PERLab is hands-on. Our experts work directly with your cross-functional teams to explore your product’s true value potential. We bring you a range of proven value-building tools for end-to-end product life cycle management, including consumer sentiment studies, value engineering, competitive product teardowns, cost modeling, rapid prototyping, and lean operating models. Together, we find new cost savings, enhance the product features that matter most to your customers, and deliver sustained gains to your bottom line across the following imperatives:

Improve product margin

We’ve worked with more than 200 companies over the past five years, and fewer than half had conducted a comprehensive review of their products before we stepped in. These companies were effectively leaving money on the table. In fact, research shows that proactive product life cycle management can translate to an average of 15 to 50 percent in EBIT opportunity.
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The point: good design is also good business. We combine operations excellence and design thinking expertise to offer a fresh perspective to your organization. Our outside-in approach to product analysis improves the top and bottom line by evaluating products through four key lenses:

  • Design. Reducing complexity, part count, and cost while creating products that stand out
  • Features. Optimizing product attributes based on what consumers value
  • Processes. Increasing manufacturing efficiency and minimizing product defects
  • Materials. Identifying alternative ways to achieve profitability and sustainability objectives

PERLab engages laterally and vertically across your organization to identify, design, and implement product improvements. By collaborating with everyone from engineers to executives, we’ve helped organizations revitalize product lines, build new design capabilities, and increase unit EBIT by up to 50 percent.

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Optimize operational complexity

When it comes to performance, unnecessary complexity is the enemy. It drives up costs on all fronts, creates confusion for your customers, bloats your supply chain, and increases operational risks. That’s why reducing complexity remains a key pillar of Kearney’s Strategic Operations Practice.
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At PERLab we take this mandate a step further by addressing the root causes of operational and business complexity: portfolio and product design. To deliver radical simplification, we start at the top and dive deep, with a process that includes:

  • Portfolio simplification. Clearing out products with overlapping value propositions and weak contribution margins
  • Feature rationalization. Combining or deleting product features with weak willingness-to-pay and implementation costs that dilute margins
  • Design modularity and platforms. Encapsulating common product functions into platforms and design differentiating customer features into modules
  • Component standardization. Using off-the-shelf components, harmonizing material specifications, and rationalizing suppliers across the component portfolio

In many cases, some complexity is required. But the key is cultivating it in a smart way that retains market differentiation and creates outsized returns. Bring together a keen understanding of customer value drivers, smart design, and cost analytics, and you’ll do just that.

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Design for sustainability

With nearly 50 percent of the growth in the consumer goods industry in the last five years driven by sustainability-marketed products, green is not just a trend—it’s a requirement. However, embedding environmental excellence into business strategy is a challenge for organizations without an all-encompassing framework to achieve their targets.
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At PERLab, we work with clients to seamlessly incorporate sustainability into product design while uncovering benefits throughout the value chain. Create a win-win situation by reinvesting cost savings and achieving sustainability benefits, while maintaining customer appeal and driving additional value through design.

Our design for sustainability framework provides specific methods to unlock sustainability potential at the core product, complementary, and consumer levels.

  • Core products. Finding alternative materials and designs that reduce the environmental footprint associated with the core product and associated primary packaging (for example, post-consumer recycled material use, recyclable materials, dematerialization, etc.)
  • Complementary benefits. Quantifying secondary benefits both upstream and downstream (for example, sustainable sourcing, reduced shipping needs, localization, etc.)
  • Cultural/consumer shifts Prepare for the long-term inevitabilities (closed loop investment, informatization, incentives, etc.)

Through PERLab you can access an ecosystem of sustainability experts from environmental engineers to former chief sustainability officers. The result? Outstanding solutions that fulfill your sustainability goals while creating an advantage down the value chain.

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Build design DNA

In a survey we conducted with over 500 executives, more than 95 percent of respondents recognized the importance of design-centricity, yet only 15 percent had integrated design into their strategy and operating model. The gap raises questions about what’s behind the disconnect. More importantly, it creates an imperative to remedy it.
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We help organizations build out their design capabilities by enhancing the functions that are integral to developing, launching, and sustaining products We address each element of the operating model and culture to transform the way your organization thinks about design:

  • Organization design and governance. Designing the go-forward org construct, reporting structure, roles, and accountabilities that will activate the strategy
  • Capabilities. Defining the key skills and tools required to succeed and develop a plan to build in-house and/or partner
  • Resource configuration. Taking a clean sheet approach to determine the team size and shape required to deliver the defined value potential
  • Processes and metrics. Designing seamless end-to-end processes and ways of working across cross-functional teams to drive innovation and sustain profitable products
  • Culture. Embedding formal and informal mechanisms to drive the desired behaviors across the organization, aligned with core purpose and values

Products reflect the underlying design capabilities of the organization that created them. Put design at the core of how you build teams, trainings, and processes, and your products will be innovative, differentiated, and profitable.

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Drive customer obsession

What’s the difference between the top-performing consumer goods companies and those that remain mid-pack? The secret is customer engagement—or even better, customer obsession. The best brands have cultivated a loyal fan base, and it wasn’t by accident.
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PERLab helps organizations create an obsessed customer base. By blending left- and right-brained thinking, we empower companies to design products that excite and inspire their customers, deepening the relationships along the way. Take advantage of our expertise for:

  • Sentiment mining. Challenging design choices with publicly available customer review data
  • Conjoint analysis. Optimizing features based on what customers value and are willing to pay for
  • User experience testing. Identifying and eliminating pain points, and creating meaningful differentiators
  • Ethnographic research. Designing for how users use, experience, and love your product

With our help, you can incorporate valuable consumer insights into your product launch or refresh designs to be more purpose-driven. The overarching goal: creating products that evoke emotion and cultivate a sense of belonging. Achieve this, and you’ll capture—and retain—a growing share of your market.

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Launch profitable new products

Three out of five new product development projects don’t meet their profitability objectives or fail to launch completely, despite long timelines and big budgets. The reasons are usually the same: a lack of appreciation for competitor offerings, a less-than-compelling customer value prop, or simply weak execution.
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Our mission is to help you avoid these missteps. We objectively guide your choices early in product development, so you can earn the highest possible returns. Using techniques that blend analytical rigor with design thinking, we empower you to make decisions that maximize new product value:

  • Design-to-value. Creating clear and compelling value propositions with “customer-back” features to capture the intended price, market, and use case
  • Design-to-cost. Designing features with simplicity, standard components, and modular functions to meet cost targets and avoid post-launch surprises
  • Portfolio analysis. Analyzing potential cannibalization potential and evaluate switching costs at the outset
  • Landscape analysis. Evaluating competitor positions, pain points, and product design to develop differentiation and uncover design and engineering inspiration
  • Joint development. Complementing your capabilities and reducing ground-up development by partnering with the right engineering companies

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Insights

View full list of insights here.