7 Key Insights Business Leaders Can Use To Step-up EBITDA: Lessons From 1,000+ Successful Projects

A roadmap to impactful and sustainable EBITDA growth

Ever wondered why conventional operational excellence approaches often result in unsatisfactory improvements to EBITDA?

Over 40 years delivering successful high-impact EBITDA improvement projects to over 1,336 companies, we’ve noticed that all winners focus on 7 crucial factors. To achieve permanent and lasting step-change improvement to EBITDA, it’s essential to conduct a gap analysis of these 7 areas.

Example of typical results: One company turned a planned saving of £70MM into £130MM (85% increase), by harnessing the heart of EFESO's Seven Key Insights:

Focus on attacking losses in crucial areas of the E2E value chain

Doing this avoids the 2 tunnel vision traps that all winners must steer clear of:

1. Investing in Capex and cost reduction (which reduces quality of product)
2. Over-focus on one area of the value chain (typically Operational Excellence in manufacturing)

Seven Key Insights for Significant and Sustainable EBITDA Improvement In 24 Months (taken from the full webinar presentation)

1. Align Boardroom Strategy with Improvement Programmes: Your improvement programmes must be tied to boardroom ambitions. Misalignment could lead to resources being wasted on activities that are not impactful to the priority KPIs. Is your boardroom vision directly driving your improvement programmes?
2. Prioritize Critical Domains within the E2E Value Chain: Diagnose the most impactful areas in your end-to-end value chain that will create the most impact to KPIs. Defaulting to traditional areas for operational improvement like manufacturing excellence = lost opportunity for meaningful change.Have you properly diagnosed the E2E value chain to find hidden opportunities for impactful improvement?
3. Find and Attack Losses in the Identified Critical Domains: ZZZ. Do you systematically attack losses at the start of all improvement projects?
4. Identify Key Workstreams: Focus on workstreams whose KPIs will have a step-change impact on EBITDA. Focusing on less impactful workstreams will dilute efforts. Are your workstreams prioritized by impact to EBITDA?
5. Avoid Projectitis: Ensure you have a single, clear agenda of high-impact projects linked to results with 3–4-month cycles. Falling into the trap of creating numerous, unfocused projects ("projectitis") will suffocate EBITDA impact. Are all your projects clearly defined, focused and results-driven?
6. Develop Leadership and Drive Sustainable Change: Senior leaders must be passionate about developing Level 2,3 and 4 leaders and instill a commitment to change. Poor leadership will allow problems to be “hidden” throughout the company. Are your leaders driving implementation and fostering adoption?
7. Implement Digitalization in a 4P Way: People First, Progressive Journey, Partnership with existing programs, Profitability. Risk: Ignoring the 4Ps can lead to shiny object syndrome, harming profitability. Are you implementing digitalization with the 4Ps at the forefront?

About the author

Luca Stoppino Managing Director EFESO UK