Transforming a Culture Through Successful Projects

---

After a major acquisition, the CEO wanted to transform the entire company. We helped his strategy succeed by working with executives and front-line staff on multiple initiatives which led to billions of dollars in both cost savings and revenue

---

MAXIMIZING A PHARMACEUTICAL COMPANY THROUGH THEIR PRODUCT PORTFOLIO

The CEO of a global pharmaceutical company asked Schaffer Consulting to help him transform the organization. He wanted better performance, better leaders, and an adaptive, results-focused culture. We helped them develop milestones to track the initiative and worked with executives and front-line employees to implement the strategy. The projects delivered in spades.

DRIVING A COMPANY-WIDE TRANSFORMATION

Following our advisory work on a major M&A deal, the new CEO asked Schaffer to help drive a transformation of his entire organization. The key objectives were to:

• Deliver dramatically higher levels of performance (billions in cost and revenue enhancements in 24 months)
• Develop the leadership and change capabilities needed to realize the transformation
• Create a more adaptive, results-focused culture to sustain new ways of working

A CULTURE-SHIFTING MINDSET LEADS TRANSFORMATION

With our help, the senior leadership team committed to lead the transformation with a culture-shifting “Prioritize, Align, and Simplify” (PAS) mindset:

• Prioritize – the most critical drivers of profitable growth and strategic advantage
• Align – resources against these strategic priorities
• Simplify – unnecessary complexity that was getting in the way of these objectives

Cross Business Group Drives Operational Improvements

After helping to develop financial guideposts for this work, we collaborated with executives to apply these cultural and leadership principles to specific operational improvement opportunities that front-line employees could internalize, understand, and implement.

One initiative focused on maximizing sales of the company’s mid-tier brands. Historically, the organization excelled in selling its top products within each market, but neglected other valuable parts of its product portfolio.

With Schaffer’s support, a cross-business group agreed on the criteria for identifying these brands in any given market. We then designed a process that local sales, marketing, and operations staff could use to identify no-cost or low-cost opportunities for incremental growth from these brands. The process was piloted in four markets, then refined and quickly expanded to the top 20 global markets, all within six months. Each local team developed a customized plan to maximize revenue from co-selling, new markets and channels, and prevention of price erosion. Ideas were then aggregated and shared across markets to allow for even bolder target-setting.

ONE INITIATIVE ADDS $500MM IN INCREMENTAL REVENUE IN 12 MONTHS

Our collaboration with this company over two years included more than a dozen initiatives like this one, enabling the realization of billions of dollars in cost reductions, hundreds of millions in recurring revenue, and dramatic advances in strategic agility and operational performance.

Download PDF