost reduction: optimization of direct and indirect purchasing costs, cost variabilization, design to value on industrial investments, optimization of shared services for support functions, lean management
- Time to market acceleration: optimization of the ideation process, development, industrialization and launch of new products and services
- Optimization of working capital requirements and acceleration of flows: forecasts, tactical and S&OP planning, implementation of inventory policies adapted to the specificities of the sector, load/capacity matching of resources
- Operational efficiency: optimization of organizations including roles and responsibilities, staff and performance management
- Change management