How a Consultancy Leveraged Culture for Digital and Proposition Growth

A sustainability consulting business had growing pains. It based its central propositions upon reducing both energy costs and carbon emissions. The executive team and founders could see the opportunity, but their different styles caused friction to the extent that the company’s future was in jeopardy. Additionally, to realise their vision, they needed support to embrace the digital opportunity that would extend their service offerings.

Creating a Foundation

We embarked on a process to address the acute cultural issues within the executive team. Each executive was given clear responsibilities with autonomy to ensure that effort was as productive as possible. Alongside this, we also instilled the need to be accountable, leading to greater freedom and trust. It became clear that each executive brought the same values but different skills to the business. From this much more robust platform, the road to expansion became clearer and frictionless.

Embracing Digital

We then reviewed the opportunity to embrace digital. For a consulting business, this can be a mixed blessing, and there is often a fear of commoditising expertise. We countered this with an inclusive dialogue with the professional teams. In doing this, we formulated a data strategy and machine learning plan to supplement skills and increase the consultants’ value to both their customers and the business.  A technology team was created and integrated with the professionals.  In little time minimum viable products were produced. A positive ROI was achieved in the first 12 months, operating on a secure, robust, scalable platform.

New Propositions

This, in turn, created opportunities for new propositions. Together, we implemented a new proposition process and the digital transformation of their service lines. A unique flagship proposition was launched to leverage the consultants’ skills so they could add insight and interpretation to information produced as a result of the data strategy. In turn, this made each consultant more valuable, moving them away from data reporting to advising. Revenue per employee significantly increased.

Culture Again

By tuning the culture to embrace the principles and the proposition of the business, we catapulted digital into the front line. At the end of the programme, the digital platform supported 90% of the business’s revenue, created new propositions, increased revenue per employee, integrated digital into the culture, captured millions of data points daily as the foundation for consulting insights, and contributed to staff retention and expansion.  

But even more importantly, it changed how their clients could improve their businesses to reduce carbon emissions and energy costs.