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Bain's Management Tools

Bain's list of tools, developed through their annual survey, offers
many techniques used to make a business more successful. Many
of these can be implemented in Excel.

In 1993, Bain & Company launched a multi-year, world-wide research effort to get the facts about tools and techniques that promised to make a business more successful. Bain called them Management Tools.

Bain's objective was to provide managers with the information they need to identify, select, implement, and integrate tools that will improve bottom-line results.

In each year since 1993, Bain has repeated the survey. During the 1990s, respondents said they used an average of 10 tools. But in recent years, the average company is using 16 such tools.

The table below lists many of the tools Bain has uncovered since 1993. In recent years, the company has paid special attention to the 25 tools that are most widely used each year. Bain lists these at their Management Tools Home Page. The following table provides links to each of the current 25 tools.

Management vs Business Tools

Although Bain's list is a long one, it necessarily is incomplete. Bain lists the most widely used tools that their surveys have found. They don't necessarily list the newest tools, nor little-used tools that could be very useful.

Therefore, ExcelUser has adapted the term "Business Tools" to describe a more general concept. This allows us to add additional tools to Bain's list without muddying the meaning of their definition of "Management Tools".

Of course, in all cases, we will actively search for ways that Excel can assist in the use of such tools.