Management - from vision to responsibility
Leadership with reflected decisions.
As an entrepreneur, managing director or board member, you have the vision in front of your eyes and the big picture in view. You stand up for the company, organization or a unit with your head, heart, gut and capital. In fact a top manager. You have a lot of knowledge and experiences, because everyone uses the strengths of their talents and capabilities. But you can hardly be strong in all respects - and you probably don't even want to be. And you know that it helps to talk to a trustworthy sparring partner about half-baked ideas and tricky situations. This brings new perspectives in weighing and leads to clarity in your decisions. The mentoring of your managers can also strengthen your strengths. Or you use someone as an operational, pragmatic interim manager to bring changes forward without losing any advantages you have gained. Management consulting subsumes all of this.
Management consulting - operationally and with a hands-on mentality
We actively work hand in hand.
Interim Management
Limited in time
Immerse, do, say goodbye. From now on, take on a team and tasks in order to achieve defined goals.
Result-oriented
If so, then responsibly explore all options and push the best.
Do
Keeping everything - really EVERYTHING - up and running until pending fundamental decisions have been made.
Bridging vacations
Quickly take the lead and keep everything running until the decision to fill is made.
Corporate Change Management
Business transfer
During transfer process and due diligence, companies only retain their value if business operations continue without interruption and the workforce remains motivated on board.
Post Merger Integration
In all functional areas - HR, products, processes, IT, marketing - people and relationships as well as data and facts have to be synchronized. No employee, customer or business partner should be lost in the end.
Reorganization
Outsourcing, merging locations, etc. - that means keeping an overview, doing, correcting, leading to the desired state.
Generation transition
Parents-child relationships are one thing in private - the other is evident in business. A neutral third party with empathy and a sure instinct helps to circumnavigate factual and emotional cliffs.
Vision, mission, general principle, values
Vision
Fixing the company's vision for the future - and not just a generic "We want to be the greatest".
Mission
Grasp the purpose of entrepreneurial activity - from the customer's perspective and from the market's perspective. What does the market really need of what we can do and what is it useful for?
General principle
Develop the self-image and the principles and use the really appropriate words for substantive statements. This is how you can finally seize employees, customers, partners, the public and rely on mutual loyalty.
Values
Values determine the corporate identity. Who are we? What drives us? What do we want to achieve? It doesn't work without like-minded people. The shared values serve internally and externally as guides in business operations.
Mentoring
New in the management role
Peer-to-peer mentoring for young and best-aged executives helps people to help themselves, so that they can "stand by their own" in future.
On-boarding of new executives
Corporate culture and management style are decisive for employee satisfaction. That is why a coordinated program and defined feedback milestones help at the start.
Diversity
Woman-man, young-old and many other differences shape society in the market as well as in the company. Strengthening the strong, but also promoting the supposedly weaker - that in fact strengthens the entire organization.
Strategy - with goal and focus
First think, then act.
It is important to formulate strategies at company level, in functional areas as well as in individual projects. Analyze critically what went well or not so well so far, in order to then weigh up the opportunities and risks for new paths and modified goals. Even when it comes to innovations, there is seldom something completely new, but rather built on what is already known or brings together several known components to create something new. Strategies define the direction and the framework of how the big goal is to be aimed in order to approach the vision. Wasn't it good if you had someone by your side as a sparring partner who, as a strategy consultant, would consider business development with you, introduce new ideas, find ways and create benefits with the expanded network.
Corporate Strategy
Vision, branding, business models
We accompany you through the entire process of finding your company direction. Three fundamental questions about corporate strategy that are not only relevant for start-ups, but also result in the so-called elevator pitch, your brief company presentation.
- Who are we and what can we do?
- What benefits do we want to promise our customers?
- How do we efficiently implement them?
Corporate strategies also extend into everyday business. Declining customer satisfaction, growing competition or dwindling level of awareness require corrections in the business models, the company organization or other fields of action:
- Reorganization of individual business processes or entire business areas
- Acquisition of cooperation partners, e.g. for sales
- Company acquisitions and takeovers to expand the portfolio, market coverage and acquisition of skilled workers
- Outsourcing of service units or business areas in order to concentrate on the value-adding core competencies
We are at your side for research, decision-making aids and operational implementation - with broad specialist knowledge in the technical environment, with a good market overview, international group experience, content-related objectivity and a great deal of sensitivity for the current situation and business opportunities.
Product Strategies
Stronger competitiveness
Customer satisfaction and competition guide the product strategy for the product portfolio with the associated products. The classic marketing mix - product, price, channels, promotion - and the necessary service chain including employee resources within the company or across company boundaries must be worked out with as is and should:
ACTUAL - Analysis and assessment of the current situation based on the following criteria
- Customer needs and benefits with regard to existing or possible product properties
- Influencing factors from the market: New technologies, competition, price, conditions, service, level of awareness
- The service chain within the company: purchasing, production, sales, services, logistics, customer service, accounting, human resources
TARGET - concept for positioning and expanding the product portfolio
- List of new product services, benefit aspects and price models / tariff models, highlighting the special features with regard to competitiveness
- Selection and development of suitable sales channels: direct, indirect, online, digital
- Development of the associated service chain, e.g. additional services before and after the purchase
Marketing Strategy
Higher sales success
Who are your (potential) customers and how do you reach them?
