Why Do Organizations Hire Strategy Consultants
Now that you know a bit more about strategy consulting, let’s discuss when and under what circumstances organizations hire a strategy consultant. Consultants are often hired to focus their efforts 100% on projects or strategies when the corporate officers are too busy to dedicate the full amount of effort required. Additionally, consultants are used as an outside unbiased view of issues when primary decision-makers are potentially too tied to the outcomes to have a critical view from another perspective. These consultants are often experts in their field and may not be affordable or required for full-time employment in-house for all the organizations that contract their time. They may already have experience solving the strategic problems the organization is about to enter. Strategic consultants may also help provide a wider variety of working hours and add additional teams on a temporary as-needed basis for the project. No need to get your teams up to speed or hire additional team members who may not have a role when the project is complete. Their connections outside of the organization's network are likely to play a pivotal role in providing the external feedback indispensable to your success. The world changes at a rapid pace, so organizations need leading professionals to help them make vital decisions about their direction and pathways to make or increase profits. The decision-makers have a lot invested in their organizations and may have a difficult time seeing when it’s time for important changes. Strategy consultants help by providing pivotal guidance and plans of action to help organizations achieve their goals.
Do You Need a Strategy Consultant?
Do You Need a Strategy Consultant?
In order to solve the challenges mentioned and more, Universal Creative Solutions provides a variety of services developed to match your unique set of strategic challenges.
There are a wide variety of situations where a Strategic Consultant can be useful. They aren’t always employed specifically for major planned changes but can be useful for strategizing improvements to a variety of business areas. In the next section, we cover a variety of services we provide within the strategy consulting umbrella. Additionally, here are some questions to ask which may mean it’s time to hire a strategic consultant:
Are you planning significant enterprise-level decisions? Do you feel like your organization is struggling in an area that would require high-level adjustments and a thorough strategy to result in a successful change? Are your organization’s decisions based on a feeling rather than the data because it’s too difficult to organize or make sense of it?Is the decision you are about to make have a significant financial impact?Is your current business structure leading to a high turnover rate?
Strategic consultants can support your organization in a myriad of ways. If you’re unsure if your current organizational hurdles match these needs, contact us and we can help apply the right professional and skillset to nearly any operational issue.
Any organization can use strategic support even if you don’t fit a specific situation detailed here. Whether you feel like you have everything you need to make the right choices for your organization we’re here to discuss your current strategies to provide any additional insights available.
No or little productivity support or tracking tools
With today’s technology enabling teams and individuals to do more than ever it’s important to implement these tools where and when they can provide the most value. Choosing the right tools and building their use into your workflows is an important operations process. However, when you are considering company-wide changes to these tools it may be time to discuss the overall strategy and goals for the program before proceeding.
Team has a Difficult time making decisions
When your team has trouble unifying decisions or taking the decisions made and turning them into new processes it may mean that the issue runs deeper than one team. Strategic consultants can provide company-wide alignment to fix issues that are trickling down to the teams.
Strategy Development
Strategy Development
Strategic planning makes up an indispensable part of business operations. It is essentially a roadmap towards the company's goals and objectives and is always subject to change as it relies on a variety of factors to ensure favorable results. A company’s vision must be evergreen and evolving. A strategic plan needs to be constantly reassessed in order for it to work against inevitable disruptions to growth and development. While business leaders in the industry make these challenges manageable, experienced strategic consultants, hold a high-level of expertise in developing structured and strategic plans that not only set a clear direction for the company’s future, but also create a field of opportunities with the least risks. We make sure goals are specific, strategy supports inherent data and company's proven capabilities, and goals are aligned with that of the company's.
Data Research Aggregation & Analysis
Data Research Aggregation & Analysis
An important part of any plan is having all the key components analyzed. With the advent of faster processing and data processing tools, it’s imperative that data research, aggregation, and analysis be a part of your decision-making process. Whether you have these teams necessary to provide this analysis or not, it takes a strong strategic consultant to turn that information into actionable insights. It often starts with the right questions, before you even attempt to gather data to make sure you have all the necessary information so that the end result is information that answers the questions and more.
Operations Implementation Roadmap
Operations Implementation Roadmap
There are several stages to full phase operational execution: strategy, operations, and implementation. It’s important that each successive stage has a complete picture of what was intended from the strategic plan. We provide the full roadmap from strategy to specific operations and through implementation. However, not every organization requires support at each phase so the strategy has to be well laid out and have each further stage considered. We make sure the strategic plan can be followed through each successive phase regardless of who leads them.
Growth Strategy
Growth Strategy
Growth hacking seems to be all the rage these days, but there is an upside and downside to growth (especially if done without a plan). Universal Creative Solutions works to align goals with growth strategies that leave the organization in a positive position at each stage. Without the right plan in place, organizations can end up in over their heads financially, contractually, or buried in customer complaints and bad press. Don’t let a lack of growth strategy put your organization in a tough spot.
