PIMS®

The PIMS tools are a key part of the Malik Strategy Intelligence Program. They allow you to quickly and accurately assess the potential effects of your strategy and actions where it matters: In the marketplace and on the bottom line.

Like Syntegration, PIMS is based on simple concepts but is extremely powerful in application. Initiated by General Electric in the 1960’s for portfolio and investment analysis, the PIMS tools and databases have been refined and developed first by Harvard, then as an independent company, and now as part of Malik Management.

The PIMS Strategy database, developed in the course of consulting assignments across the globe, now contains in depth customer, market, and financial data for around 4000 businesses with a minimum time span of three years, giving us 25000 years of real business experience at our finger tips.

The basic principles of PIMS can be summarised as follows:

There are four key elements to PIMS:

Customer Value

Customer Value analysis allows you to compare the performance of your product/service in the market place relative to its competitors, assess its strengths and come up with an overall relative value position. This concept is key to our view of strategy, there is no point in being the most efficient producer of a product no-one wants to buy. Our analysis assesses your performance from the customers point of view and relative to your competitors.

The concept of Par performance

We answer the questions: What should a business like mine earn?  What are my strategic strengths and weaknesses? Once you know whether your business is over or under-performing, making and monitoring key decisions becomes easier.

Look-alike analysis

In a complex world, it is difficult to predict the likely outcomes of decisions. Look-alike analysis uses the experiences of similar businesses in the PIMS database to assess the chances of success and also to look for other strategies.

General findings and targeted research

PIMS is famous for linking market share to profitability, but there are other ‘lesser known’ findings and evidence that can be applied successfully by all businesses. Additionally, the databases are used within our assignments to analyse specific market and business situations.

Areas of application :

Business performance improvement

• How much money should we make?
• What would we expect costs in the business to be?
• What is the right mix of advertising, promotion and salesforce effort?
• Where must the business concentrate its efforts to improve overall performance?

Portfolio strategy

• What is the expected performance of the businesses in the portfolio?
• What businesses should we invest in?
• How can we improve operational effectiveness in a poorly performing business  to achieve an acceptable return?
• What businesses should be divested?

Customer Value management

• What matters most to your customers and how well do you perform on those factors?
• What are your strengths & weaknesses, compared to competitors?
• Do you offer value?
• What are the customer clusters/segments and how should you address them?

Acquisition

• What is the acquisition worth?
• What are the potential synergies?

New ventures

• What is your competitive position?
• What is the likely competitive reaction to new entry?
• How quickly can you penetrate the market?
• Will you achieve acceptable returns after entry?