For businesses seeking to improve profits, the low-hanging fruit is obvious. Fixes, such as reducing manufacturing costs, improving marketing effectiveness, or optimizing a supply chain are typically among the first to be implemented. Thus, a company that has already made such improvements faces a challenge. Does it, like the fox, conclude that anything else is out of reach and therefore not worthwhile? In such challenging economic times, a company can't afford to draw such conclusions. Does it then run for a ladder and raise it to a spot where, at first glance, more fruit appears to be within reach? Because of past improvement activities that seemed promising but failed to produce bottom-line results, many companies are wisely hesitant to do so. So is there a way to take a more holistic approach—to use the ladder to learn more about the tree, use scaffolding to align efforts to achieve productive results, and even prune the tree's branches to improve the likelihood of a long-term sustainable harvest?

Yes, there is a way. We call our approach Expanding the Profit Frontier. We've used it to help companies improve overall earnings 300 to 500 basis points before interest and taxes. For example, one company saw a 1 to 2 percent revenue lift when it aligned its pricing and discount strategies with a cost-to-serve model for each customer segment. Another company, initially planning to implement a single fixed-cost reduction strategy, instead combined this one initiative with another designed to streamline the product portfolio, and achieved six times the benefits with this more holistic approach.

Success for these companies was achieved using proven tools to address all of their profit frontiers (cost reductions, price increases, portfolio adjustments and other actions)—and doing so simultaneously as part of a continual business process to ensure maximum profitability both today and in the future.

Business case analyses (BCAs) for U.S. Department of Defense weapons programs should serve as more than a requirement—they should also be educational endeavors. BCAs provide the opportunity to step back from the daily grind and think strategically.

During typical business case analyses, staff members grind through the required elements, often gaining only limited insights about possible alternative means for completing their mission. A forward-looking approach—rooted in hard data rather than intuition and past practices—provides a deeper look at how the sustainment business model is working and the potential alternatives available.