The Best of Boston Consulting Group

Holger Rubel, Marc Schmidt and Alexander Meyer zum Felde present 10 salient, actionable steps for companies pursuing “circularity” initiatives. Find out how your firm can benefit from becoming “regenerative by design” and how to smooth the transition to circular processes, products and models.

If you consider games frivolous, think again. Playing games can strengthen your company and your strategy, say the professionals at Boston Consulting Group. They describe 10 games – largely thought experiments – for the business audience, as well as how to play for best results. Before you tackle strategy, consider how game play could unlock fresh thinking and “pre-emptive self-disruption” at your firm.

If your firm’s customer relationship management (CRM) system has become an “unwieldy beast,” consider this Boston Consulting Group article a field guide and trainer’s manual. Roger Premo, Matthew Ward and Santosh Raghunath will teach you how to identify the factors that can aggravate chaotic CRM – as well as how to optimize the benefits of your system.

Electric vehicles (EVs) are surging. New estimates predict that by 2030, EVs will overtake internal combustion–powered vehicles in market share. And battery-powered and plug-in hybrids will account for half those sales. To meet the demand of millions of new EVs hitting the road, utilities will need to boost their capacity, and ratepayers will shoulder most of the cost. To help utilities and policy makers in planning for grid capacity upgrades and expansions, Boston Consulting Group project leader Anshuman Sahoo, principal Karan Mistry, and managing director and partner Thomas Baker modeled power demand and rate impacts for various scenarios of EV penetration and charging behavior. Utility executives and policy makers will appreciate this informative white paper.

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Leaders should be managing remote working conditions amid the uncertainty of today and prepare for and optimize the hybrid working models of tomorrow.

As organizations strive for greater agility, their software development teams often turn to microservices for flexibility and efficiency. Amazon, PayPal and Netflix, among many tech supergiants, have been leaving their monolithic structures behind and are moving to microservices architectures. For executives looking toward their own transition, a team at the Boston Consulting Group offers a clear, authoritative introduction to the technology.

Just a few years ago, companies guarded their patents jealously. They weaponized intellectual property and chased through the courts those who “stole” their ideas. Times have changed. Today companies have eased off the fury and started collaborating for their mutual benefit. Boston Consulting Group experts Wendi Backler, Tatu Heikkilä and Derek Kennedy dive into how and why leading patent holders are working with companies that own less intellectual property. getAbstract recommends this insightful report to technological innovators or anyone interested in contemporary business practice.

In the past, pricing was the Wild West, with a floor, a ceiling, and very little else to guide a sales team besides years of experience and strong gut instincts. When algorithms came along, companies thought they might take the human instinct – and therefore, the human error – out of pricing. But salespeople resented feeling like order takers rather than trusted professionals and balked at an algorithm doing their job. Most companies are now pursuing a human-talent, tech-informed hybrid, and according to the Boston Consulting Group, “smart pricing authority” might be the answer they’re looking for.

Forward-looking companies may want to experiment with the new technologies at work.

«The metaverse is about the convergence of several developments, all of which involve step changes in technological capability.»

There’s a fissure in your company. That crevasse will swallow your company if you let it. It’s the gap between what your employees know, and what they need to know to help your company thrive in the future. Your employees need digital skills, and trainings won’t get them where they need to go – especially with COVID-19 accelerating the process of digital transformation. The situation requires a more flexible approach to workplace learning, and the experts at Boston Consulting Group explain how to implement the necessary measures.

Transportation, telecommunications, energy, finance – no matter the industry, no matter the sort of service-related problem, digitization is probably the answer. You witnessed the Industry 4.0 revolution. Now get ready for the rise of the bionic company: a seamless melding of human specialists and robots, analytics, blockchain and artificial intelligence (AI). This new revolution will yield hyper-personalized products and services provided by “dispersed, minimalist workforces.” In this special report, the Boston Consulting Group explains how your company can prepare for the future of service. 

There’s been a buzz around personalized offers for years, but widespread societal change brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic has intensified that buzz up to something more like a deafening crescendo. Consumers are on the brink of a new way of interacting with their favorite brands, and companies that want to capitalize on changes in the way people shop will need to offer personalized marketing. In this special report, the Boston Consulting Group describes retailers that are currently benefiting from personalized marketing, then explores the off-the-shelf technology that can help your company do the same.

«Vendors and US retailers currently spend $140 billion to $200 billion in trade and shopper marketing (excluding advertising), yet they spend only about 5% of that amount on personalized offers. (See Exhibit 2). We believe the share of spending on personalized offers should be at least 25% overall and at least 50% in some categories.»

Enduring a crisis often means focusing on fundamentals: what it takes to survive. Cash flow is as essential as breathing for a business – and during the pandemic crisis, cash management has become the overriding priority. Jochen Schönfelder, Tobias Wens and Jeff Gordon – all managing directors and partners at Boston Consulting Group – have written a brief but valuable guide to cash management when survival is the line. Leaders will appreciate their timely, concise advice.

When the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic struck, organizations already undergoing transformation – or dragging their heels – found themselves suddenly catapulted into the future. A global team of experts from Boston Consulting Group offers clear, commonsense guidance to the new imperatives in work models, workforce management and leadership.