Strategic & Operational Alternatives Analysis

Looking to take the organization in a new direction or make the organization more effective and efficient within its current markets?

We can help. We work with your board or management team to generate potential strategic or operational alternatives or distil a list of potential alternatives into those that best meet short and long term goals, work within current business constraints, and address stakeholder needs and preferences.

Our clients realize the benefit of incorporating outside perspectives into their planning and execution processes. These benefits include:

• Unbiased advice: not tainted by the existing views and politics.
• Different perspective than insiders: Management teams needs different views and perspectives to problems that only outsiders can bring. This is especially true for a family business.
• Objective: Outsiders have been there and done that and can add the objective advice that management teams need to distinguish crises and normal situations.
• New skills: New skills and experiences bring a different view to problems and discussions.
• Short and long term: Consideration for the potential impact on different timelines of the business.
• Risk identification: Avoid group think when identifying and evaluating potential risks.

Board Members

Add Depth and Breadth to your Board

Is it time for a new board member that will look beyond the numbers? One who can help balance the short term needs with the long term goals? Our consultants make ideal board members. With business expertise in strategy, risk, internal control, corporate structure, accounting, and market research combined with backgrounds in other fields such as engineering and project management, we work with the board to focus on the key issues, protect the current value of the organization, manage risk, and help position the organization to capitalize on opportunities targeted to achieving shareholders objectives.

Major Shareholder Representative

Are you a majority shareholder in a small or medium sized company but are not active in the day to day operation of the venture? Are you looking for a professional with decades of business and technical experience to help ensure the board focuses on the key issues, balances the short and long term view and helps ensure your objectives are achieved?

We can provide a board member who will ensure your intent is heard at the meeting, act on your behalf in board meetings, keep you up to date on what is going on based on what was discussed, the known risks, and what is being done to manage them. Besides our consultants providing their own written summary of each board meeting, with their comments to you, our individuals are available to meet by phone or in person to explain, in straightforward terms, what transpired at the meeting, the possible implications of it, and steps you might consider. Being a silent partner doesn’t mean you are an absent partner. Manage your investment.

Market Research

Knowledge is key to the success of any business. Many businesses fail to reach their full potential because they didn’t understand their targeted market. Small changes to positioning, features, targeted market or pricing can be the difference between marginal performance and a block buster success. This is true for both product extensions in established markets and innovations creating new markets.

Market research is more than surveys. The amount of data available from day to day operations is constantly increasing. This data combined with public information, 3rd party research and any research conducted on our client’s behalf can be combined to provide unique market insights that can lead to a competitive edge.

We can then work with you to develop and test these opportunities to help you strengthen your market position and move your business forward.

Risk Management

Risks exists. However risks that are identified before they become incidents can often be avoided entirely or have their potential impact reduced. We can help identify potential risks, rank them to determine their relative likely impacts and probability of occurrence and suggest actions that can be taken to reduce exposure to them.

Internal Controls

Good internal controls help reduce the likelihood and magnitude of fraud and theft while providing signals to enable early detection when it does occur. Unfortunately the reality is that unless there is a single shareholder who handles all aspects of purchasing, inventory management, sales, delivery and financial management, the opportunity to defraud the company and its shareholders exists. While large companies struggle with appropriate levels of internal controls, many small and medium sized companies devote little thought to protecting themselves. As Benjamin Franklin said, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

We can help design internal controls to help deter individuals from committing fraud and increase the chance of it being detected earlier, all while keeping the importance of underlying process efficiency in mind.