Management Consulting Techniques, Tools and Frameworks

Here I will show you what to do if a blurry image appears

Here I will show you how to find additional resources attached to the coruse like Excel files, presentations, links etc.

In the second section I will discuss the main tools that you can use to analyze and understand a business. We will talk about things like: issue tree, bottom-up approach, top-down approach, backward reasoning, 80/20 rule, benchmarking, cost drivers, opportunity tree and many, many more

In this lecture you will get to know our favorite method for first rough estimation – the bottom-up method. We give you also 2 examples with Excel calculation how to use it.

Top-down is the little brother of bottom-up approach – not used that often but still very useful for re-segmenting the market (niche an low cost strategy)

Le'ts use the Bottom-up approach to estimate a ceramic tile market

Here I present you the case. You will be asked to estimate the market for ceramic tiles 

In this lecture I will show you the logical structure to the case presented in the previous lecture

Once you are done with the logical structure you should build the analysis in Excel on the basis of it

The data you have gathered will be used in your business analysis. You can also fill in the slides prepared in the very beginning and modify it if needed

In this lecture I show the backward thinking /induction. This approach enables you to design the whole process, company on the bases of the expected outcome

Let’s try to put the backward reasoning to practice. In this case study we will use it to decide what effort has to be done to 10x the current business. A few information about the retailer

• He has currently 100 stores. Each store sales are equal to EUR 2 M

• He wants to 10x the business up to Year 5

• Estimate what LFL growth he must get and how many stores he must open

• Assuming EUR 1 M per store estimate the Capex

• Estimate how many people he has to recruit assuming 6 people per store

In this lecture I will show you how to solve the case shown in the previous lectures 

Backward logic can be used in many situations. Below some of them

• You have a clear goal in the future but not a clear path towards it

• You want to estimate the pace needed to reach the goal

• You want to check the implications for you or your department

• You want to see what are the limitations preventing you from reaching the goal

• You want to see whether the goal is not too ambitious

• You want to see whether the goal does not require too big resources

In many cases you can get high end result from compounding effect in time or by getting small improvements in many areas. In this lecture I will explain the concept

Imagine that you have to help content agency estimate what will be the effect of increasing the number of posts produced by 10% every month. Use the compounded effect to estimate it

Here we will have a look at the Data Available that will help you with solving the case study introduced in the previous lecture

In this lecture I will show you the solution to previously introduced case study

Issue tree is a simple yet powerful concept used in consulting for structuring discussion and picking the right topics to concentrate on. In this lecture I will show you the principles of using it as well as a practical example

In this lecture, I will summarize what kind of examples of issue trees we will present in the next few lectures.

Here I will show example of an issue tree in Logistics

Here I will show example of an issue tree in Retail

Here I will show you an example of an issue tree in FMCG

In this lecture we will talk briefly about applying the low hanging fruits in practice. I will show you the principles of using it as well as a practical example

Now let’s see on a bit more advanced case study how to apply the low hanging fruit in practice.

In the next lecture we will develop a modification of low-hanging fruit framework to cost reduction. We will also apply it to a drugstore chain that has 4 000 stores and want to reduce it costs to survive the recession.

Enjoy the case study and as always if you have any questions please let me know

Let’s look how the quick win framework looks for savings. We will look at 2 dimensions:

• What is the potential savings we can achieve

• How easy it is to implement it?

We will have thanks to 4 categories of projects that we can consider:

• Cow savings – easy to kill and big

• Elephant – difficult to catch yet big

• Chicken savings – easy to kill yet you need to kill a lot of them not to be hungry

• Bat savings – small and difficult to catch

Remember that the potential reduction in costs depends on 2 elements: potential percentage cost reduction and the cost starting point:

• Potential % cost reduction

• Cost starting point

We will discuss this in this lecture

Imagine that you have to identify quick wins in cost reduction for an international chain of drugstores. We know their cost structure

• A few information about the firm that we will be analyzing

• They have 4 000 stores

• We have their cost structure

• They have send us a list of projects that will help them reduce costs

• Estimate the potential and group them using the quick wins framework

In this lecture we will solve the previously introduced case

We cover in this course the most essential techniques, tools, and frameworks.

We know that sometimes is difficult to decide which technique, tool or framework you should use for solving a specific problem.

Therefore, we have created a cheat sheet that will narrow down your search. Below a link to the overview of all tools:

Management Consultant Tools Overview

Go to the sheet “Finder” and pick on the left the problem you want to solve.

On the right, the most useful techniques, tools, frameworks for a specific problem will appear. You can use one of them or in some cases all of them. This will depend on the context. A lot of those methods we cover in this course.

I hope this will help you with using the content of this course in practice afterward.

If there is a problem that you are facing that we did not cover please let me know. We will be updating this tool using your feedback.

So enjoy the rest of the course!

Without setting the right priorites to tasks you may end-up concentrating on the wrong things.In this lecture we will discuss the ways in which you can set priorities to tasks that you have to perform. At the end I will apply them in an example to show you the difference in outcome

In this lecture I will discuss the role of external and internal benchmarks. They are a powerful help in business and will help you boost your productivity yet have to be used with caution.  At the end I will apply them in an example to show you the difference in outcomes.

