Skip to content

 

STRATEGY & TRANSFORMATION

We see strategy as a holistic process that is constantly facing uncertainties and risks, with a portfolio of initiatives and projects, to achieve an increase in enterprise value and strengthen one’s competitive advantage.

Megatrends such as globalization, individualization, mobility, the silver society, connectivity, health or safety, influence markets, regulation, customer behavior, supplier policy and business opportunities. The digital tsunami and much-cited disruption ensure that one’s business model and strategy must change almost as fast as the algorithms of Facebook or Google.

We validate, together with you, existing strategies, think through implications of relevant trends on your business model, calculate risks, evaluate scenarios and create operational implementation plans.

Questions that we answer for you are for example:

  • What digital innovations threaten my current business model and how do I re-design it?
  • Which market dynamics in which region have to be considered and what is the best response?
  • Where do M&A, joint ventures or partnerships generate significant added value?

Transformations and Turnarounds are complex business situations. Only too often the achievement of one’s goals fails on the way from strategy to implementation due to the Strategy Execution Gap. However, there are not three or five different reasons responsible for this, as often described. This believe leads to powerless efforts trying to remedy the situation. The causes are by far more complex and interwoven. We have identified between 30 and 40 factors, which prevent the successful implementation of a strategy and consistently eliminate these in our transformation programs.

We are a specialist in Tailoring Successful Programs. Tools that we use to increase transparency and speed are:

  • Business modeling and simulation
  • Transformation Roadmap Control
  • Program Management Office

Rhine Bridge Solutions has extensive experience with accompanying crucial CEO-change, succession, merger, carve-outs and restructuring situations. Together with you, we develop long-term strategies that are in line with your corporate organization, structure and culture, and support you in your implementation.

 

ADVANCED DIGITIZATION

Digital Transformation, Industry 4.0, Internet of Things, Augmented Reality, Disruption, …

The list of buzzwords is endless and their interpretations as well. It is often terrifying how unconcrete and “blue-eyed” even big names address the omnipresent topic of digitization. While trial & error, fail fast, and agile to volatile project and team structures are essential to digitization projects, thinking through all the implications of innovative ideas, feasibility studies, and scenario calculations also have to be applied in the digital world.

Digitization must never be a self-purpose. We love the citation of a CEO of a leading international telecommunication company (here published in a family friendly way): “If you digitize a bad process, you have a bad digital process.”

For the management of a company it is crucial to recognize the digital opportunities and future possibilities clearly and quickly.

 

However, digital change offers more opportunities than risks, if one aspires to analyze, reflect and actively shape this digital change. Three fundamental questions are important in this regard:

  1. Where can digital innovation change the business model or product in such a way that a significant added value for the customer arises?
  2. Where can digital innovation in the value chain be such as to create a significant efficiency gain?
  3. Where can digital innovation change the relationship between supplier and customer in such a way as to create completely new situations and how should one deal with them?

As with any fundamental change, the transition process, the transformation, must be thought through and be managed ex ante for stakeholder groups concerned.

We support you in the analysis with a deep understanding of technological and sociological trends, in the development of a suitable corporate strategy and in pragmatic implementation at all operational levels with our exceptional digital competence.

 

HUMAN CAPITAL

Successful implementation of strategies requires the existence of competence. We define, together with you, the competencies necessary to achieve your goals and to determine whether these skills are available in your organization, or can be developed internally or have to be purchased externally.

A scenario analysis of key positions, taking into account adequate timelines and status quo of your organization, is extremely important to us and leads to development of a personnel strategy that supports your business model in a meaningful and successful way.

We support you with

  • talent management, development of high potentials and how to increase employee loyalty in the war for talents,
  • setting parameters to enable peak performances such as concepts for and implementation support of new forms of collaboration,
  • promotion of flexibility and commitment of employees to strategy, as well as with
  • development and organizational optimization of your own personnel department.

 

ORGANIZATIONAL EFFECTIVENESS, LEADERSHIP & GOVERNANCE

If only a top-down approach is chosen to strategy transformation, you run the risk of losing up to 70% of content and energy. Also, methods of professional change management, internal communication, or enabling cannot prevent the Strategy Execution Gap from unfolding. Effects can be that the management team is burdened with corrective tasks and chronic troubleshooting. Capacities normally devoted to core tasks such as innovation, development or talent management are diverted into secondary processes, quality management. Budgets for internal as well as external communication for generation of alignment and to foster mobilization increase.

We recommend to take a look at Toyota Ways of Working and to consider that elements of Blue Collar Work that can be successfully transferred to the White Collar World. The inspiration for this line of thought comes to a major extent from ideas, approaches and methods that deal with the reduction of errors and error probabilities, continuities, standards and freedom of losses.

