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Five actions retail supply chains can take to navigate the coronavirus pandemic

Retail supply chains are grappling with the humanitarian impact of the outbreak, as well as new operational risks. Five actions can help retailers bring goods to communities and help employees.

As the coronavirus outbreak has spread and its humanitarian impact has grown, retailers have stepped up their efforts to provide consumers with essential goods and to protect the health and well-being of the communities they serve. Particular challenges have arisen in global retail supply chains, where the pandemic’s far-reaching effects have weighed heavily on the health and well-being of employees and jeopardized livelihoods and economic lifelines in many communities.

Retailers are now taking extraordinary measures to keep goods moving to store shelves and consumers’ doorsteps. Supply-chain leaders are creating transparency and building rapid-response capabilities to mitigate the short-term fallout from the crisis. We focus in this article on the five actions retailers are taking to resolve the immediate challenges that COVID-19 presents to supply-chain workers, business partners, and operations. (In a subsequent article, we will examine how supply-chain leaders at retail companies can chart a path to the next normal, building resilience and returning the supply chain to full effectiveness while reimagining and reforming supply-chain operations to improve their performance.)

Changes in consumer spending during the outbreak

Retailers’ supply-chain difficulties have largely arisen as big shifts in consumer behavior and stepped-up health restrictions have rippled back through their operations. One noteworthy shift has been an abrupt swing in purchasing patterns. Sales of nondiscretionary products, such as food, household, and personal-care products, have spiked, while sales of discretionary items, such as apparel and furnishings, have tailed off. Our consumer research indicates that these initial shifts could persist in the very near term—though it remains to be seen how the restrictions that some governments have placed on store openings and order deliveries might further influence consumer behavior. In recent McKinsey surveys of consumers in Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States, respondents were more likely to say that they would increase their spending on groceries than to decrease it during the next two weeks. For most discretionary consumer-spending categories, including restaurants, apparel, and furnishings, respondents were more likely to say they would decrease spending (Exhibit 1).

We strive to provide individuals with disabilities equal access to our website. If you would like information about this content we will be happy to work with you. Please email us at: McKinsey_Website_Accessibility@mckinsey.com Consumers have also said they will shift spending among channels. In the surveys noted above, McKinsey asked consumers whether they were planning to increase or decrease their in-store and online spending on various types of goods during the next two weeks. Only respondents in Italy and Spain said they were likely to increase their in-store spending on nondiscretionary goods, such as groceries and household supplies. Respondents in the United Kingdom and the United States, by contrast, were more likely to say they would increase their online spending on groceries and household items. And respondents in all four countries said they were likely to increase their online spending on a wider variety of items

How retail supply chains are adapting: Five priority areas

The pandemic has forced retail executives to mount urgent efforts to adapt their supply chains, whether by revising their purchase orders and merchandising plans or by reallocating all kinds of resources—working capital, inventory, employees, transport capacity—to where they are needed most (Exhibit 2). We explore these changes in detail below.

About the authors: Manik Aryapadi is an associate partner in McKinsey’s Cleveland office; Vishwa Chandra is a partner in the San Francisco office; Ashutosh Dekhne is a partner in the Dallas office; Kenza Haddioui is a partner in the Paris office; Tim Lange is a partner in the Cologne office; and Kumar Venkataraman is a partner in the Chicago office.

More: www.mckinsey.com

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IV Pomorskie Spotkanie Użytkowników Siemens NX

W imieniu CADOR, członka wspierającego Klastra Morskiego i Kosmicznego, mamy przyjemność zaprosić Państwa do udziału w czwartym spotkaniu inżynierskim łączącym świeżą, innowacyjną myśl edukacyjną, zaawansowane narzędzia CAx oraz komercyjne zastosowanie dla przemysłu. Spotkanie organizowane jest przez firmę Cador wspólnie z CI TASK, Politechniką Gdańską oraz firmą Siemens PLM Software.

W ramach wydarzenia zaprezentujemy Państwu:

–        nowoczesne narzędzia symulacyjne do optymalizacji modeli konstrukcyjnych

–        funkcjonalny system do zarządzania przedsiębiorstwem poprzez nadzorowanie cyklu życia produktu

–        integrację oprogramowania MCAD z ECAD (nowość na rynku)

–        optymalną symulację procesów produkcyjnych oraz wytwarzania

–        przyszłościowe, wspólne inicjatywy firmy Cador, firmy Siemens PLM Software oraz Politechniki Gdańskiej.

