Consulting projects in a variety of industries

Client: Leading multinational pharmaceutical company

Objective: Deploy agile project management methods for cross-border, cross-functional teams (8 months)

• Definition of 2-3 year strategy, breakthrough objectives and annual targets.
• Training of agile project management principles and methods.
• Accompaniment of teams and leaders on prioritization and execution (sprints) of topics.

Key success factors: Coherent strategy definition, agile methods training and transparency across all initiatives to ensure alignment towards achieving the common goals

Client: Leading multinational pharmaceutical company

Objective: Ensure stable, scalable order management processes and implementation (8 months)

• Process analysis and optimization of order management process for Cell & Gene Therapy treatment.
• Planning of the migration of ordering processes to new IT platform.
• Leadership training on "Large Scale Change Management and Implementation"

Key success factors: Low-level process mapping, identification of obstacles, and joint planning between teams to remove them

Client: Leading multinational pharmaceutical company

Objective: Define world-wide roll-out processes to enable country on-boarding for product launch (8 months)

• Ensure successful global Cell & Gene Therapy product launches by defining supply chain and system requirements involving all relevant teams.
• Built a multi-project management system to identify resource bottlenecks as a decision basis for launch and implementation projects.
• Project contents were successfully transferred to the newly created line organization.

Key success factors: Leverage experience from past launches to define a launch process and detailed checklists and timelines for successful launching of new countries

Client: Leading multinational pharmaceutical company

Objective: Successful European launch of novel Cell & Gene Therapy treatment (14 months)

• As commercial project manager, responsible for the European launch of the Cell & Gene Therapy treatment.
• Successful and on-time product launch including provision of supply chain processes and IT systems.
• Definition of work packages and setup of high-level and medium-level project plans.
• Ensured all relevant topics were covered by work packages and all tasks and responsibilities clearly defined.
• Coordinated teams and networked key stakeholders to ensure good internal communication and smooth problem resolution.
• Close monitoring of key issues to ensure critical points are resolved quickly and efficiently.
• Set up and led core team meetings to ensure alignment within the project.

Key success factors: Clear assignment of roles and goals in commercial, supply chain and IT organizations to coordinate all parts of the program. Detailed pre-launch planning and a high degree of transparency and communication ensured alignment of all program parts.

Client: A group of private equity firms in the healthcare sector

Objective: Project analysis with the goal of increasing revenues and finding new revenue streams (4 months)

The competitive landscape was to be analyzed, market gaps identified and possible strategies for revenue growth defined. The project portfolio was evaluated by business impact and customer potential. Implementation planning and targeting of the sales organization followed.

Key success factors: Understanding of a constantly evolving technology landscape, market development analysis and revenue forecasts.

Client: Leading global logistics provider, Logistics sector

Objective: Define a process to identify and manage mission critical IT systems (2 months)

This process involved defining criteria for identifying mission critical systems. Subsequently, software quality levels and service levels were defined to support critical systems. In a team, we conducted a risk assessment and defined risk mitigation strategies, along with KPIs and monitoring tools to minimize and mitigate risk.

Key success factors: Development of a scoring system to define criticality and system relevance.

Client: Publisher

Objective: Identify main structural inefficiencies in the marketing and sales department (2 months)

The goal was to analyze the Marketing and Sales organization to determine structural and process issues. Recommendations were developed for organizational changes to future-proof the department. We created process maps, customer clustering and defined product strategies.

Key success factors: Solid understanding of the current business and clear customer segmentation.

Client: Leading European logistics provider, Logistics sector

Objective: Define the role and responsibilities of a newly created CIO function (2 months)

A new regional CIO department was to be defined and set up in terms of personnel requirements, structure and functions. Roles and responsibilities for a demand IT were defined and planning for a new organizational structure was carried out.

Key success factors: Solid definition of a demand IT specially aligned with the needs of an international logistics business.

Client: Confidential

Objective: Migrate service processes to shared service center (9 months)

• Established quality management processes to ensure company-wide uniform standards.
• Implemented prioritization and release management processes for key service processes.

Key success factors: Focus on underlying support processes in the IT and services organizations to be able to implement the migration.

Client: Telecommunications Industry - Worldwide leading telecom HW provider

Objective: Identify non-headcount savings and develop process improvements (6 months)

• Develop and capture non-headcount savings in product development, supply chain, and service organization.
• Validation of pricing for hardware, software and service products.

Key success factors: Analysis and aggregation of low-level data to provide new insights into process and pricing issues.

Client: Leading software and content producer

Objective: Prepare post-merger integration (7 months)

Prepared the integration scope, and execution of the post merger integration project. Supported the integration workstreams and overall coordination.

Key success factors: Close collaboration with top executives to define integration strategy and prerequisites. Leadership development to prepare top management for the new situation.

Client: Leading energy services provider

Objective: Transform central IT systems to support regional restructuring of field and sales forces (7 months)

The goal was to transform the central IT systems to support the regional restructuring of the sales and field forces. This includes defining goals, detailed planning, accompanying the transformation, and ensuring smooth operations throughout the transformation process.

