industry
Retail Management
Distribution Restructuring in the Financial Services Industry
Client Problem
- How can our client restructure their distribution network to increase its effectiveness, given changing customer needs and attitudes?
- Customers are changing their preferred distribution channels, seeking greater convenience
- Technology enables more self-servicing
- Select competitors are aggressively changing their networks and distribution approach
Project Objectives
- Develop a strategy for changing the client's approach to the distribution of Financial Service products
- Lower cost, higher sales
- Improved convenience
- Develop tangible market-level plans (based on the strategy) which can be implemented over the short-medium term
- Highlight dependencies and issues to be worked
Approach
- Understood competitor's practices and the economics of different practices in use by competitors
- Determined economic stakes of restructuring client's network, assuming the adoption of select best practices from competitors and other retailers
- Developed prioritization of the elements to be restructured
- Which ideas/options yield the most impact?
- Developed analytical frameworks and models to determine the optimal network configuration:
- Market saturation
- Optimal mix of different outlet types
- Outlet locations
- Customer usage preferences
- Revenue, cost, and investment trade-offs among reconfiguration options
- Worked on-site with market managers to understand market-specific issues
Results
- Developed detailed market-level plans for reconfigured networks, resulting in significant savings and improved sales generation capability
- Improved customer convenience (locations and hours)
- Reduced cost to serve customers (including more self-servicing)
- Improved sales performance
- Jointly implementing new network plan, with significant impact on client's bottom line