Udziału w spotkaniu jest bezpłatny, wymagana jest jedynie rejestracja. Szczegółową agendę oraz formularz rejestracyjny znajdziecie Państwo na stronie: https://cador.pl/2020/01/27/iv-pomorskie-spotkanie-uzytkownikow-siemens-nx/

Z poważaniem

Marek Grzybowski

Prezes Zarządu

BALTIC SEA & SPACE CLUSTER

KONTAKT I INFORMACJE SZCZEGÓŁOWE: Wiktoria Konopko-Karwasz, Młodszy specjalista ds. Marketingu 

T.: (+48) 58 772 74 55 E.: wkonopko-karwasz@cador.pl

Cador Consulting Sp. z o.o. Czechosłowacka 3, 81-969 Gdynia

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Ze start-upu do profesjonalnej grupy

Założona około 30 lat temu przez 3 inżynierów Automatic Systems Engineering rozrosła  do grupy  obejmującej kilka firm skoncentrowanych na wdrażaniu oraz projektowaniu bezpiecznych technologii dla przemysłu i infrastruktury.

Po pierwsze innowacje. „Przez 30 lat nie zmieniła się filozofia działania firmy. Wciąż stawiamy na projektowanie i wdrażanie innowacji’ – mówi Dariusz Jachowicz, prezes Grupy ASE.  Szybko minął czas, gdy ASE zajmowało się projektowaniem zastosowania tensometrów i montowaniem ich w różnego rodzaju urządzeniach technicznych. Pierwszy poważny kontrakt realizowaliśmy dla Centrostalu, kierowanego wówczas przez Zbigniewa Canowieckiego.  Dziś firma specjalizuje się w opracowywaniu nowych rozwiązań i technologii,  działa jako integrator procesów inwestycyjnych w zakresie bezpieczeństwa przemysłowego. Aktywności te opierają się  na kompetencjach z zakresu bezpieczeństwa przemysłowego, co pozwala na transfer wiedzy eksperckiej. Co istotne, dzisiaj pracownicy Grupy wdrażają rozwiązania wykorzystujące autorskie  know-how, własne patenty i rozwiązania techniczne.

DCIM100MEDIADJI_0279.JPG

Inżynierski design. Dzisiaj Grupę ASE tworzą głównie inżynierowie różnych specjalności. W jej skład wchodzą: Automatic Systems Engineering, ASE ATEX, Biuro Projektowe Biproraf, Biuro Projektów Morskich PROJMORS, C&T ELMECH, EKO-KONSULT oraz MIEP i Squadron. „Taki skład pozwala nam na  oferowanie usług kompleksowych od projektowania poprzez działania integracyjne do rozwiązań eksperckich i montażu konkretnych urządzeń technicznych” – wyjaśnia prezes Jachowicz, podkreślając, że poszczególne podmioty Grupy uzupełniają  się i w ten sposób uzyskuje się rzeczywisty efekt synergii.  „W ostatnim czasie poszliśmy nawet dalej i projekty techniczne „opakowane” zostały w „autorski design” – projektami obiektów przemysłowych i ich wnętrz”. Jest jeszcze jedna istotna zaleta działania tak zróżnicowanej grupy firm. Dzięki dywersyfikacji obszarów aktywności, Grupa dobrze radzi sobie w sytuacji, gdy branże rozwijają się nierównomiernie. „Cykle branż, w których działają podmioty grupy nie nakładają się, więc gdy rośnie popyt na usługi części firm Grupy ASE, rekompensuje to okresowy spadek popytu na inne usługi” – wyjaśnia przez Jachowicz.

Zarządzanie przez delegowanie. Ciągły rozwój firmy wymuszał również zmiany w zarządzaniu. „Od początku stawialiśmy na łączenie wiedzy doświadczonych inżynierów i entuzjazmu, wiedzy i dynamiki ludzi młodych” – mówi prezes ASE i podkreśla, że kompletując zespół koncentrował się na wyławianiu talentów i stwarzaniu warunków do ich rozwoju. Gdy firma rozwijała się i rosła ilość nowych projektów w sposób naturalny kreowali się menedżerowie projektów, a później kierownicy działów. Ten naturalny proces inkubacji talentów i menedżerów pozwala na delegowanie uprawnień w kierowaniu,  podejmowaniu inicjatyw i kreowaniu innowacji. Grupa ASE niedawno wzbogaciła się o nowoczesny budynek z laboratoriami. Jest więc miejsce, gdzie pomysły mogą przejść od fazy inkubacji do projektowej. Nową siedzibę otrzymali również projektanci Projmorsu, firmy z silną pozycją na rynku projektów hydrotechnicznych, jak porty i terminale.

