About the Client

Operations and Supply Chain-Focused Advisory Firm

This innovative operations and supply chain consulting firm provides operational due diligence to private equity firms and performance improvement support to operating companies. It partners with the world’s top investors and executive leadership teams to transform businesses and drive enterprise value across multiple industries like private equity, consumer products, specialty chemicals, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, and more. 

The Situation 

A Need For More Capacity 

As a go-to-market advisory firm, pricing is one of this firm’s top specialties. But when a SaaS client that provides educational materials for life sciences professionals asked for a detailed pricing strategy review, the firm lacked internal capacity. 

They had three choices. First, they could tell the client they lacked the capacity and see them go to one of their competitors. Second, they could attempt to hire someone full-time and bring them on board to assist with the project. 

While this would have been the normal response, the expedited time frame of the project meant that taking the traditional approach to talent acquisition, in this case, was simply not a feasible option. The firm didn’t have the time to draft the job description, work with a recruiter or agency to find the person for the role, and then onboard and train them. 

So, the firm decided to explore a third option: Onboarding an independent consultant on demand. The specialist selected for this role would need to be a true pricing expert with experience working in large data sets (1M+ rows), developing pricing hypotheses, and performing analyses to confirm these hypotheses. 

They had to be comfortable summarizing analysis in presentable graphs and presentations, and identifying and quantifying pricing opportunities. This project also included performing multivariable regression analysis to identify stock-keeping-unit (SKU) level elasticity and optimum price, and modeling price optimization as a function of revenue, volume, and margin.

The Solution 

Onboarding a Pricing and Strategy Expert

The firm desperately needed to find the right specialist, fast. Interested in learning how Graphite could help it find a subject matter expert within 24-48 hours, the firm engaged an Account Executive (AE) on the platform to learn more. 

In the demo call, the AE explained the process. First, a follow-up meeting would need to be set up to scope the project. Then the AE would draft the project description, get client approval, and post it on the platform. 

Once posted, experts can apply for the role or be recommended by the AE to apply for the role. From there, all the firm has to do is interview the curated list of experts and onboard their selected expert. 

Excited at the prospect of finding the talent it needed, the firm moved on to the next meeting — discussing its requirements in more detail with the AE and talent engagement manager.   Over 645 highly vetted independent corporate strategy consultants were identified on the platform, of which 11 potential candidates were invited to apply for the project. 

The client chose to work with a pricing and strategy expert with a Ph.D. in economics and 15 years of consulting experience. The selected expert had spent the best of a decade working with a leading pricing consultancy where they used R (a data analysis platform) almost daily, analyzing transaction data for incredibly data-intensive industries, and built dozens of price elasticity models using regressions. 

The Result 

Delivering Invaluable Pricing Analysis and Strategy

Before starting the project, Graphite connected with both the firm and the expert to establish expectations, regular check-ins, how payments work on the platform, and best practices. After getting onboarded, the expert performed a detailed current state analysis to identify pricing opportunities based on products, channels, order size, and more. 

With that information on hand, the expert conducted a price elasticity multivariable regression analysis to determine the optimum price by SKU. To make the information more accessible, the expert used R to present the findings to the firm while also identifying pricing KPIs and developing a pricing dashboard. 

Everything went smoothly from start to finish. The expert used their industry-leading expertise to successfully lead the project to fruition. The client was so pleased with the expert’s work that it extended the project beyond its original timeline.

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