Grey Rhinos and Broken SOPs: Consulting in a BANI World

Meet Mark, a pharma consultant stuck between the boardroom and the back dock.

Rising costs, late deliveries, and everyone’s pointing fingers. The SOPs say one thing, interviews say another, and the dashboards? Completely misleading.

In this episode of Trust the Process, we unpack how Process Intelligence gives consultants like Mark a new edge and revolutionizes strategy consulting.

Featuring insights from PwC, McKinsey, EY, and more, we explore how PI replaces guesswork with ground truth and helps consultants cut through noise in a BANI world.

The following is a transcript of the podcast, edited and organized for readability.

Cold Coffee

It’s 11:05pm in Düsseldorf.

No lights on except the glow of three monitors and a bitter cup of coffee.

Mark—32, strategy consultant, ex-McKinsey—is still in his client’s boardroom. His hotel check-in? That’ll have to wait.

For the last eight weeks, Mark’s been embedded at a pharma logistics company struggling with late shipments to customers, bloated inventory, and spiraling costs.

The CEO wants transformation. Operations want stability. And Mark? He just wants to find out why shipments keep missing their delivery window.

He’s created process maps. He’s done interviews. But something’s off. Everyone tells a different version of the truth.

He reopens his PowerPoint deck. And wonders if he's solving the wrong problem.

And if the truth might be a lot more complex.

Show Intro

Welcome to Trust the Process — the podcast that demystifies the world of process mining and process intelligence.

Today, we’re inside the boardroom of a multinational pharma distributor — cold-chain vaccines, temperature-sensitive meds, and customers like hospitals, pharmacies, and clinics.

Our consultant-in-residence is Mark, tasked with fixing late deliveries and skyrocketing inventory costs. He’s stuck between the boardroom and the back dock, searching for the root cause.

To help make sense of it all, we’ve brought together a roundtable of expert consultants:

• Julia März, partner at PwC
• Julian Fischer, partner at McKinsey
• Benjamin Lüders, partner at EY
• Gabriela Galic, Managing Director for Process Mining at Ofi
• Gori von Hirschhausen, Head of Transformation Consulting at PwC

Let’s get on the case.

Chapter 1: A Day in the Life

Consulting can be glamorous — but not always.

Mark’s day started at 6:00am in a rented apartment. By 8:00am, he was walking the warehouse floor. By 10:00am, he was in his fourth interview. By 6:00pm, elbow-deep in Excel.

Gori shares what that process used to look like:

“You do a walkthrough. You shadow someone doing the process. You look at documentation. You do interviews. But you only ever see one piece — and you never really see how it all fits together.”

Meanwhile, Mark’s client is drowning in delays. Inventory is piling up. Deliveries are late. Shelf life is slipping. A GDP compliance audit looms.

Good luck, Mark.

Chapter 2: Traditional Consulting — Good Intentions, Flawed Tools

For years, consulting followed a familiar script: flipcharts, post-its, interviews, and a process map built from memory.

Mark did all of it.

Here’s what he heard:

“The road freight team’s too slow.” — Ops Supervisor
“It’s the warehouse. They delay the handoffs.” — Warehouse Manager
“We’re buried in regulatory work.” — Quality Officer
“The system doesn’t reflect how we really work.” — Floor Lead

Everyone had a different truth. Everyone was right. And wrong.

Julian Fischer put it bluntly:

“You go into interviews, process mapping, sticky-notes — you never really get to the root of what’s actually happening.”

EY’s Ben Lüders added:

“We ask process owners how things work. That’s the first bias. What they describe isn’t always what’s real.”

Even SOPs were unreliable. Task durations were off. Some instructions referenced systems that no longer existed.

“No individual can grasp what’s really happening in a process. It’s part system, part human — and most people underestimate that.” — Martin Wolleswinkel

Even the dashboards failed Mark. Plenty of KPIs. But they showed symptoms, not causes.

He needed more than a story. He needed the data.

Chapter 3: The Pressure is Real – and It’s Here

For Mark, pressure wasn’t abstract. It sat in a walk-in fridge. Millions in medication. Shelf life ticking down.

“If these meds don’t arrive by tomorrow morning, we’ll go with another supplier.”

The company’s losing money. Losing trust. And if Mark doesn’t solve it soon, he might lose the client.

Julian Fischer explained:

“It’s a time of cost consciousness. You look at transport, labor, inventory. The big drivers. And when you link that to processes — it’s P2P, O2C, warehousing, logistics.”

But global pressure doesn’t operate in a straight line. Gori explains the new reality:

“VUCA stands for volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity. BANI takes it further: brittle, anxious, non-linear, incomprehensible. That’s the world we’re in.”

Traditional methods weren’t built for this. But Process Intelligence is.

“It started with transparency. Now it’s predictive, real-time, and deeply integrated into how we execute.” — Julia März

Mark opens a dashboard. He sees it: regional hubs rejecting deliveries due to cold storage constraints. The central warehouse never saw the issue. €1.2 million in vaccines caught in a loop.

Finally — something real.

Chapter 4: Process Intelligence, Applied

Mark’s project was a hybrid. Strategy and implementation.

Gabriela Galic explains the spectrum:

“Some clients come in mid-transformation. Others need technical help. It’s change management, tool setup, data engineering — the full stack.”

Julian Fischer adds:

“We stay vendor-neutral. Clients choose the tools. But internally, we monitor the market constantly — we know what works.”

With Process Intelligence, Mark sees what SOPs and dashboards never could:

• Delayed handovers
• Bottlenecked hubs
• Outdated instructions

Now, he can act. And the results follow:

• On-time delivery up 11%
• Inventory turns improved by 22%
• GDP compliance risk flagged and addressed

“Everyone worries about black swans. But the bigger danger? Grey rhinos — the obvious risks no one wants to deal with.” — Julian Fischer

The rejected deliveries? A grey rhino. The siloed systems? Another.

“ERP and CRM systems were there. But siloed. PI brought it together.” — Ben Lüders

And for compliance?

“Controls aren’t an add-on. They’re embedded in process activities. That’s compliance by design.” — Ben Lüders

For the first time, Mark wasn’t just fixing problems — he was preventing them.

Chapter 5: Back in Düsseldorf — Consulting, Changed

It’s 11:52pm.

Mark finally gets in the taxi. He’s headed back to the hotel. But his dashboard is still open.

Live monitoring. Alerts set. Executive dashboards ready.

And he’s not doing it alone.

Behind him? A process CoE. Data engineers. Analysts. Architects.

“We used to say we’d never work with SaaS. That’s changed. Clients need impact — and we need to meet them where they are.” — Julian Fischer

Process Intelligence is mainstream now. McKinsey, EY, PwC, KPMG — all embedding it.

Why?

Because in a VUCA, BANI world, sticky-notes don’t cut it.

Mark still works late. But now he has clarity. Direction. Visibility.

That’s the new model: Not just mapping problems — but measuring, fixing, and moving on.

That’s a wrap on Season 1 of Trust the Process.

Because when processes work, everything works.

Image Credit: Photo by Zoo Augsburg on Upsplash