Advisers are being increasingly asked to conduct cost-cutting programs, from upskilling and reducing staff numbers to digitisation and automation.
Consultants who specialise in helping clients reduce costs are in high demand amid the uncertain economic and geopolitical environment, a bright spot for an otherwise slow advisory market.
Boston Consulting Group’s Monika Saunders, an expert in “cost-out” consulting, said interest in cost reduction advice had been a consistent theme in her work as clients seek to make sure they are operating as efficiently as possible.“So that’s all around optimising how you maintain your equipment, increasing the throughput that you get, getting more out of your assets that you have,” Ms Saunders said.
Ms Saunders, who has worked at the strategy consulting firm for 15 years and also focuses on advising mining, agricultural and manufacturing companies, was promoted to the equity-owning position of managing director and partner in the firm’s Melbourne office a fortnight ago.It isn’t just BCG. Bridget Loudon, the CEO of consultant marketplace Expert360, said consultants with technology-based optimisation skills, which help trim costs, were in high demand.
PwC’s national mining leader, Marc Upcroft, said the push to reduce emissions was forcing miners to reassess their ongoing costs.“We are asking a lot from our mining companies on decarbonisation – both in transforming their operations to reduce emissions and to invest in growth projects for the minerals that the world needs to decarbonise,” Mr Upcroft said.
Originally from Germany, she joined the firm in 2009, after completing a Master’s in Finance from the University of Cambridge. It was the year after the global financial crisis had hit the world economy and “not the best year to start” her professional career. Like now, the focus then was on cost-out.“I had quite a few friends coming out of that went into investment banking, including to Lehman Brothers, which then collapsed just as they were about to start. So was a lot of turmoil,” she said.
“I did a PhD in business model innovation and it probably was a bit of a test to say, ‘do I actually want to go into academia or do I want to go back into industry?’,” she said. “I think I realised for myself that while I enjoy , I think I prefer working more ‘hands on’ on tangible problems, rather than one problem very, very deep.”She is now one of the 51 managing directors and partners and roughly 450 consultants at BCG Australia and New Zealand.
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