Key success factors: Close collaboration with all stakeholders, creating transparency and understanding of dependencies between IT systems, detailed transformation planning

Client: Leading electricity provider

Objective: Transform regional commercial functions into central functional units (14 months)

The project consisted of three main parts: Management of the PMO for transformation from a regional to a functional organization, leading the reintegration of a facility services subsidiary into the fleet organization, and supporting HR transformation and harmonization projects including negotiations with the works council.

Key success factors: Close collaboration with all stakeholders; creating transparency for all organizational units involved regarding all aspects of the transformation

Client: Online HR Industry - Leading HR posting service in Berlin

Objective: Develop a 3-year strategy and operational business plan (3 months)

As a basis for developing the 3-year business plan, we conducted a market analysis of the demographic development of labor markets over the next 10 to 20 years. The current competitive landscape was also analyzed and based on this, several strategic options were developed.

Key success factors: Sound analysis of markets and market forces over 5, 10, and 20-year time horizons; development of concrete and operational implementation plans.

Client: Technology company in healthcare sector

Objective: Find new business areas and growth opportunities for existing technologies (18 months, part-time)

The client's goal was to expand its strategic focus for opening new business areas. One of the concepts developed, a method for monitoring movements of mentally disabled patients, was awarded a special prize of the European Satellite Navigation Competition by T-Systems.

Key success factors: Development of a solid understanding of potential target markets to evaluate the value that customer technology can offer these markets.

Client: Domain Trading - Worldwide leading domain trading platform

Objective: Improve the sales process and organizational structure (2 months)

The sales process was analysed by interviewing close to half of the salesforce to understand the current products, sales process and market, both in Germany and international locations. In workshops with the management team we agreed on several key areas of improvement, and developed detailed implementation plans.

Key success factors: Analysis of sales processes and structures in combination with the overall company structure itself

Client: Telecommunications Industry - Worldwide leading telecom HW provider

Objective: Design and implementation of a sales controlling system for customer projects (4 months)

The challenge was to design and implement a sales controlling system for large scale international customer projects. These projects deployed telecommunications hardware worldwide and were tracked in a variety of SAP systems, making the consolidation of controlling data difficult. Accessing the basic financial accounting information from the various systems provided a basis for tracking working capital requirements (WCR) and evaluating project progress and performance.

Key success factors: Focus on basic financial data from SAP systems to obtain consistent data and ensure rapid implementation.

Client: Worldwide leading generics manufacturer

Objective: Build a central indirect procurement organization by consolidating decentralized procurement departments (10 months)

We accompanied the set up of the central purchasing organization from scratch. We planned and coordinated all parts of the setup process: coordination and recruiting of nine management positions via three different headhunters, establishing interview guidelines, defining roles and responsibilities, developing onboarding plans for the new employees.

Key success factors: Stakeholder management at all levels of the company, good recruiting and onboarding processes for new employees

Client: Worldwide leading generics manufacturer

Objective: Integration of the product portfolio and administrative functions of the two companies

The post-merger integration (PMI) activities focused mainly on market synergies in the product portfolio and cost savings in administrative functions. The revenue potential and launch opportunities in "white-spot countries" were assessed to best complement the existing product portfolio.

Key success factors: Detailed country-based analysis of product portfolios, sales structures and market potentials

Client: Trade fair and Congress organization, Germany

Objective: Multi-day leadership development workshop for top executives

• Led breakout sessions for top executives in a two-day seminar and workshop.
• Content related to employee competency models and the employee evaluation process.

Client: Retail bank in Frankfurt

Objective: Outsourcing preparation for parts of the HR function to a shared service center (5 months)

• Prepared outsourcing of an area to a shared service center (SSC). Coached management for the outsourcing process.
• Collected and compiled information for a Request for Proposal (RFP). Drove vendor pre-selection until project freeze.
• Planned and supported post-merger integration (PMI) activities.

Key success factors: Analysis of processes and legal issues surrounding outsourcing.

Client: Pharmaceutical company in Nuremberg

Objective: Support strategic marketing with project management and analytical tasks (3 months)

• Development of a decision model for health policy issues for game-theoretic analysis of insurance rebate models.
• Analysis of visit and sales data to improve sales force targeting.
• Setup of a closed-loop promotion pilot project for the sales force.

Key success factors: Methodical approach to analysis and validation of all supplied data.

Client: Holding company in Munich

Objective: Restructuring of an acquired company (EUR 300m revenue, 750 employees) in France (6 months)

• Catalog mail order for clothing and other products.
• Focus on logistics, IT (externally outsourced), customer service, marketing and finance.
• Externalization/outsourcing of logistics and customer service.
• Renegotiation of parts of the IT outsourcing contract with major IT provider.

Key success factors: Consistent and rapid implementation of the post-acquisition plan.

Client: Holding company in Munich

Objective: Support for pre- and post-merger activities in portfolio companies (8 months)

• Restructuring of an acquired company and integration with another company in the group.
• Implementation of controlling systems, development of an end-of-life roadmap for various applications.
• Identified critical issues using the Balanced Scorecard and created a prioritized action plan.
• Wrote business plan for investment search of a pharma development software company.
• Analysis and processing of M&A deals. Conducting due diligence on acquisition targets.

Key success factors: Good relationships and open communication with key employees of the holding companies. Quick analyses of current situations.