
Operational excellence is vital for gaining and sustaining competitive advantage—but it’s also more challenging than ever. BCG’s operations consulting teams help clients unlock value from every aspect of their operations.
Maximizing operational efficiency and effectiveness has never been easy. Yet excelling at operations management is even more daunting today owing to supply chain disruptions, trade instability, changes in customer expectations, and the rise of digital operations, which have upended services and manufacturing processes. These developments have business leaders in every industry asking, “What will the future of operations look like? And how can we succeed in that new landscape?”
At BCG, we partner with clients at every level of their organization to drive transformational change—and impact—in key areas of operations management ranging from procurement, service operations, and supply chain to manufacturing, capital project management, and end-to-end operational excellence.
At BCG, we know that excellence in operations—including managing operational costs and driving topline growth--is core to both competitive advantage and a sustainable future. We draw on our global operations consulting team to deliver tangible, enduring impact across our clients’ entire operations management value chain.
To unlock this potential, we partner with our clients at every level of the organization. And we deploy a unique blend of industry, operations, and digital operations expertise to accelerate results while building capabilities customized to each client’s unique circumstances.
We strive to help our clients win today and thrive tomorrow.
BCG has completed more than 3,000 operations projects for clients in recent years. The stories featured here speak to the impacts our operations teams have achieved through close partnerships with clients.
BCG engaged with an aerospace and defense organization to set up a groupwide shared-service center for indirect procurement spending. With the target model in force—supported by optimized processes, governance, tools, and KPIs—the organization achieved savings of €500 million, demonstrating the power of effectively managing operational costs.
We worked with a global oil company on a capital project to design, engineer, and build a large-scale offshore drilling program to be deployed over a period of 20 to 30 years, with capex of more than $200 billion. Our analysis led to the implementation of several capex optimization initiatives for offshore fields, such as project management offices, that reduced program costs by 15% to 20%.
The 1,000-plus operations consultants who make up our global network have a long track record of partnering closely with clients to help unlock new value from every aspect of their operations. Our team includes dedicated experts in areas such as operational cost consulting, generalist consultants with a focus on operations, senior advisers, and Operations Center members.
Manufacturers can implement win-win actions in their production and logistics operations that benefit the environment and create financial value.
For procurement organizations, today's uncertainty has made risk mitigation and cost reduction tougher than ever. Learning lessons from the pandemic will be key to survival and sustainable competitive advantage. See below for the critical steps that teams can take to overcome current shocks and withstand futures ones.
Giant call centers, commodity offerings, and rigid scripts for dealing with customers will give way to agile, AI-enabled organizations that combine hyperpersonalization with ultraindustrialization.
To optimize their cost-cutting efforts, smart companies are turning to their suppliers.