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Advanced concepts & frameworks
MBAs and other candidates with business backgrounds, take note - interviewers will expect you to have a more detailed take on your case than an undergraduate would have. Here are some commonly used case concepts.
Net present value
Perhaps the most important type of decision company managers must make on a daily basis is whether to undertake a proposed investment. For example, should the company buy a certain piece of equipment? Build a particular factory? Invest in a new project? These types of decisions are called capital budgeting decisions. The consultant makes such decisions by calculating the net present value of each proposed investment and making only those investments that have positive net present values.
Example: Hernandez is the CFO of Western Manufacturing Corp., an automobile manufacturer. The company is considering opening a new factory in Ohio that will require an initial investment of $1 million. The company forecasts that the factory will generate after-tax cash flows of $100,000 in Year 1, $200,000 in Year 2, $400,000 in Year 3, and $400,000 in Year 4. At the end of Year 4, the company would then sell the factory for $200,000. The company uses a discount rate of 12 percent. Hernandez must determine whether the company should go ahead and build the factory. To make this decision, Hernandez must calculate the net present value of the investment. The cash flows associated with the factory are as follows:
Hernandez then calculates the NPV of the factory as follows:
Since the factory has a negative net present value, Hernandez correctly decides that the factory should not be built.
The net present value rule
Note from the example above that once the consultant has figured out the NPV of a proposed investment, she then decides whether to undertake the investment by applying the net present value rule:
Make only those investments that have a positive net present value.
As long as the consultant follows this rule, she can be confident that each investment is making a positive net contribution to the company.
The Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM)
In the above example, we assumed a given discount rate. However, part of a consultants job is to determine an appropriate discount rate (r) to use when calculating net present values. The discount rate may vary depending on the investment.
Beta
The first step in arriving at an appropriate discount rate for a given investment is determining the investments riskiness. The market risk of an investment is measured by its "beta" (?), which measures riskiness when compared to the market as a whole. An investment with a beta of 1 has the same riskiness as the market as a whole (so, for example, when the market moves down 10 percent, the value of the investment will on average fall 10 percent as well). An investment with beta of 2 will be twice as risky as the market (so when the market falls 10 percent, the value of the investment will on average fall 20 percent).
CAPM
Once the consultant has determined the beta of a proposed investment, he can use the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) to calculate the appropriate discount rate (r):
The risk-free rate of return is the return the company could receive by making a risk-free investment (for example, by investing in U.S. Treasury bills). The market rate of return is the return the company could receive by investing in a well-diversified portfolio of stocks (for example, S&P 500).
Example: Shen, Inc., a coal producer, is considering investing in a new venture that would manufacture and market carbon filters. Shens chief financial officer, Apelbaum, wants to calculate the NPV of the proposed venture in order to determine whether the company should make the investment. After studying the riskiness of the proposed venture, Apelbaum determines that the beta of the investment is 1.5. A U.S. Treasury note of comparable maturity currently yields 7 percent, while the return on the S&P 500 stock index is 12 percent. Therefore, the discount rate Apelbaum will use when calculating the NPV of the investment will be:
Although this is an overly simplified discussion of how consultants calculate discount rate to use in their cash-flow analysis, it does give you an overview of how consultants incorporate the notion of an investments market to select the appropriate discount rate.
Porters Five Forces
Developed by Harvard Business School professor Michael Porter in his book Competitive Strategy, the Porters Five Forces framework helps determine the attractiveness of an industry. Before any company expands into new markets, divests product lines, acquires new businesses, or sells divisions, it should ask itself, "Is the industry were entering or exiting attractive?" By using Porters Five Forces, a company can begin to develop a thoughtful answer. Consultants frequently utilize Porters Five Forces as a starting point to help companies evaluate industry attractiveness.
Take, for example, entry into the copy store market (like Kinkos). How attractive is the copy store market?
Potential entrants: What is the threat of new entrants into the market? Copy stores are not very expensive to open - you can conceivably open a copy store with one copier and one employee. Therefore, barriers to entry are low, so theres a high risk of potential new entrants.
Buyer power: How much bargaining power do buyers have? Copy store customers are relatively price sensitive. Between the choice of a copy store that charges 5 cents a copy and a store that charges 6 cents a copy, buyers will usually head for the cheaper store. Because copy stores are common, buyers have the leverage to bargain with copy store owners on large print jobs, threatening to take their business elsewhere. The only mitigating factors are location and hours. On the other hand, price is not the only factor. Copy stores that are willing to stay open 24 hours may be able to charge a premium, and customers may simply patronize the copy store closest to them if other locations are relatively inconvenient.
Supplier power: How much bargaining power do suppliers have? While paper prices may be on the rise, copier prices continue to fall. The skill level employees need to operate a copy shop (for basic services, like copying, collating, etc.) are relatively low as well, meaning that employees will have little bargaining power. Suppliers in this situation have low bargaining power.
