Services

ASSESSMENTS

Assessments systematically uncover vulnerabilities, untangle deep rooted issues and wicked problems, and identify new opportunities. This reduces risk, fuels operational effectiveness and efficiency, and feeds strategy development for achieving short and long term business objectives. Each assessment is customized to meet the goals of the client, while leveraging our frameworks and knowledge of best practices from many years of experience in industry and consulting. Typical clients recognize that they:

• Require an objective third party to evaluate the current state, at times in response to Board of Directors or executive leadership request
• Intend on making a major investment and want to minimize risk before mobilizing
• Need to break the “vicious cycle” (or capability trap) of a known problem area that is seemingly impossible to overcome
• Are embarking into unfamiliar territory or new domains, where in-house expertise is not yet established (i.e. don’t know what don’t know)
• Are facing important decision points and need assistance in focusing their decisions, where they benefit from assessments, confirmation of issues, identifying opportunities, exploring scenarios, and recommendations

STRATEGY ASSESSMENT, DEVELOPMENT, EXECUTION

Strategies can have many forms, exist at every level of the firm, and their success lies on their overall cohesion, alignment to market realities, flexibility to external forces, and the capability to execute.  Typical clients recognize that they:

• Need experienced assistance to work through their strategic planning cycles
• Are stuck on how to execute on their strategic directives
• Need to align their strategy across their organization, functions, and partners
• Are facing important decision points and need assistance in focusing their decisions, where they benefit from assessments, confirmation of issues, identifying opportunities, exploring scenarios, and recommendations

BUSINESS ACCELERATION & GROWTH

Companies and businesses go through lifecycles of maturation, growth, decline, and at times even need to “re-invent” themselves.  For technology and innovation-based companies, effectively managing the explore (new-stream) / exploit (mainstream) paradox is fundamental for establishing and sustaining leadership positions in the industry.  Typical clients recognize that they:

• Are going in circles (being active, yet not achieving) on defining and executing their roadmaps, New Product/Technology Introduction (NPI/NTI), Go-to-Market
• Are falling short on true product differentiation in market, real customer value proposition, and competitiveness
• Are uncertain whether to continue | stop | pivot a product investment stream (e.g. legacy product, in-market product, new product development still in progress)
• Are needing to de-risk their next big disruptive offer to the market
• Are challenged with establishing or sustaining high performance partnerships for product development and delivery (e.g. off-shore development, technology alliances, vendors, market partners)
• Are needing to develop their bench-strength while building or growing their venture

TRANSFORMATIONS & TURNAROUNDS

Transformation initiatives relate to breakthrough changes that lead to a new identity for the company, business unit, organization, or function.  Turnaround initiatives are similar to transformations but focused on saving a troubled business that is losing money, where radical and fast action is required.  Clients that engage in this service typically encounter one or more of these challenges:

• Situations where profitability is stable – and typically underperforming or not geared for growth – however strategic direction and performance need to be renewed
• Situations where there is a profitability crisis, including risk of liquidity of the business
• Recognize they need to align business growth stages with operations to support the changing size of the business
• Have several years of mediocre or poor operational performance in and across business functions, where various well-intentioned improvement initiatives have not resulted in measureable or sustained performance improvements
• Recognize they need to achieve a balance between focusing on their near term business as well as protecting their future (since they currently are over-rotating on either near or long term at the expense of the other)
• Want to move from a domestic or international (import/export) business to a global business
• Need to modernize from their current paradigm or mode of operation
• Are facing a merger/acquisition

OPERATIONAL EXCELLENCE & LEAN SIX SIGMA

Operational excellence involves continuous improvement efforts that drive cost out of the company’s value chain, improve processes, and achieve best practice, thereby improving functional, cross-functional, and overall business performance.  Typical scenarios that trigger clients to address their operational excellence include:

• Situations where radical cost reduction (for example: workforce layoffs) is required and there is risk in damaging operational effectiveness as a result
• Level of waste and defects is costly and impeding the business, organization, or function from achieving its mandates (and heroic actions aren’t working or cannot be sustained)
• Organization is stuck in a capability trap, coupled with a culture of learned helplessness, and prior well-intentioned efforts to improve have not delivered results
• Proactive companies, along with their underlying functions, are wanting to raise the bar on capability and effectiveness in order to stay on the leading edge of cost control, best practice, predictable process performance, customer satisfaction, and global competitiveness
• Company already has a Lean Six Sigma or operational excellence program implemented, where it isn’t performing to expectations and true potential.
• Company or organization wants to implement process automation software and tools, yet needs to ensure that the end-to-end processes are optimized in order to leverage the benefits of automation without carrying forward legacy baggage or introducing new limitations
• Organizations that want to deploy Lean Six Sigma and/or Business Process Management

BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT (BPM) & AUTOMATION

Processes are not simply “pulled together”; rather they are systematically architected, designed, managed, and controlled in correlation to the whole ecosystem, a multidisciplinary endeavour using state of the art methodologies and practices that focus on the value enhancing lifecycle end-to-end. Typical scenarios that trigger clients to adopt Business Process Management (BPM) into their originations are:

• Recognize the need to transform into a process-centric organization
• Company is embarking into new era of enablers (e.g. digital transformation, Internet of Things (IoT)) where processes are key foundational elements
• Company’s operational processes are highly complex, mission critical, safety critical, or tightly regulated
• Company or organization wants to implement process automation software and tools, yet needs to ensure that the end-to-end processes are architected, designed, and modelled in order to leverage the benefits of automation as well as the solutions being usable, maintainable, reliable, and scalable.

EXECUTIVE | LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT & CAPABILITY MATURATION

Improving a company’s or organization’s agility requires improvements in capabilities.   We focus on developing executives | leaders as well as business functions (for example:  R&D, product management, marketing, operations, program/project management, Lean Six Sigma).  Clients that engage in this service typically:

• Recognize the specific areas where bench strength needs to be developed
• Have identified career path developmental areas for executives and leaders
• Are in the midst of some form of company or organizational change that precipitate new areas or higher level of capability mastery