Bain employs its expertise for the Baltic Sea
News on the Bain collaboration
BAIN EMPLOYS ITS EXPERTISE FOR THE BALTIC SEA
We received an interesting proposal from Bain & Company last fall. Bain wanted to offer BSAG its expertise to develop our operations on a pro bono basis. Bain was familiar to us as a pro-bono partner from previous years, so it was easy to take up on the offer.
“This kind of collaboration is very important to Bain. Both in terms of the fact that we want to do our part to help society and the environment, and also because of the personal interest and enthusiasm of the employees. Our way of collaborating is to bring Bain & Company’s know-how to innovative partners that make a real impact, such as BSAG”, says Jani Kelloniemi, Bain’s partner.
The first project was the development and clarification of BSAG’s business cooperation concept. We thought this could be a meaningful topic for Bain. For BSAG, this was a timely issue that we had been considering for a while, and we needed an outside sparring partner.
Bain offered the means for this project with a strong team that worked intensively and very enthusiastically for several weeks all through winter and spring. Various background studies, surveys and interviews were conducted, which provided a lot of useful material for the development of our business cooperation. Indeed, many of our partners received various contacts from Bain and we want to thank everyone involved for the valuable input!
We refined the information further together in workshops and several discussions. A huge number of new ideas were hatched within the enthusiastic group. As a cherry on top, the work was also very inspiring and fun. At BSAG we also learned a lot and identified needs for improvement.
At the same time, we were also able to conclude that BSAG’s activities and the basic idea of business cooperation will stand the test of time and are likely to be even more in demand in the future. With a defined and even more ambitious presentation of our activities, we are able to provide even more added value to companies in various industries. This way, we help companies to improve the state of the Baltic Sea in the long term and create good business at the same time.
“The Baltic Sea can be helped in many ways. Assistance may take the form of donations, the development of one’s own business activities or the providing of expertise pro bono to develop the activities of a Baltic Sea NGO. The close cooperation project with Bain early this year represents pro bono collaboration at its best. We are very grateful that Bain offered its extensive network, high level expertise and vast experience for us to use. The result of the cooperation is extremely valuable and useful to us”, says Michaela Ramm-Schmidt, CEO of BSAG.
“Both the core team that worked together with BSAG and the entire office that participated in brainstorming were really excited about the collaboration and the impact that was achieved with BSAG,” Jani Kelloniemi continues.
To ensure business continuity, every organization must constantly improve its performance. It does not always happen on its own and often examination done by an outsider is needed. However, BSAG is an NGO that runs on donations and project money and therefore does not have the means to purchase external consulting services. A carefully selected and tailored pro bono partnership is therefore a great way to help us help the Baltic Sea.