Business Challenge

Management had conducted a broader review all of their operations and had decided that the cause of the importance of pensions and some background concerns as to potential profitability problems a review was required. The company was heavily promoting a key product - Sales were growing, market share growing as was share of the companies ‘Book’

What WDScott did to help

The analysis involved a substantial team - to motley fifteen clients personnel and six WDScott team members. The scope included looking at the entire value chain and all the internal processes related to this offering. There was a large amount of internal actuarial and P&L data but it still required a large amount of additional bottom-up analysis in order to reach the conclusions shown in the exhibit opposite.

Initial Outcomes - The initial key findings showed that every sale was systematically destroying shareholder value and had been doing so for some years and that continuing operations drive down the share prices of the business. In addition the analysis showed that simply focusing on internal costs was a necessary but not sufficient condition for viable value creating offering.

The next stage involved determining what action could be taken to at least substantially improve the current position in the short term and then to identify the strategies that would lead to creation of a value creating offering.

Implementation - This involved redesign of the processes, technologies, the product and critically the means by which it was to be distributed. These changes took time but they have been profound. For example, the cost associated with distribution has been reduced by almost half as if it as have the overhead costs associated with operations.

Outcomes - Until recently, the nature of the market named that profitability was not at the low levels required however in recent times this has significantly improved.