It is most conducive towards achieving  a goal to choose the dual bottom up & top down approach: precisely defined processes – binding principles in the case of agile procedures – as well as derived and described competencies and creation of a stable state can lead the transformation losses to be zero.

Rhine Bridge Solutions increases the effectiveness of your organization through

  • development of strategy-compliant processes or agile principles,
  • derivation of targeted job descriptions and performance indicators,
  • relief from unnecessary, standard repetitive tasks to allow management team to focus on their actual leadership tasks,
  • design and implementation of effective leadership processes and
  • design and implementation of effective governance processes.

 

OPERATIONAL EXCELLENCE

We see Operational Excellence as the uncompromising pursuit of maximum effectiveness, efficiency and quality in all processes in order to meet customers’ wishes in the best possible way.

Operational Excellence is not a unique initiative for us. Rather, it must be viewed as part of the entire enterprise system with its principles, elements and methods. Operational Excellence almost has the character of a philosophy: she has to be lived and be set as an example every day. Even the most innovative and agile production companies cannot be sustainably successful without this basic attitude.

In addition to focusing on top performance in value-adding processes and their efficiency, a crisis-robust process creates a clear safety buffer and enables flexibility reserves that are hardly possible to be achieved without Operational Excellence. So-called island solutions that are not connected and intervowen prevent a company’s continuous excellence.

Our experts have many years of experience in the tailor-made design and implementation of Operational Excellence, which is precisely tailored to the specific requirements of your company.

 

CORPORATE FINANCE & RECOVERY

Transparency requirements, compliance, higher shareholder involvement and increased performance expectations make corporate finance a field in which excellent, error-free work and processes are as indispensable as a mine detector in a mine field.

We support companies in development and implementation of integrated value strategies, which always look at the business model, financial strategy, investor strategy, shareholder management and communication from the perspective of the ultimate target achievement, and therefore meet or exceed the shareholder and stakeholder expectations.

Rhine Bridge Solutions help to recognize criteria for better valuations on stock exchanges or due diligences (valuation-advantages) and to manage them authentically and, above all, to meet regulatory requirements. Proven components of our consulting services are: restructuring, value-based management and investor relations strategies.

CEO / CFO and Board thus have the possibility to lead the company in a value-creating manner in accordance with their contracts or announcements.

 

MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS

Strategy implementation may necessitate, for example, acquisition of competencies or in order to achieve an international footprint, the purchase of company units or complete enterprises. In addition to these considerations, corporate acquisitions or successions are in general an increasingly important component in the portfolio of strategic decisions.

Rhine Bridge Solutions support companies in:

  • Strategic cooperations / joint ventures
  • Business combinations
  • Outsourcing and divesture of business units
  • Company acquisitions and sales
  • Post-merger integration into your own organization and strategic overall planning
  • Stock market launch (IPOs)

We design these transactions from a single source. With your own trusted attorneys, auditors and tax consultants or with leading international experts from our network.

In addition to the organizational implementation of this process, we develop and assess the strategic options for action with our clients, identify and evaluate potential targets (due diligence) or potential investors, conduct international bidding processes, and accompany contract negotiations until their successful completion.

In context of post-merger integration, we integrate the acquired company strategically, tactically and operationally, detect potential management requirements and, if necessary, cover it through our network, in order to accelerate the achievement of the goals set.

 

MARKETING, COMMUNICATION & SALES

In marketing, communication and sales, it is determined how customers are addressed with which content and how one’s own products or services reach the target customers. In addition, crucial knowledge is gained here about market structures, market expectations, customer preferences and competition activities.

But the crucial point is that the impact and perception of the company and its products are created and managed here. In best case, foundation is laid here that a customer has no chance to shop elsewhere.

Rhine Bridge Solutions support you B2B, B2C and B2Government in all facets of strategic and operational tasks in sales, marketing and communication with the usual precision in our analysis but with completely unexpected creativity in conception and implementation:

  • Corporate & product branding
  • Public relations & all forms of internal / external communications
  • Category & portfolio management, including pricing
  • Multichanneling & channel / salesforce effectiveness
  • Crossmedia advertising & campaigns
  • Social media
  • Commercial marketing & promotions (loyalty, instore, digital)
  • Customer insight
  • Buildung up structures, quality and efficiency improvement of your organization, including interim management

And, very unusual for a topmanagement consultancy: with our network, we can create and produce everything at international top level. This is the only way to ensure that implementation is carried out according to the highest quality and effectiveness requirements.