An independent perspective to help your business grow, adapt and thrive.

To succeed, businesses must constantly evolve and adapt to competitive, market, operational and financial challenges. There are times you need access to skills that are either new to your business or outside your current capacity. Continuous performance improvement takes effort and discipline, and an independent perspective can help you identify creative solutions.

The professionals at McGrathNicol have assisted organisations of all sizes at various stages of their business lifecycle. We work with a sense of urgency to understand and analyse complex issues, identify opportunities and help make change happen. We deliver measurable and sustainable improvements to your organisation, linking strategy to action. We aim to consistently deliver increased value to our clients by focusing on cash and providing analysis to assist in the quantification of practical solutions, deliver clear messages whilst implementing a disciplined project management approach.

Our Strategy & Business Improvement services include Analytics & Modelling, Cash & Working Capital, Earnings Improvement, Operational Improvement and Strategy.

More than ever, organisations are in need of analytics specialists who can interrogate their data to help them improve internal processes, review performance and understand their customers. Our analytics specialists can help you interpret historical events in the context of business issues and develop insights from data enhanced with external sources of information. We have extensive industry experience identifying and solving complex problems, and our technical skills empower management to make strategic decisions.

We assist companies implement major strategic change to transform their business. Our team utilises a proven methodology of bottom up action planning to extract the best ideas from the business, initiative implementation to drive value to the bottom line and a transformation governance structure to ensure high quality analysis, accountability and compliance throughout the organisation’s transformation. Our approach not only substantially improves profit performance, but assists companies to build the leadership, infrastructure and culture to drive ongoing high performance.

Our Centre of Excellence is focused on increasing cash flow for companies by using our Cash Flow Optimisation System to forecast, track, save and generate cash. We have the experience and expertise to “unlock” material cash from working capital and can provide you with best practices, procedures, systems and staff training programs to maintain the improvements achieved.

A simplified corporate structure reduces costs and provides significant governance and tax benefits. We help you review, assess and de-risk your corporate structure by eliminating unnecessary trading and dormant entities. We also put in place measures and controls to sustain the benefits of a simplified corporate structure into the future.

We help companies improve earnings using our proven methods for cost reduction and revenue optimisation. Our exceptional skills, combined with our use of advanced data and business analytics, help us get to the issues quickly and design plans to improve performance, ensuring lasting value creation.

Models and forecasts assist organisations to make better decisions around resourcing and capital allocation, as well as gain a better understanding of the true drivers of business performance. Our team helps organisations implement financial models and forecasts, and also regularly provides independent assessments of existing models.

Independent and objective assessment of operational performance can be invaluable to organisations. Whether analysing underperformance in a subsidiary or assessing an opportunity for growth, we offer our clients exceptional analytical skills and practical experience to identify their options and implement solutions that create value for the organisation.

For businesses that have a short- to medium-term need for technical expertise, surge capacity and/or project support, we provide professionally qualified and experienced resources. We can hit the ground running within your team, delivering tasks and projects that may be outside the day-to-day experience of your staff. Employing our Finance Business Partnering Framework, we assess the capability and capacity of your finance team and advise the best structure for your business.

To assist organisations with planning, reviewing, implementing and monitoring outstanding strategy, we use our significant commercial experience and analytical focus in combination with the acclaimed Argenti Strategic Management System. We facilitate the strategic planning process for you and provide an independent view on the development and stress-testing of strategic initiatives. We also have a strong track record of developing implementation plans and project managing teams to ensure initiatives are rolled out effectively and efficiently – extending to the hands-on delivery of those plans and broader business transformation projects.

Our Strategy & Business Improvement Services

Analytics & Modelling

Providing insights to support strategic data driven decisions.

Strategic decisions should be based on the best possible data and analysis. Our analytics and modelling specialists interrogate, simplify and dynamically summarise vast volumes of complex and disparate data to assist you in making informed decisions.

Well-developed models and forecasts support better decisions and allow management to gain a deeper understanding of the key drivers of business performance. Our financial modelling solutions include:

  • dynamic three-way forecast modelling to assist in assessing funding requirements, optimal capital structure and obtaining finance;
  • independent assessment and sensitivity testing of existing models;
  • cash and working capital projections and capital allocation analysis;
  • acquisition and project finance modelling;
  • strategy and initiative assessment and sensitivity analysis; and
  • tender submission and assessment analysis.

Analytics interprets historic data to develop insights, providing clients with visual and interactive dashboards to assist decision making. Our analytics solutions include:

  • customer sentiment analysis;
  • benchmarking;
  • retail analytics on demand and supply data;
  • automating manual, time intensive tasks to clean, manipulate and report on data;
  • data migration analytics; and
  • transactional analytics to test financial information including revenue, expenses (such as payroll), working capital and cash flow.

Cash & Working Capital

Improving cash and working capital cycles to help you gain a material competitive advantage.

Our experts work with clients to improve and accelerate conversion of earnings to cash. We do this by optimising debtor, inventory and creditor management practices to embed a “cash culture” within our clients’ businesses.

