Business Advisement: The High Level Review on Business Areas to Improve After a firm wide or departmental review, we will advise you on what we perceive that you are doing well and what may need improvement in relation to your current business needs and future goals. The purpose of this service is to advise our clients at a macro level regarding their business operations versus a detailed business assessment. We will advise you on what business areas we recommend need improvement such as Sales, Marketing, Operations, Client Services, etc. The Business Advisement serves as a tool to enable a company to gain objective insights that often their own employees may not want to give or are in a position to share.
 This macro level review can be very useful when a client suspects there are issues but does not know where they exist or knows where they exist but not what the issues are. This service is also useful as a periodic “checkup” for your business, much like you do when you get a periodic physical for your health. In both cases, you want to be sure that you are operating as healthy as you possibly can.
The Business Advisement service will also create the foundation for a firm to determine whether or not they are ready, able, and willing to utilize our business assessment services for focused performance improvement. We have found that sometimes companies will listen but do not act and therefore fall short of taking the steps necessary to resolve their problems. It is to our mutual benefit to only engage in projects that are properly supported with the resources necessary to make improvement. Clients who embrace the process and fully utilize our solutions experience a return on their investment many times over.
Business Assessment: The Detailed Level Review on Business Areas to Improve
If your firm decides to go beyond our advisement service, then we will perform a detailed review of each business area or subject matter that you wish to improve upon. Business areas refer to: Sales, Operations, Finance, Client Services, Account Management, etc and subject matter refers to Products, Services, Competitors, Markets, Resources, Communications, etc.
 The detailed business area review typically requires performing a gap analysis. The gap analysis will provide a concise objective assessment of the current state of the selected business area needing improvement. An on-site situation analysis will result in a baseline comparison of where you are today (current reality) versus where you think you are or want to be (target reality) in relation to your objectives and goals.
The gap analysis consists primarily of the following activities:
1. Pre-planning – where we obtain key background information prior to a formal on-site visit. This information includes items such as: business or department summary, organization chart, employee handbook, and financial statements.
2. Introductory Meeting – where the Principal consultant(s) will outline the analysis methodology and deliverables to your top management and key stakeholders. It is also at this meeting that we make sure we are in agreement with the subject matter, the purpose, the required resources, and the desired end results from our efforts.
 3. Data Gathering – interviews, observations, and data analysis will be conducted with various cross-functional internal personnel and external associates.
4. Gap Analysis Report – a detailed report will be produced indicating our findings that compare your current reality to your projected reality or goal. A review of the findings is done in a round-table discussion forum to gain feedback by stakeholders who will influence the recommendations stage and ultimate success of the project.
5. Recommendations Meeting – recommendations are provided to your firm to improve the performance of the business problem area.
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Performance improvement results are achieved through a process that considers the institutional context, describes desired performance, identifies gaps between desired and actual performance, identifies root causes, selects interventions to close the gaps and measures changes in performance.
Although multiple recommendations are offered, a primary recommendation path must become the focus of the improvement process. At the conclusion of this meeting, your firm determines if it wishes to implement the improvements itself or with the additional assistance of our firm.
Issue Resolution: Mediation, Negotiation, and Alternative Answers
 Problems or challenges often arise in the work environment that if unknown or left unresolved or ignored will significantly impact your firm’s ability to prosper. Whether the challenges are real or just perceived and occur with your customers, third party affiliates, or internally among individuals or teams within your own organization, we can and do bring resolution.
The most common types of issues that we uncover and resolve are: communication, financial, political, alignment of objectives, and inadequate tools to measure performance. We often serve as facilitators, neutral third party mediators or negotiators, and we can recommend and implement the resolution(s). Every business faces unwanted challenges; it is what you do about them that matters most to your short and long term success.
Strategic Planning: The Big Picture and The Map to Get There
Strategic planning is a process of defining desirable future results and developing strategies to reach those long-range objectives. Strategic plans operate on a grand scale and look at "the big picture" over one to three years versus tactical detailed activities for accomplishing weekly or monthly goals.
Many smaller firms often view strategic planning as more important after they grow and become larger, but without a long-term plan of action in place then how will you grow your business and communicate it clearly to employees. A strategic plan is the map that will better enable you to reach your final destination. Use of periodic mandates of how to run your business is not a substitute for a strategic plan.
A strategic plan begins with defining the current overall environment that your company operates in and compares it to your desired future direction. The strategic planning process can enable your firm to address long-term challenges and thus be more agile and adaptive to its changing environment.
