Management Tools for 2009

Over the past three decades, management tools have become a common part of executives' lives. Whether trying to increase revenues, innovate, improve quality, increase efficiencies or plan for the future, executives have looked for tools to help them. The current environment of globalization and economic turbulence has increased the challenges executives face and, therefore, the need to find the right tools to meet these challenges.

To help inform managers about the tools available to them, in 1993 Bain & Company launched a multiyear research project to gather facts about the use and performance of management tools.

Every year or two since, Bain conducted research to identify 25 of the most popular and pertinent management tools. Their efforts to understand the continually evolving management tools landscape have led them to add five tools to this year's guide:

• Decision Rights Tools
• Downsizing
• Online Communities
• Price Optimization Tools
• Voice of the Customer Innovation.

Three of these tools are relatively new and two, Downsizing and Price Optimization Tools, may be increasingly relevant to managers in the current economic environment.

Download the PDF of the Management Tools 2009 Guide from Bain - here.