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【正文】 aurant operations after it concluded that its expertise was in manufacturing and marketing beverages, not in managing restaurants. Benchmarking and best practices A monly used concept in consulting (especially in operations and implementation engagements) is benchmarking. Benchmarking basically means researching what other panies in the industry are doing (usually in order to evaluate whether your client is operating efficiently or to identify areas where the client can cut costs). For example, if a mailorder pany wants to reduce its orderprocessing costs, it would want to pare its order processing costs with those of other mailorder panies, breaking down its costs for each part of the process (including ordertaking and shipping) and paring them with industry averages. It can then pinpoint those areas where its costs are higher than average for the industry. A related concept is best practices: once you39。ve benchmarked what other panies are doing, you want to focus on those panies that have particular low costs or which otherwise operate particularly well. What are they doing right (., what are their best practices)? And how can our client (in the case) emulate or copy what they39。re doing? Remember to look outside your client39。s particular industry, if necessary, to find the best practices for a particular process or operation. The 2x2 matrix The 2x2 matrix is a good framework to use any time you have two factors that, when bined, yield different outes. A very rudimentary example would be what happens when you turn on your bathroom faucets, as follows: A more businessappropriate example would involve acquiring a pany. Let?s say a pany is interested in understanding the difficulty of acquiring or building a distribution center and it is considering financing this decision with either stock or debt. The potential outes might look like this: The BCG Matrix The BCG Matrix, named after the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), is perhaps the most famous 2x2 matrix. The matrix measures a pany39。s relative market share on the horizontal axis and its growth rate on the vertical axis. Mamp。A cases: Determining the value of an acquisition Case interviews aren39。t just for consultants. Mergers amp。 acquisition cases are wildly popular at investment banks. Here39。s how to analyze a potential acquisition. Value Drivers (Mamp。A) Framework In order to understand value, we need to understand the three primary value drivers: The value ponents can be further broken out into specific value drivers: Mamp。A Cases: Data Gathering and Analysis Market Analysis Tools ? Competitive position framework ? Relative value versus petitors to customer through supply chain ? Product life cycle ? Supply and demand analysis Industry capacity Industry utilization Demand drivers Regressions ? Segmentation analysis ? Porter39。s Five Forces ? Experience curves ? Trends and outlook ? Key success factors Target Analysis Tools ? Business system parison with petitors ? Market share (over time and by segment) ? Capacity (growth and utilization of) ? Customer39。s key purchase criteria and relative performance ? Financial history ? Sales and profitability by segment ? Cash flow analysis ? Margin and expense structure ? Relative cost position ? Cost benchmarking Your data gathering strategy will vary depending on industry: A framework caution All the frameworks detailed above are widely used, and most . business schools teach them as part of their core curriculums. Your interviewers will instantly recognize when you are applying them, since they are already familiar with the techniques. While this is OK, consider that you are trying to demonstrate your unique analytical and deductive reasoning skills that set you apart from other candidates. You must be creative and original in analyzing case questions. Use these frameworks sparingly. (Another note: No interviewer will be impressed if you proudly proclaim, I39。m going to apply Porters Five Forces now. Apply frameworks without identifying them.)