In this lecture I will show you how to use in practice 80/20 rule also known as Pareto principal

Goals are good as long as they are SMART. In this lecture we will talk briefly about applying this useful concept in practice. I will show you the principles of using it as well as a practical example: some of them general and one specific for consulting

Opportunity tree is a tool that you can use to generate new ideas to improve your business by looking at main drivers of your business

If you want to understand well a business you have to be able to identify the cost drivers that shape the business model. In this lecture I will show you how to do that

Key Performance Indicators are extremely important to understand and manage a business. In this lecture, I will show you how this is achieved. In the next lectures I will show You using an example of a cinema company how to apply KPIs in practices

In the next few lectures I show how to estimate the potential improvement in a cinema

In this lecture I will show you the case you have to solve. As a first step you will have to define the KPIs that matter in the cinema business

In this lecture I will show you the logical structure to the case presented in the previous lecture

In this case study you will be asked to define the drivers and KPIs for the marketplace / 2-sided business model

In this lecture I will discuss the KPIs that you should concentrate on in marketplace business model

In this case study you will be asked to define the drivers and KPIs for the FMCG business model

Here we will discuss the main drivers for the FMCG business model

In this case study you will be asked to define the drivers and KPIs for the SaaS business model

Here I will show you some examples of SaaS businesses. This will help you to understand the nature of the business and define proper drivers and KPIs

In this lecture I will discuss the KPIs that you should concentrate on in SaaS business model

Here I show basic rules for Excel that you should flow

Here we will briefly discuss what you should learn when it comes to Excel

Power Pointe presentation is the second most important tools to be used by Business Analyst in his work. After all it is not only important to analyse data and draw conclusions but also to show them in a nice manner to decision makers. Here you will learn basic rules on how to build your Power Point deck in fast and easy manner. You will see also some examples of good and bad slides. There are many advanced tools for presentation (i.e.) Prezi. Still Power Point is the most often used and widely accepted

Here we will summarize all the methods we have learnt in this section

In this section I will discuss more advanced techniques such as: rankings, scenario analysis, representative element analysis, decision tree, OEE, OLE, theory of constraints, Critical Chain and many, many more

Quite often you have options that you want to somehow compare and rank. Thanks to the ranking you not only give points but you can sort them from the most wanted to the least desired. In this lecture, I will show you how to use rankings and when

Let’s have a look at a milk producer that wants to expand its product range. In this case, you will be asked to analyze and find the best candidates for brand expansions. 

In this lecture, I will show you how to solve the case shown in the previous lectures.

Creating an expansion strategy requires you to do several things. I will show you in this lecture how to approach this subject

In this lecture, I will start the case study that we will be solving for the next few lectures. Imagine that you are a Spanish fashion retailer and you want to figure out which countries you should enter. Therefore, you prepare a ranking of countries that show attractiveness and the size of every market.

In this lecture we solve previously introduced case.

The future is pretty difficult to figure out. You don’t know what will happen. In those cases, it is a good idea to consider a few different scenarios. One of the ways to face it is via scenario analysis. I will show you how to use it in practice

Price formula in B2B services can drastically impact the margins and net profit. In this lecture, we will go through a case that will show you how to approach the analysis of the price formula with uncertainty on the scenario that will happen

In this lecture, I will show you how to solve the case shown in the previous lectures

In this lecture I will show you how to solve the case shown in the previous lectures

To help you understand the scenario method let’s have a look at another cases study.

Imagine that you work for a ceramic tile producer that wants to increase the demand for his service.

He is considering 3 different scenarios. In the next few lectures I will show you how you can approach this sort of case studies.

Enjoy and if you have any questions please let me know

Imagine that you are working for a ceramic tiles producer that wants to change the frequency at which customers are remodeling its houses. Your task is to analyze and decide which way is the best

There are some standard ways to make people shorten the lifespan. In this lecture we will discuss them

Here I show you more examples from scenario analysis

In many cases there are a lot of options that you can consider. For simplicity you want to limit the options and get down to 1-5 representative elements. In this lecture I will show you how to use this technique in practice

This case will show you how to compare the non-comparable. I will show you what to do in situation when you have different tariffs and straightforward comparison is virtual impossible

In this lecture we will give you some tips how to approach the case and show you the usage of the proper Excel functions

In this lecture we solve the case with you, show you the outcome, interpret it and give you examples how the results can be presented in terms of Excel and slides

Quite often you have to make important decisions faced with uncertainty. In those situations, it is very useful to apply the so-called decision tree. In this lecture, I will show you how to use this technique.

We show here how to use the so called OEE (Overall Equipment Efficiency) Analysis that shows you how efficient you are in using your resources. It is very useful for checking whether you use well machines and equipment

In every company, you have bottlenecks that limit your ability to go forward and deliver more goods and services. Here I will show you how to estimate what is the impact for the whole system and how you can remove improve them. I will use a simple production example to show you the effect on the whole system. You will see how the bottleneck can shift from 1 shift to another. You will also learn how to prioritize where it makes sense to invest to get the best results.

Before doing this lecture I strongly encourage you first to take the OEE lecture – we use the OEE concept here so if you are not familiar with it please start with the OEE lecture as a warm-up.