ASE na kołach. W Grupie ASE niezwykle ważną częścią aktywności jest rozumiany w sposób modelowy CSR. „Wpieramy amatorską działalność sportową” –  mówi prezes Dariusz Jachowicz, który sam uprawia z sukcesami kolarstwo i bieganie, co widać po licznych medalach, pucharach i dyplomach zdobiących pokój prezesa. „Uważam, że biznes powinien nie tylko przynosić wyniki finansowe, ale także iść w parze ze społeczną odpowiedzialnością, gdyż firma jest częścią jej otoczenia” – podkreśla prezes i wylicza: wspieramy między innymi takie przedsięwzięcia jak imprezy biegowe i triatlony organizowane przez Sposrt EVO, KaszebeRunda, Żuławy Wkoło, Cyklo Gdynia oraz Cyklo Strzepcz i wiele innych. Firma ma nawet swoją amatorką drużynę kolarską ASE TREK GDYNIA, która w sezonie 2018 jest jedną z najlepszych drużyn kolarskich na Pomorzu.

Jaką przyszłość widzi prezes dla Grupy ASE? „Stawiamy na inicjatywę, synergię doświadczenia i  nowoczesności oraz innowacyjność” – mówi Dariusz Jachowicz i podkreśla:  nie oglądamy się za siebie, szukamy wyzwań w dynamicznej przyszłości.

Marek Grzybowski

Fot. ASE

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BCG The 2018 M&A Report

Lofty Valuations have Pushed Synergies to Center Stage in Global M&A

The years since 2016’s seismic political events on both sides of the Atlantic have been surprisingly ordinary for the M&A market. Despite persistent uncertainty and a less favorable regulatory environment in the US, deal activity—in terms of both value and volume—remained fairly steady in 2017 compared with 2016. And the first half of 2018 brought abundant reasons for anxiety, as many feared that dizzying market plunges and escalating trade wars would suppress deal making. But a pullback did not materialize. Deal value in the first half of 2018 exceeded the first-half average for the period dating back to 2009. Somehow, dealmakers have not let themselves be diverted from their core pursuit.

The resilience of the M&A market is especially remarkable in the face of ever-increasing valuation multiples. Targets are, on average, more expensive today than they were in 1999, at the height of the dot-com bubble, or in 2008, shortly before the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Indeed, acquisitions are more expensive today than at any time observed in our sample of transactions dating back to 1990. Despite the frothiness, shareholders still support and motivate deal making. For five consecutive years, they have rewarded buyers with positive announcement returns—a major departure from the historical pattern. Along with steady investor support, deal making has been incentivized by a variety of other factors, including slow organic growth, the need to add digital capabilities, and the availability of cheap funding. In this environment, dealmakers seeking to convince their board and shareholders that an acquisition creates value have a clear imperative: prove that synergies justify a high valuation.

The 2018 M&A Report

The 2018 M&A Report examines the trends that have moved synergies to center stage in deal making and how dealmakers and investors have responded. Analyzing a unique data set of the 1,000 largest public-to-public deals over the past ten years, we find that the synergy estimates in deal announcements have increased to a new high every year since 2013. Investors reward buyers that include synergy estimates in their announcements with higher returns around the announcement date. But their enthusiasm appears to be waning. Buyers’ announcement returns in transactions with synergy estimates have decreased in recent years, an indication that investors have become skeptical about companies’ ability to deliver on their increasingly bold promises.

Perhaps even more alarming, buyers are giving away a higher share of the total synergies in order to afford their deals. Historically, buyers have kept two-thirds of the value of expected synergies—their reward for bearing risk and shouldering responsibility for realizing the synergies after closing. In today’s seller’s market, buyers are keeping less than half of the synergy potential, with the remainder going to targets’ shareholders at closing.

Taken together, these trends have elevated synergies to the top of the board agenda at every company that is considering an acquisition. Board members and executives must have a clear understanding of whether the anticipated synergies are realistic, the time frame and approach to realize them, and how to communicate them to the market.

Dealmakers Keep Calm And Carry On

M&A activity remained healthy in 2017, despite being a bit of a mixed bag. Deal value was in line with 2016, but fell 27% from 2015’s record level. Part of the reason was the decline in the number of megadeals (those valued at $10 billion or higher), which dropped more than 50% from 2015. Although the number of very large deals declined, the total number of deals held steady. About 36,000 deals were announced in 2017, in line with 2016 and still above the long-term average. (See Exhibit 1.)

The mixed results may signal that uncertainty about the political environment diverted some executives’ attention from deal making. But the dampening was more like a steady drizzle than a heavy downpour. The modest pullback cannot be blamed on shareholders’ disinterest in deals. They rewarded acquirers with positive returns for the fifth year in a row.

Above-Average Deal Value in Early 2018

Unflinching investor support, along with still-cheap funding and slow organic growth, helped push global deal making to a rapid pace in early 2018. Indeed, deal value in the first half of 2018 was higher than the first-half average for 2009 through 2017 and only slightly below the first-half figure in the record-setting year of 2015. Total deal value was $1.7 trillion, with more than 16,000 deals globally. (See Exhibit 2.)

