Blum Shapiro Consulting: Strategy and Operations

Business Planning - Faced with opportunities and challenges that affect future success, organizations recognize the value of confronting very serious questions:

Does your top management share a common understanding about the business direction?
If your business strategy hasn't been fully implemented, are there unstated issues or people in the organization holding you back?
How well is your business running day-to-day?
Is there a need to create an actionable agenda with accountability within the company?

The planning process facilitated by Blum Shapiro Consulting helps organizations find answers from within - and change for the better.

Professional support for the planning process - At Blum Shapiro Consulting, we know that aligning your management team around a focused set of strategic priorities will advance your organization toward its longer-term vision.

Our approach is to facilitate your team through a structured planning process to identify strategic initiatives that best leverage the organization's strengths in view of environmental opportunities and threats. We help your team translate strategic initiatives into a short-term operating plan with clear responsibilities and measures.
Proven methods tackle five challenges - Our pragmatic methods address and resolve the critical planning challenges facing organizations today:
1. Creation of a shared and internalized vision for alignment of purpose
2. Honest assessment of the organization's current strengths and weaknesses
3. Acknowledgement of the environmental factors which are not within your control, but which will have a severe impact on your future
4. Creation of an infrastructure which gives clear consideration for how the plans will become operational
5. Engaging the organization to develop realistic plans and the commitment to achieve desired results.
Practical direction for decisions - The results of an effective planning process should not be "dust-gathering" documents, but should have value and be directly translated into daily operating decisions. The plans should be used as a framework to develop a management operating system and supporting performance measurements. Then the management team can monitor operating results, recalibrating and adapting the plan with new insights or information.
Preparing participants in advance - A planning group of six to eight key individuals is considered an appropriate size for the planning process. In preparation for the workshops, we highly recommend one-on-one interviews with each of the participants using a structured interview guide. The purpose of these interviews is to obtain individual perspectives on the vision and strategic direction of the organization that can be consolidated and presented at the workshop, highlighting common themes. These interviews also allow us to describe the workshop format and encourage participants to organize their thinking before the session.
The planning process timeframe - We have found that the facilitated planning process is most effective when it is conducted as two separate six-hour sessions held one to two weeks apart. This allows time for the participants to engage in some off-line environmental assessment work (and creative individual thinking) between meetings. However, we have conducted the process successfully over two consecutive days, when the client has a strong perspective on critical environmental factors such as competition, expected technological advances, and government regulations that may affect the business.
A results-oriented agenda - Blum Shapiro Consulting will create a customized agenda for your planning session. Two of our professionals will co-facilitate the session to address some or all of these topics:
- Creation or validation of the company's long-term vision/mission
- Identification of environmental opportunities and threats
- Depiction of internal strengths and weaknesses
- Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats analysis to identify strategic initiatives
- Development of operational action plans and measures
- Discussion of any needed refinements to the organization infrastructure
- Creation of a check-in process to monitor progress against the plan

Operational Process Assessment - Market disruptions can cause profits and performance to drop. Despite these disruptions, there are market successes since with every disruption there is a new opportunity. At Blum Shapiro Consulting we understand that to achieve success, a shift must be made to meet new challenges and opportunities. Our balanced approach that evaluates people, process, technology, strategy and culture creates solutions that reduce complexity, increase ROI and improve operational performance. We bring deep industry and process expertise that we use to customize solutions to your specific needs and optimize the return, investment, and risk. Our best practice solutions reach across your organization from order entry to inventory management to customer service.

We begin working with you through our Operational Assessment. Together we find improvement opportunities that minimize disruption and risk while maximizing value with a focus on your most pressing business needs. We assemble the skills, experience, tools, and partners to analyze the challenges impeding improved business performance. We work together to develop a value proposition that will allow you to leap ahead of competitors by focusing on improvements that leverage newly identified opportunities and possibilities. The result is a business case that increases your competitive advantage, efficiency, and effectiveness and a short and long term plan to execute and rapidly achieve success.

Merger Integration - Merger integration is one of the biggest challenges an organization can face. Between 50-70% of mergers fail to deliver value after the deal. The Blum Shapiro Consulting approach to integration accelerates value creation starting with a clear understanding of the strategic drivers behind the deal and puts a focus on the execution of priorities that include:

High Value Targets - Being selective where you integrate is the most effective way to extract value and to reduce unnecessary friction. Companies should integrate only where valuable or necessary.
People and Culture are Critical - People and culture can make or break an acquisition. Decide quickly on a specific approach and use hard tactics -- organization structure, compensation incentives, and a shared decision-making system - to make sure the right people and culture survive and thrive.
Move Quickly - You should launch your integration planning several months before the deal is announced to determine the new organizational structure and the key people who will drive the integration.
Operations First - Focus most of your talent on the base business and have a plan to maintain the market share of both companies and their brands while the integration is underway.

These integration priorities are an umbrella over the entire merger and integration process that must get implemented at a granular level. Blum Shapiro helps you link the big picture to all areas of integration including but not limited to:

Accounting and reporting
Technology and process alignment
Organization structure and competencies
Cost reduction and benefit achievement
Program management
Employee communications
Supplier consolidation
Sarbanes-Oxley compliance
Strategy and performance measurement
Tax implications
AR valuation, due diligence, disposal

Call us to learn more

Our strategy and operations consulting services are customized to your organization's needs. We would welcome the opportunity to talk with you about how our strategy and operations consulting services will provide immediate and long-term benefits to your organization.

Brian Renstrom
Blum Shapiro Consulting
29 South Main Street
P.O. Box 272000
West Hartford, CT 06127-2000
860-561-4000
brenstrom@blumshapiro.com

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