Threat of substitutes: What is the risk of substitution? For basic copying jobs, more people now possess color printers at home. Additionally, fax machines have the capability to fulfill copy functions as well. Large companies will normally have their own copying facilities. However, for large-scale projects, most individuals and employees at small companies will still use the services of a copy shop. The Internet is a potential threat to copy stores as well, because some documents that formerly would be distributed in hard copy will now be posted on the Web or sent through e-mail. However, for the time being, there is still relatively strong demand for copy store services.
Competition: Competition within the industry appears to be intense. Stores often compete on price, and are willing to "underbid" one another to win printing contracts. Stores continue to add new features to compete as well, such as expanding hours to 24-hour service and offering free delivery.
From this analysis, you can ascertain that copy stores are something of a commodity market. Consumers are very price-sensitive, copy stores are inexpensive to set up, and the market is relatively easily entered by competitors. Advances in technology may reduce the size of the copy store market. Value-added services, such as late hours, convenient locations, or additional services such as creating calendars or stickers, may help copy stores differentiate themselves. But overall, the copy store industry does not appear to be an attractive one.
As dot-coms come under fire, one case question weve heard increasingly is "How would you create barriers to entry as an Internet Startup?"
Product life cycle curve
If youre considering a product case, figure out how "mature" your product or service is
Strategy tool/framework chart
Heres one way to think about the choice between being the lowest-cost provider or carving out a higher-end market niche - what consultants call differentiation.
The Four Ps
This is a useful framework for evaluating marketing cases. It can be applied to both products and services. The Four Ps consist of:
Price
The price a firm sets for its product/service can be a strategic advantage. For example, it can be predatory (set very low to undercut the competition), or it can be set slightly above market average to convey a "premium" image. Consider how pricing is being used in the context of the case presented to you.
Product
The product (or service) may provide strategic advantage if it is the only product/service that satisfies a particular intersection of customer needs. Or it may simply be an extension of already existing products, and therefore not much of a benefit. Try to tease out the value of the product in the marketplace based on the case details you have been given.
Position/Place
The physical location of a product/service can provide an advantage if it is superior to its competition, if it is easier or more convenient for people to consume, or if it makes the consumer more aware of the product/service over its competition. In the context of a business case, you may want to determine the placement of the product or service compared to its competition.
Promotion
With so much noise in todays consumer (and business to business) marketplace, it is difficult for any one product/service to stand out in a category. Promotional activity (including advertising, discounting to consumers and suppliers, celebrity appearances, etc.) can be used to create or maintain consumer awareness, open new markets, or target a specific competitor. You may want to suggest a promotional strategy in the context of the case you are presented relative to the promotional activity of other competing products/services.
The Four Cs
The Four Cs are especially useful for analyzing new product introductions and for industry analysis.
Customers
How is the market segmented?
What are the purchase criteria that customers use?
Competition
What is the market share of the clients?
What is its market position?
What is its strategy?
What is its cost position?
Does he/she have any market advantages?
Cost
What kind of economies of scale does the client have?
What is the clients experience curve?
Will increased production lower cost?
Capabilities
What resources can the client draw from?
How is the client organized?
What is the production system?
The Five Cs
This framework is mostly applied to financial cases and to companies (although it can be applied to individuals). You may employ it in other situations if you think it is appropriate.
Character
Evaluate the dedication, track record, and overall consumer perception of the company. Are there any legal actions pending against the company? If so, for what reason? Is the company progressive about its waste disposal, quality of life for its employees, and charitable contributions? What sort of impact would this have on the case you are evaluating?
Capacity
If you are dealing with a manufacturing entity, are its factories at, above, or below capacity, and for what reasons? Are there plans to add new plants, improve the technology in existing plants, or close underperforming plants? What about production overseas?
Capital
What is the companys cost of capital relative to its competitors? How healthy are its cash flows, revenues, and debt load relative to its competition?
Conditions
What is the current business climate the company (and its industry) faces? What is the short- and long-term growth potential in the industry? How is the market characterized? Is it emerging or mature? These questions can assist you in evaluating the facts of the case against the environment that the company/industry inhabits.
Competitive Advantage
This is the unique edge a company possesses over its competitors. It can be an unparalleled set of business processes, the ability to produce a product/service at a lower cost, charge a market premium, or any number of other assets that create an advantage over other market players. Whatever the case, these advantages are usually defensible and not easily copied.
In evaluating business cases using the Five Cs framework, you should look for those unique qualities that a company possesses and identify any that meet the criteria mentioned above. You may suggest that the company leverage its competitive advantage more aggressively or recommend alternatives if that company has no discernible advantage.
Value Chain Analysis
This approach involves assessing a companys overall business processes and identifying where that company actually adds value to a product or service. The total margin of profit will be the value of the product or service to buyers, less the cost of its production, as determined by the value chain.
In most cases, a competitive advantage is only temporary for many of todays products/services. Being first to market, having a unique formula or configuration, or having exclusivity in a market were once long-term defensible strategies. But today, businesses are globally connected by lightning-fast communications and knowledge-sharing systems and manufacturing technologies are getting better and faster at reacting to and anticipating market conditions. Thus these advantages are only fleeting or may not exist at all.
