POWERING BUSINESS PERFORMANCE THROUGH MORE EFFECTIVE CLIENT FOCUS AND TEAMING
Re-engineering the firm to become more truly client facing and to drive higher client service performance raises a number of important organisation and management issues. Where best to focus resources and how much priority and emphasis do we give? How to generate insights and to leverage these as points of differentiation? How best to deploy resources so that the right mix of practices, industries and geographies are reflected? How to get people inside the firm to be more open and sharing of client contacts and industry information to benefit the firm? Howmuch do we invest in building positions and over what timeframe? And so on. None of these is an easy issue to address but they cannot be ignored as they remain real barriers to greater and more durable effectiveness and competitive success. FOCUS THE FIRM The first major issue to be confronted is to sharpen the strategic focus. The implications of this however, are not always fully understood or pursued. It requires internal recognition that if the firm is to achieve its strategic aspirations there are specific industry sectors, practice areas and geographies in which it is critical a strong position is built. In the light of this there will be therefore certain clients (or targets) of greater strategic and economic value to the firm than others and the greatest resource and priority must be given to the development and protection of these. Analysis of the client base of a firm will typically highlight that around 80% of its revenues and 120% of its profits are generated by around 20% of its clients. The corollary is that often a high percentage of the firm’s clients are absorbing the hard-earned profits generated by a few, thereby reducing the firm’s ability to invest in areas that will generate the most significant returns. When faced with such an analysis, partners typically retort the ‘great oaks from small acorns’ metaphor and will always have one example in their back pocket (but only one)! There will, of course, be smaller and less profitable clients in which the firm might invest but this should be done selectively in line with strategic intent. ‘High ground’ market positions can best be gained by attacking the market with a sharp-edged ‘arrow formation’ drive , combining the firm’s full range of intellectual capital with tailored resource teaming and effort, and directing this selectively at chosen areas rather than covering the market with the extended line drive that characterises the marketing and business development efforts of so many firms . The most effective firms will be those that have the courage, conviction and clarity to select those relatively few areas on which to deploy its most penetrating firepower!
INDUSTRY TEAMS
GLOBAL
ACCOUNT/CLIENT PENETRATION & DEVELOPMENT
Intergrated capacity, capability and effort
GEOGRAPHIC TEAMS
REGIONAL
PRACTICE TEAMS
LOCAL
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