Leaders face an uncertain landscape. The impact of each decision feels impossible to predict, which is why they need a resilience strategy that is proactive, resilient, and competitive. No matter their starting point, BCG can help.
From geopolitical tension and supply chain bottlenecks to soaring inflation, rising interest rates, and decelerating growth, businesses must navigate a range of complicated global headwinds. Despite these challenges, leaders have a powerful opportunity to build business resilience and competitive advantage.
It’s never been more important for leaders navigating uncertainty to sharpen their approach to managing volatility and cost reduction. While an economic downturn is never guaranteed, leaders need a strong resilience strategy in order to evaluate trade-offs and successfully lead. No two resilience journeys are the same, with each path forward individually based on region and industry, so BCG’s business resilience consulting experts help leaders recognize their starting points and guide them each step of the way. Our business resilience framework—sense, adapt, and thrive—equips leaders managing uncertainty with a head-on approach or a more long-term business resilience strategy.
BCG’s approach and business resilience frameworks help leaders chart their course for the future and build a more resilient enterprise, no matter their starting point. Our business resilience consulting teams draw on our strategic heritage to help companies reinforce their positions and create functional advantage, even in moments of disruption.
Financial Resilience in Business
Wherever its starting point, any firm can achieve financial resilience in business by taking advantage of such approaches as zero-based budgeting and cost-cutting, scenario-based strategic planning, or acquiring new capabilities through mergers and acquisitions.
Operations
Opportunities to find advantages while reducing exposure to risk often exist at the operational level. BCG focuses on supply chain resilience, comprehensive margin management, and technology innovation to find greater efficiency.
Organizational Strategy
To win in today’s environment, businesses need flexibility to dial down costs and nimbly shift resources. BCG helps clients adapt to the biggest challenges of the present and become more resilient for the future.
Marketing, Sales, and Pricing
As inflation remains high, firms must approach pricing and consumer behavior with continuous measurement and improvement. BCG helps firms adapt rapidly in order to maximize value for their customers.
Tech Resilience
The push for AI and tech adoption takes on new urgency as companies strive for greater agility, speed, and data-driven automation. BCG’s business resilience consulting teams bring expertise in transformations across all sectors.
The Action Imperative: A CEO’s Dilemma
Leaders have never confronted such a complex mix of volatile conditions in so many areas all at once. BCG helps executives design resilience strategies with objectives that are as ambitious as they are sensible.
Linear thinking is valuable when the environment is relatively stable and familiar. But in uncertain economic times, executives also need to think expansively about the future, analyzing a range of potential scenarios. Alan Iny discusses how executives can prepare for uncertainty rather than be overwhelmed by it.
The business environment just keeps getting tougher, but transformation is still an imperative. A new survey confirms that five measures can make a big difference in results.
To succeed, companies must find the right balance between building their capability to absorb shocks while also building their competitive advantage.
Nothing is as costly for business as inaction. The right approach to scenario planning can put you on the path to resilience.
In the Spotlight
Reinforce Financial Performance
Today’s uncertain macroeconomic environment requires leaders to build advantage into every aspect of their business, from financial resilience in business to supply chain resilience to pricing to cost management. Read our latest insights on bolstering your core business in the face of uncertainty.
Companies can gain breathing room to operate under stressful conditions, withstand the scrutiny of shareholders, creditors, and regulators, and pursue market opportunities.
ZBT can do much more than inject cost discipline—it can help companies maintain their strategic momentum even amid difficult economic conditions.
Risks associated with the Russia-Ukraine war and complications in China-US trade are encouraging a major reorientation toward ASEAN and other developing markets.
Consumer packaged goods companies have many options for balancing volume and profit in a downturn, but they need the right tools to make the changes stick.
Invest for Future Growth
Caution would be the first response of many companies facing turmoil in global markets—but thanks to business resilience frameworks and strategic planning, some organizations are well positioned to take bold actions in such times, laying a foundation for future success.
Reframing brand spending as a vital long-term investment helps companies build the resilience they will need when a downturn hits.
Coming resource constraints threaten the successful business models of today's companies. To find success in a new environment, businesses must find new abundance.
BCG research reveals that companies that successfully transformed during a downturn improved their performance by 45% in the following years over companies that did not.
As recession looms in European and North American markets, many beauty companies are considering cutting costs and layoffs that may hurt their long-term business resilience.