Value Chain Analysis attempts to identify a competitive advantage by deconstructing the various "changes" a companys business processes perform on a set of raw materials or other inputs. Most can be easily copied by other competitors, but there is usually a unique subset that represents the "value-added" qualities only the company under scrutiny possesses. This set is that companys competitive advantage, or "value chain." Sometimes this set can be copied, but a unique set of circumstances may still allow the company in question to perform them at a lower cost, charge a premium in the market, or retain higher market share than its competitors.
In the context of a business case, you can use this framework to identify a companys overall business processes set and then determine if one or more of the processes are defensible competitive advantages.
For example, a manufacturer of fruit juice might have the following value chain elements:
Research and development (Will mango really taste good with cloudberry juice?)
Cost of goods sold (How much does it cost to manufacture the fruit juice? Is there a frost in Florida that drives up the costs of oranges? Is the currency crisis in Indonesia making papaya very cheap? Are per-volume purchases lower than, for example, those of Tropicana?)
Packaging and shipping (How much does that new banana-shaped container cost? Are many bottles lost in transit? What are the fixed costs of shipping?)
Manufacturing (How much do those juice pulpers cost? How often do factories need to be reengineered?)
Labor (How many employees do we have? Where are they located? Are they unionized?)
Distribution (Where are the distribution centers? Where are the products distributed?)
Advertising (Billboards, TV, magazines?)
Margin (How profitable is the juice company?)
For more detailed information on this type of analysis, you may want to consider the authoritative text on competitive strategy: Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors, by Michael E. Porter.
Core competencies
"Core competencies" is the idea that each firm has a limited number of things it is very good at (that is, its core competence or competencies).
When restructuring or reengineering, one of the starting points for a company should be identifying its core competencies. A firm should define its core competencies broadly in order to be flexible enough to adapt to changes in the marketplace. (For instance, when Xerox defined itself as a "document company," rather than a maker of copy machines, it was able to take advantage of the more lucrative business of document handling and outsourcing for major corporations, as well as of the market for fax machines, scanners, and other document-handling equipment.)
Companies should seriously consider selling/spinning off business units that are not part of their "core" business. For instance, Pepsi recently spun off its restaurant operations after it concluded that its expertise was in manufacturing and marketing beverages, not in managing restaurants.
Benchmarking and "best practices"
A commonly used concept in consulting (especially in operations and implementation engagements) is "benchmarking." Benchmarking basically means researching what other companies in the industry are doing (usually in order to evaluate whether your client is operating efficiently or to identify areas where the client can cut costs). For example, if a mail-order company wants to reduce its order-processing costs, it would want to compare its order processing costs with those of other mail-order companies, breaking down its costs for each part of the process (including order-taking and shipping) and comparing them with industry averages. It can then pinpoint those areas where its costs are higher than average for the industry.
A related concept is "best practices": once youve benchmarked what other companies are doing, you want to focus on those companies that have particular low costs or which otherwise operate particularly well. What are they doing right (i.e., what are their "best practices")? And how can our client (in the case) emulate or copy what theyre doing? Remember to look outside your clients particular industry, if necessary, to find the best practices for a particular process or operation.
The 2x2 matrix
The 2x2 matrix is a good framework to use any time you have two factors that, when combined, yield different outcomes. A very rudimentary example would be what happens when you turn on your bathroom faucets, as follows:
A more business-appropriate example would involve acquiring a company. Let?s say a company is interested in understanding the difficulty of acquiring or building a distribution center and it is considering financing this decision with either stock or debt. The potential outcomes might look like this:
The BCG Matrix
The BCG Matrix, named after the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), is perhaps the most famous 2x2 matrix. The matrix measures a companys relative market share on the horizontal axis and its growth rate on the vertical axis.
M&A cases: Determining the value of an acquisition
Case interviews arent just for consultants. Mergers & acquisition cases are wildly popular at investment banks. Heres how to analyze a potential acquisition.
Value Drivers (M&A) Framework
In order to understand value, we need to understand the three primary value drivers:
The value components can be further broken out into specific "value drivers":
M&A Cases: Data Gathering and Analysis
Market Analysis Tools
Competitive position framework
Relative value versus competitors to customer through supply chain
Product life cycle
Supply and demand analysis
- Industry capacity
- Industry utilization
- Demand drivers
- Regressions
Segmentation analysis
Porters Five Forces
Experience curves
Trends and outlook
Key success factors
Target Analysis Tools
Business system - comparison with competitors
Market share (over time and by segment)
Capacity (growth and utilization of)
Customers key purchase criteria and relative performance
Financial history
Sales and profitability by segment
Cash flow analysis
Margin and expense structure
Relative cost position
Cost benchmarking
Your data gathering strategy will vary depending on industry:
A framework caution
All the frameworks detailed above are widely used, and most U.S. business schools teach them as part of their core curriculums. Your interviewers will instantly recognize when you are applying them, since they are already familiar with the techniques. While this is OK, consider that you are trying to demonstrate your unique analytical and deductive reasoning skills that set you apart from other candidates. You must be creative and original in analyzing case questions. Use these frameworks sparingly. (Another note: No interviewer will be impressed if you proudly proclaim, "Im going to apply Porters Five Forces now." Apply frameworks without identifying them.)
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