Consulting Solutions
No two clients have the same issues and as a result our consulting solutions are infinitely varied and designed for the needs of specific clients. Common themes identified by clients include:
Profit Improvement Consulting
Understanding what is holding an organisation back from making more profit, designing action plans to improve and then hands-on driving the action plans. If part of a long-term ‘Profitable Business Growth’ engagement it can have a high success element as part of the fee. Typical action areas include focussing the sales team (see below), marketing (segmentation, segment strategies, customer focus groups), pricing strategies, negotiation support, product costing, benchmarking, cost reduction, lean/six sigma techniques, supplier management, on-line supplier auctions.
Outsourced Operations Director
As a result of our consultants having experience in senior operations management, we identified that there are many companies who need senior level support for some of the time to drive key actions through with the wisdom gained through experience, but they don’t need someone of that level 5 days per week. We therefore offer companies an ‘outsourced’ solution where our ‘Outsourced Ops Director’ visits usually weekly, and drives project teams to deliver agreed outcomes. The client then employs a more junior ‘Ops Manager’ type person who deals with the day-to-day matters. The combined team costs less than a full time Ops Director, and you get two brains for less than the price of one.
Strategy Consulting
Often the starting point for companies we meet is a ‘Strategic and Operational’ review which explores the current status across a number of strategic areas (Vision, Strategy, Structure, Culture) and more operational aspects of a company (Products/Services, Marketing, Sales, People, Systems and Finance). Using the findings gathered from interviews with the Board (collectively and individually), we can compare the company’s current strategy with the generic strategy most suited to the self assessed strategic position and recommend a detailed action plan. This can then be delivered internally but to ensure it doesn’t get forgotten we generally prefer to drive through the implementation – possibly through a ‘Profitable Business Growth’ project with a success fee component. This area also covers succession planning, pre-company sale grooming and post-merger support.
Benchmarking
Through our expertise in the Business Excellence Models (Baldrige, EFQM) and benchmarking, we have been invited to provide external independent benchmarking of major outsourced activities for utility companies and government service providers. We also deliver internal benchmarking solutions to compare different operational units within an organisation. In both cases, our approach is to look beyond the measures and to define how results are being delivered and then drive improvement programmes to bring underperformers up to high performance.
Telemarketing
One of our fastest growing areas is telemarketing, where for the right business model of our clients, we can literally make the difference between success and failure. Our team of telephone marketeers will call agreed target lists of companies (which we can provide) and represent you over the phone to get an appointment for your sales team. Where the product or service being sold fits this model, we have found clients can easily prove the return on investment and want to increase their investment in this area as much as they can. Significant sales growth has been seen in several of our clients as a result of this support.
Online marketing support
Nearly every company has a web site, but relatively few use it to get new business. This can often be because they are not driving traffic to their site. We can provide support for ‘Search Engine Optimisation’ and also targetted paid-for online advertising to get more clicks to the site which turn in to leads. This is an area where return on investment is frequently very high.
Outsourced Sales Director
As a consequence of providing marketing support, we found that some clients weren’t making the most of the leads we were getting them. Combined with profit improvement consulting, we have developed approaches to define the sales process for each company we work for and then manage it in great detail – monitoring conversion ratios at several levels right through to negotiation, closing and after-sales support. This has proved to be very effective for companies with a team of sales people but not the critical mass to justify a full time sales director.