We help with the selection and alignment of the marketing channels and their target segments. Due to our many years of sales-related marketing experience, we are very familiar with the technical industries and sales methods. This practice is the most reliable tool of the trade. The key points of the ACTUAL and TARGET:
ACTUAL - Analysis and evaluation of the current marketing channels and methods
- Performance of the analog and digital sales channels with regard to customer access
- Market shares in which segments, reference customers
- Previously unaddressed markets and potentials
- Comparative view of the competition with regard to their product range, market shares, customer access and references
TARGET - Development of the new marketing strategy
- Target segments - previous and new customer groups
- Determination of sales methods and sales arguments as well as commissioning models
- Selection of the sales channels suitable for the respective products:
- Direct sales for products that require explanation
- Indirect sales to gain remarketing partners
- Online sales for self-explanatory products
- Regular requirement plan for marketing measures - in which markets how much sales should be achieved.
Communications Strategy
More transparency and interaction
Clear addressing of your customers, employees, suppliers and service providers
Meaningful, binding communications - both internally to the employees and externally to the market, i.e. to customers, business partners, suppliers and service providers. Communications that is unsuitable in terms of quality and quantity can lead to random assumptions and discussions that will steer your plans past their goal.
And nowadays it's about even more: Communications is developing more and more into interaction due to the more intensive use of social media - customers show their (dissatisfaction) satisfaction with a single click or employees make statements about their employer and "search for new challenges".
Here are examples of situations as food for thought that call for a consistent communications strategy:
- Far-reaching change processes in the company organization, e.g. through company acquisitions
- Innovative product developments that should not be spied on before market readiness and announcement
"We didn't know that" or "I feel badly informed" - the frequency of such statements can be reduced if the communication is correct. Positive astonishment at a groundbreaking development or rapidly growing customer numbers please everyone more. Insufficient communication wastes the best opportunities to position the company with its achievements and to make the motives - even for unattractive measures such as short-time work - understandable. For communication, you need a framework plan about what (core messages) to whom.
Some references
STAR ELECTRONICS / Eberspächer Electronics, Göppingen
Interim Management
Eberspächer Electronics, developer and manufacturer of products in vehicle networking based in Göppingen, was sold by the Eberspächer Group to the STAR COOPERATION Group in the summer of 2014. In the field of vehicle electronics, as STAR ELECTRONICS, it now complements the service portfolio of the sister company (previously Berger Elektronik GmbH), both of which have been trading as STAR ELECTRONICS since September 2015.
- Order 1 - from the Eberspächer Group, Esslingen | Mandate for 4 months:
Management of the company as interim general manager;
Main objectives: Retain employees, maintain business, parallel support of the sales process with due diligence - Order 2 - from the STAR COOPERATION Group, Böblingen | Mandate for 13 months:
Company integration into the STAR COOPERATION Group in the same role as General Manager; Change management in every respect: strategy, product / engineering portfolio, company legal name changes, business processes, assets, personnel, works council, IT, SAP, spatial planning of the new business premises, transition communications and even content for the new website.
JBW GmbH, Munich
Generation transition and recruiting
Via the mandate from the exhibition stand construction agency, a stand construction inquiry that was not implemented resulted in another meeting three years later (2012). Again, a planned trade fair appearance was the trigger, which gave the impetus to evaluate suitable means for market access. From this, a very trusting cooperation developed with the then company owner and managing director on other topics, which, after her gradual departure in 2016, has been continued with the same trustworthy son as company owner and managing director. In some places I acted as a mediator.
Exhibition construction agency, Bavaria
Interim Management
After the sudden death of the main shareholder and managing director of this stand construction agency, the heirs, who were all not involved in the business operations, needed an interim manager, as day-to-day business should continue without interruption.
It was important to retain the employees and not to let any customer orders drop. That was in fact not that easy, because the second partner and operational manager should be kept away from day-to-day business from now on. This later turned out to be the strongest competitor and took away a number of customers.
I still really appreciate the well-rehearsed cooperation with the employees and the extremely loyal external stand builder as well as the printing house and graphic designer. The company was eventually sold and an employee took over the company.
Mandate for 13 months
MBtech Group, Sindelfingen (then AKKA, now Akkodis)
Introduction of product management, portfolio management and post merger integration
In 2005, Mercedes-Benz technology received an order from the head company of the group Daimler to no longer serve as an extended workbench, but to develop its own business on the open market. In the electrics / electronics business area, which developed rapidly in the years that followed, it quickly became apparent that more tools were needed for both installation and marketing.
- Introduction of product management
- Portfolio management for all products and services in engineering and consulting
- Post merger integration
- subsidiary RMCtech: customer park analysis, product portfolio
- takeover Micron AG: sub-project management for marketing and internal / external communication, - Project management and business model development for the application software factory
All in all several mandates for more than 4 years with interruptions
Frequently asked questions about management and strategy
What do you want me to answer? Thanks to a lot of experience and practice, I know a lot and what I don't know compliments my competent partner network.