Case 8: Saving a Professional Services Company

** While “saving” may sound somewhat presumptuous, one senior partner has repeatedly stated that the business may well have been dead by now if not for our timely “intervention”A strong endorsement indeed…

Client Profile
Mature professional services partnership (18 years) with 60 employees delivering about $8.0M in annual revenues. Revenues stagnating over previous 2 to 3 years and little overall earnings being delivered to bottom line.

Client Challenge
Partnership structure dealing with two exiting partners. Remaining partners trying to resuscitate business and get revenues and earnings up, while dealing with significant ongoing challenges in finalizing exit and equity payouts of other partners.  Competent business team however members lack clarity around key objectives and are not aligned around any holistic plan of improvement. Implementing major new software systems to drive business, which is major distraction for management team and employees.

Methodology & Process
Elapsed Time: 6 months
Using the transform/21 methodology, developed executive team facilitated workshops, hosted multiple facilitated strategy workshops; developed and managed weekly management team meetings, developed key business success tracking tools, Action Trackers, and educated team in use
Acted as part of management team with involvement ramping down as management team became comfortable with new “hands-on” focused management roles developed for/with them.

Formal Deliverables
• Within 6 months, team was delivering 15% increased revenue monthly, and delivering a sustainable $100,000 extra to the bottom line of the business monthly;
• Simplified all client intake and work processes resulting in much greater work throughput with less overhead consumed; developed metrics for new business development to reduce client poaching; worked with management team to ensure new business tools were designed around “new simplified business” rather than previous non-optimized processes;
• Developed key operating metrics, weekly measurement/reporting activities, weekly mgmt meeting structures; drove strong push on A/R to get collections up to reasonable, sustainable levels.

Business Outcomes (1- 15 months after engagement begins)
3 Months: Organizational culture starts to visibly improve, various “stragglers” leave on own accord allowing for bringing in fresh talent to match new culture; monthly revenue gains start to be sustainable;
6 Months: Monthly revenue gains up 15% from starting baseline have been maintained for 2 previous months, earnings strong and profits recorded for previous 3 months;
9 Months:  Client building up workforce and opening new locations; management team starting to develop next “change” project metrics for continuing growth momentum.

 

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