Megadeals helped drive the surge in first-half deal making. Buyers announced 22 megadeals, which is almost twice the historical average and the highest semiannual volume since 2015. Two megadeals were announced in the US business services industry: Cigna said it would acquire Express Scripts in a transaction valued at $69.8 billion, and Blackstone, together with co-investors, revealed plans to acquire the Financial and Risk unit of Thomson Reuters for $17 billion. In the food and beverage industry, Keurig Green Mountain announced its planned takeover of Dr. Pepper Snapple in a reverse merger transaction valued at $18.7 billion. In the telecom sector, T-Mobile US and Sprint announced their long-anticipated merger, with an implied deal value of $26.8 billion. In Europe’s energy market, the German electricity company E.ON said it would acquire a controlling stake in Innogy, a subsidiary of its competitor RWE. In the deal, valued at $19.3 billion, E.ON would transfer shares and parts of its renewable energy business to RWE.

Among 2018’s most notable deals was Walmart’s acquisition of the Indian e-commerce leader Flipkart for $16 billion, beating a bid by Amazon. This deal was seen as a major win for Walmart; the retail giant enhanced its e-commerce capabilities and achieved a greater presence in India’s emerging market. The transaction exemplifies a deal rationale frequently seen in 2018: in order to remain competitive and ensure future growth, major players such as Walmart are pursuing acquisitions beyond their traditional core capabilities and markets.

Corporate tax reform in the US is among the factors creating a favorable backdrop for deal making. (See “US Tax Reform Promotes Deal Making.”) Leading companies, including Apple and Microsoft, have already started to repatriate offshore cash to the US, as mandated by the new law. Because M&A activity is among the top uses for repatriated cash, deal making will likely receive a boost, at least to some degree.

More: www.bcg.com

By Jens Kengelbach , Georg Keienburg , Timo  Schmid , Dominik Degen , and Sönke Sievers

Photo: Marek Grzybowski

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Building an Integrated Marketing and Sales Engine for B2B

Digital and mobile technologies are reshaping the B2B marketplace. This isn’t only a technological revolution, it’s also a paradigm shift in how B2B buyers consume content, make informed buying decisions, and engage with salespeople.

Today’s buyer is empowered by the internet and no longer relies on sales as a primary source of information, especially early in the purchase journey. More often than not, this journey starts online in the domain of marketing. It may end up offline in sales or as an e-commerce transaction; ­either way, customers expect a seamless, highly personalized buying experience from start to finish. This makes marketing and sales alignment more important than ever. Achieving this alignment, though, can be complex, and success often requires overcoming significant cultural barriers and the complete transformation of the marketing and sales model.

Our work with many B2B market leaders, as well as recent interviews with more than 50 senior marketing and sales executives at top technology and industrial companies, has made it clear that B2B companies need to transform the way they engage customers, use data and technology, structure their organizations, and acquire new skills. Companies that get it right can drive impressive results, including, in our experience, 15% to 30% improvement in marketing efficiencies (such as reduced cost per lead), 20% to 50% increases in digital ROI, and a two- to threefold improvement in marketing-driven lead conversion across the entire purchase journey. In one case, a leading global software player was able to double marketing-attributable revenue for its cloud business while reducing cost per lead by 30%. As with many types of fundamental corporate change, early movers can establish a lead over the competition that will make it hard for others to catch up.

The Evolving Marketing and Sales Functions

As we have written before, there’s a new B2B buyer out there. She is younger, digitally engaged, and doing more and more business online and on a smartphone. (See “How Digital Leaders Are Transforming B2B Marketing,” BCG article, April 2017, and “Mobile Marketing and the New B2B Buyer,” BCG article, September 2017.) The new buyer’s experiences and expectations are shaped by B2C leaders such as Apple, Amazon, and Netflix. She looks for the same type of online experience in the workplace.

Today’s B2B buyers do things differently than their predecessors—all the way through the purchase process. Understanding their changing behavior, particularly in their use of online and mobile channels, is the critical starting point for B2B companies. In this new paradigm, buyers are much further down the path of making a decision before they engage with a sales rep. Recent research from Google suggests that the average B2B buyer is two-thirds of the way through the journey before talking to sales. Companies that do not engage customers effectively online are at risk of losing opportunities before they are even aware they exist.  Historically, the marketing function has focused on the early stages of lead generation, then handed off leads quickly to sales.

More: https://www.bcg.com/publications/2018/

By Phillip Andersen , Robert Archacki , Basir Mustaghni , and Roger Premo