Finally, several reasons why your firm should use us for strategic planning:
Our experience in the planning process can keep the discussions in a positive, constructive light, versus the negative, destructive confrontation that can occur when firms try to do it themselves.
Our facilitator better enables full participation by all employees on an equal basis by not allowing individuals to dominate a discussion.
Our facilitator ensures that the conversation among employees remains focused on the subject matter, and
We also make sure that the goals are specific, measurable, achievable, and tracked.
Operational, Financial, & Administrative Improvements: Improving Efficiency and Effectiveness
The efficiency and effectiveness by which your organization functions at both the macro and micro levels directly affects your bottom line results. Your bottom line results are measured in tangible terms by your revenues and profitability and by intangible terms such as infrastructure stability, and client and employee satisfaction and retention.
Often the efficiency and effectiveness by which you function is a direct correlation to the programs and or processes (or lack of) that you have in place to run your business. When improving one’s operations, it is critical to address all key components that make up a business – the processes, the technology, and the people. We will perform a gap analysis to determine if and where your organization falls short of its objectives in relation to your operations. We then refine or develop the infrastructure by standardizing key components that drive business operations such as processes, reports, tools, alliances, communications, technology, etc.
It is rare that improvements in one business focus will not at least indirectly affect another, so you will find that a focus on administrative improvements will influence operational and financial improvements. It is important to review all three categories because it provides a more balanced and sustainable approach to performance improvement. Examples of simple operational area changes that can have a significant positive impact include:
Administrative focus: 
Eliminate redundant or unnecessary tasks, and increase consolidation
Reduce manual labor and increase automation where appropriate
Improve and align communication flow both internally and externally
Financial focus:
Decrease accounts receivable
Review existing and new revenue generation sources
Review of profit and loss, fiscal budget, and cash flow
Operational focus: 
Streamline departmental interactions
Align division objectives with firm wide strategic objectives
Assess people, processes, and technology to make sure they serve each other mutually
Process and Program Re-Design: Leaving What Already Works Alone But Fixing What Does Not Re-designing processes and programs is not urgent for most companies because it often takes a back seat to the everyday demands of running a business, and thus gives way to ongoing inefficiencies and lost opportunities. It is not uncommon to resist changing “the way things are always done” or to “fix the issue later when there is more time and resources”, but this reasoning will boomerang and cause a company’s products, services, and goals to outpace its internal processes. As internal processes become inefficient, outdated, and out of focus, your company becomes less profitable, responsive and efficient.
 Process and Program Improvement is a systematic approach to help organizations make changes in the way it operates or does business. The re-design of processes and or programs can be at a corporate, divisional or departmental level and in simple terms entails:
a) Defining what the strategic goals and purposes are (who we are, what we do, and why)
b) Determining how effective and efficient the process and or program is in relation to the goals and purpose (is there alignment, how effective and efficient is process or program versus the outcome, who is or is not served by the process, is there a more creative better way)
The end goal of process and program redesign is to significantly enhance performance in targeted areas so as to improve operational outcomes. Our particular process and program re-design efforts often are focused on individual departments; however, interdepartmental dependencies will be addressed as well.
If your competitors have similar products and services and access to the same technologies, how do you differentiate yourself and improve your bottom line? All things being equal, your ability to turnaround your performance and surpass the competition is further determined by having superior processes, programs, and people in place to execute your business.
Turn-Around Services: Profit and Return On Investment = The Bottom Line
There are times when an organization has reached a plateau or a brick wall in relation to its ability to perform any further. Perhaps your organization has engaged consulting services before but now wants to move its performance to a higher level. Unlike when you hit a brick wall, there are times (like any athlete) where you will not be aware that you have reached a performance plateau.
Our turnaround services focus on three key areas: Revenue, Productivity, and Client Services and are meant to quickly turnaround negative or stale performance and outcomes. Examples of our turnaround services include:
Revenue Turnaround:
Decrease costs, decrease debts
Increase collections
Increase revenue flow
Assess and increase revenue generation (by profit center, and volume or type of product & service)
Generate higher profit margins
Productivity Turnaround 
Reduce or eliminate bottlenecks, redundancy
Streamline existing procedures or administrative tasks
Re-allocate (not eliminate) employees to under performing areas
Restructure or re-align cross-functional departmental interactions
Systems simplification
Client Services Turnaround
Reduce or eliminate communication barriers
Create proactive vs. reactive client management system
Develop tighter integration among cross-functional teams
Increase customer satisfaction levels
Increase customer retention, revive prominent non-active clients
Assure contract obligations, increase customer cross-selling
Revitalize or develop client services processes and tools effecting revenue
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