We have established a Centre of Excellence and dedicated team of working capital experts focussed on increasing cash flow for our clients. We use our Cash Flow Optimisation System to forecast, track, save and generate cash.
We work with your team to:

  • identify ‘hot spots’ across the different parts of the working capital cycle – including ‘sale to collection’, ‘procurement to pay’, and ‘inventory management’;
  • quantify the ‘size of the prize’ in cash terms using targeted and transactional analytics;
  • develop, prioritise and implement cash and working capital improvement initiatives;
  • improve forecasting processes and dashboard reporting accuracy; and
  • design incentive packages linked to cash flow.

We have extensive experience to help you implement plans to ‘unlock’ material cash. We also have the expertise to provide our clients with best practices, procedures, systems, and staff training programs to maintain the improvements achieved.

Earnings Improvement

Delivering lasting value by using proven methodologies to identify, plan and implement earnings improvement.

We work with companies to improve earnings by utilising a proven methodology and a “hands on” approach to plan and implement initiatives that help drive value to the bottom line. Our approach applies to the execution of specific revenue optimisation or cost reduction initiatives or to the implementation of enterprise wide strategic change.

We provide a governance structure ensuring high quality analysis, accountability and compliance throughout an organisation. This approach not only substantially improves profit performance, but assists organisations to build the leadership, infrastructure and culture to drive ongoing high performance. Our costed, financial results-focused approach includes:

  • early identification of issues driving current earnings performance;
  • detailed initiative planning including bottom up approach to extract the best ideas from the business;
  • thorough financial cost and benefit analysis;
  • initiative implementation focused on prioritising activities based on financial benefits;
  • establishment of a leadership and governance framework and key workstreams;
  • implementation of a reporting cadence and accountability across the organisation;
  • portfolio planning to ensure resources are allocated to activities driving the greatest value; and
  • rapid reporting methodology to track the progress, cost and financial outcomes of initiatives.

Operational Improvement

Delivering value improvement through operational efficiencies, process optimisation and initiative implementation.

We work with companies to provide an independent and objective assessment of operational performance. We understand that a cohesive and well-managed operational platform is critical to a business’ success. This requires aligned organisational structures with agreed business strategies, clear process efficiencies within core and support functions, and transparent governance frameworks.

Our “hands on” approach combines subject matter experts, specialist analytical skills and practical experience to identify options and implement actionable solutions that improve value and operational performance. We offer a fully actionable, accurately costed and results-focused approach that incorporates:

  • An end-to-end assessment of the supply chain, including strategic sourcing and procurement, supplier management, contract performance, manufacturing management and logistics.
  • Early identification of issues impacting asset utilisation, waste reduction and other operational efficiencies.
  • Bespoke process improvement including, finance function capacity and capability reviews using our four-tier core competency framework.
  • Assessment, design and implementation of “fit for purpose” roles processes and procedural guidelines.
  • Assessment of options to simplify corporate structures to reduce costs and risks and provide significant governance and tax benefits.
  • Development of detailed transformation plans with clear priorities and deliverables linked to financial benefits, resource capability, and return on investment.
  • Review and assess corporate structures to eliminate unnecessary trading and dormant entities. A simplified corporate structure reduces costs and provides significant governance and tax benefits. We work with you to implement measures and controls to sustain the benefits of a simplified corporate structure into the future.
  • Management of changes necessary to deliver improved operational performance and realise competitive advantage.

Strategy

A fully costed and implementable strategic plan.

Strategy is more important than ever in this era of disruption and rapidly evolving markets. We understand the need for a clear and implementable solution, bringing together years of extensive strategic and commercial experience to drive strategy from development through to implementation. Our strategy philosophy revolves around the following fundamental principles:

  • Understanding the problem or opportunity: comprehensively exploring the problem and articulating the opportunity will provide the business clarity on where the focus should be.
  • Making the right choices: alternative strategies should be fully considered and quantified before settling on a preferred direction.
  • Strategy execution is key to success: establishing appropriate governance, accountability and action is key to ensuring success.

We have developed a six-stage framework which focuses on delivering an implementable and costed strategic plan. Our approach leverages the acclaimed Argenti System of Strategic Planning and we will work with you to:

  • Define your purpose: understanding your shareholder, what their desired business outcomes are and how they measure success is key to establishing strategic objectives to build a sustainable strategy.
  • Analyse the gap: clearly quantifying the difference between current state and the desired state provides focus and clarity for the business.
  • Identify the strategic “Elephants”: concentrating efforts on the key strategic issues that will have a significant impact on performance allowing you to better allocate resource and prioritise.
  • Close the gap: evaluating all strategic initiatives through a quantification and risk lens ensuring effective choices can be made.
  • Implement and monitor: a strategy is only as good as its execution. Plans should be measurable, with the ability to be tracked and reported against to demonstrate progress and success.

Developing implementation plans and providing project management teams to ensure initiatives are rolled out effectively and efficiently is in our DNA. We can provide hands-on implementation and delivery of those plans for broader business transformation projects.