Supporting today's business leaders to make their businesses fit for the future

The economic downturn in Western economies has dramatically changed the dynamics of the business landscape. The competition is stronger, customers are more demanding and the cost pressures are unrelenting. Our work enables today’s business leaders to deliver the substantial improvement in performance that ensures their organisations are fit for this more challenging future.

Increasing trade volumes by speeding up new product launches for the London Metal Exchange

We delivered a major transformation programme for the London Metal Exchange (LME). The exchange is one of the world’s leading commodity markets trading a range of metals from aluminium to zinc, and managing huge volumes of trades – over 100 million individual contracts, equivalent to US$7 trillion in 2010.

The LME wanted to increase its trade volumes by speeding up the launch of new products. That meant re-engineering its 20-year-old trade-matching system, replacing it and bringing it in-house. We delivered the change programme for this project, coordinating the work of 600 people across 58 organisations. The project has been a great success, and means the LME can launch new products faster, in weeks rather than months, and grow its presence in the market. As an accompanying benefit, our work is helping to generate £4.5 million in revenue annually for the exchange, while saving LME’s members £1.1 million in fees. This will increase over time as the exchange launches new products and trade volumes grow.

Securing cost reductions of 175 million Danish kroner a year for Post Danmark

Post Danmark delivers about 11 million items of mail a day across Denmark. It had used the same model and system to manage its operations for a number of years and, through lack of development, the existing IT became expensive to operate, maintain and develop. It also limited the potential for business development. A new system was needed to bring efficiency, greater flexibility and to ensure future processes and deliveries were produced to the right standard and quality.

Post Danmark asked PA IT experts to prepare the business case and to plan and deliver the strategic blueprint for the new system. We also helped it define governance and develop a change management approach and quality audit system that was implemented in cooperation with Post Danmark’s internal auditors. It now has an effective workload forecasting system, allowing it to plan resources more effectively. As a result, Post Danmark will save 175 million Danish kroner a year.

Identifying cost savings of more than 30% for BAE Systems

The Platform Solutions division of BAE Systems designs and builds avionics products for civil and military uses. These programmes can take ten years from initial concept to entry into service. As many of the components are bespoke, cost- and quotebased estimating models do not provide robust evidence to inform future procurement and customer cost estimates.

Using our product cost optimisation capability and experience from the automotive sector, PA calculated the best practice costs for a range of electronic, electromechanical and mechanical parts. Our team of experienced product cost engineers used PA’s own methodology to analyse and calculate the costs of the parts, including realistic overheads and profit.

PA’s work helped BAE Systems and its suppliers agree realistic and competitive cost targets while recognising suppliers’ needs for sustainable prices. As a result, the project identified potential component cost savings of at least 30%.

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