Company Overview

Bain & Company provides strategic advice and recommendations for business problems to leading companies in virtually every economic sector. Bain was founded in 1973 by Bill Bain, a former VP at the Boston Consulting Group, and several others. In the beginning, Bain distinguished itself by forging long-term relationships with clients by agreeing not to work with their competitors in exchange for reciprocal fidelity, but that approach has been relaxed. Bain’s capabilities include strategy, customer and product management, growth, organization, supply chain management, cost and capital management, M&A, core process redesign, and private equity. Much of the firm’s work involves the IT implications of strategy formulation, IT support, and program management. Bain also focuses on implementation cases—sticking around to help a company put its suggestions into practice—as well as on the high-level strategy and diagnostic cases that are still its bread and butter. Bain remained relatively unfazed by the last recession and didn’t have to undergo the major layoffs that plagued other firms, and both the firm and its clients have performed well over the last number of years, experiencing significant growth in 2005. The company continued to grow in 2006, but the employee growth rate dipped from 45.5 to 11 percent.