Strategic Planning for Short term, Mid Term, and Long Term Goals
Strategic Planning for Short term, Mid Term, and Long Term Goals
The mainstay of strategy is a well-developed plan. We work with your teams to gather the information, data, objectives, and key results required to reach new heights. We take that information and develop a path towards success which often includes several stages. Short term planning to provide the base and resources necessary for the next steps. Mid-term planning to expand and accelerate the organization towards the final phases. And long term planning which takes the strides made from mid-term planning and turns it into sustained growth to achieve these goals and for whatever comes next.
Product Strategy
Product Strategy
Developing products requires a strategy unto itself. Product strategy encompasses market research, user feedback, product design, sales strategy, and so much more. Whether you’re in the beginning stages of developing a product or in the middle of the next big thing, we can help drive the strategy you need to be successful.
Brand Strategy Consulting
Brand Strategy Consulting
Strong branding makes all the difference in crowded markets. To ensure yours stands out it’s important to work with strategy consultants to build a cohesive and crystal clear branding messaging and iconography. Brand strategy consultants will help you in a variety of ways to improve customer awareness of your brand by positioning the company in the right areas, at the right time, with the right message. They take a look at the history of the brand, other strong brands in the niche, and plans for upcoming changes to enhance the final results before launch.
Decision-Making Process Building
Decision-Making Process Building
Does your organization have a centralized decision-making process to ensure results meet or exceed expectations? If not, it may be time to work with a strategic consultant to develop a process to ensure strong decisions. If you already have one, it’s always good to get a review of current processes to get feedback on any new methodologies that could be useful to integrate or replace your current model.
Sustainable Growth Planning
Sustainable Growth Planning
One of the most important times in an organization’s history is periods of large growth. However, those periods of growth comes with a host of challenges that a strategic consultant is well trained in planning for and solving before they become issues. Strategy consulting can help smooth these growth periods out by helping your organization achieve continuous sustainable growth and the underlying processes and plans that allow you to scale at any rate.
Modeling Successful Business Process
Modeling Successful Business Process
It takes years of experience working with a large variety of businesses to understand what works and what doesn’t. Strategic consultants can help define your business process based on their models of a successful organization. Get expert advice and implementation on some of the most important processes of your organization instead of adjusting based on some blog or hearsay from fellow business owners boasting of success you can’t verify.
Providing the External Outlook
Providing the External Outlook
No matter the size of the strategic decisions your organization is considering, it’s important to get as much professional advice as possible. Strategic consultants provide that critical external viewpoint to ensure success through an unbiased experienced voice. Make sure you are working with a strategic consultant that has experience in the industry, project, plan, or teams to partner with the best guide for your success.
Strategic Execution
Strategic Execution
While we also handle operations implementation, planning for strategic execution maintains a higher-level view of how management and C-Suite organize, train, and control the execution of these plans throughout the organization. Execution is the final result of so many decisions across the entire company. In order to ensure successful execution a central plan, culture, and processes management should be planned, rolled out, and monitored/reported on to ensure adoption and continued execution as intended.
IT & Digital Strategy
Strategy consultants specialize in a variety of organization types. We work with businesses and nonprofits of all sizes to ensure your organization meets its mission in a sustainable fashion to continue the mission indefinitely.
Process Updates
Process Updates
The need to consistently transform and progress has become vital for organisations to continually compete and cope with drastic global changes. Working with consultants helps keep your goals and brand intact by ensuring a smooth transition in your development plans. A concrete and well structured management plan influences a positive company culture and leads a successful implementation of software, business, and system changes. Change management consultation enables business leaders to assess and evaluate changes to extract the most advantageous course of action.
Digital Transformation
Digital transformation involves integration of various technologies into the industry to modify processes, values, and customer experiences to meet new market requirements. Strategic business consultants aid businesses in adapting and leveraging these changes and opportunities in a strategic and organized way. A successful digital transformation strategy should be able to create opportunities and make use of these beneficial possibilities of new technologies and digital tools to a company’s advantage.
Our consultation services enable organizations to strategically innovate and develop creative approaches to address these digital transformations. Consultants aim to explore the value of digital evolution and how it affects and influences trade across various business processes and industries so that you can gain market share.
Functional Strategy
Customers are a business' source of growth, a measure of success, and the reason for its existence. An effective customer strategy therefore is vital to every company’s success. The digital world is continuously evolving and is making any means of reaching and capturing customers' attention even more convoluted. It is extremely challenging to lead conversions and maintain authority in the market. Business consultants play an essential role in determining the right markets to target while managing and dealing with emerging ones. We highlight methods of establishing continuous positive relationships that provide distinct and promising value to your customers through developing customer-focused strategies that result in stronger and more profitable connections. Today we face challenges that coincide with other factors such as technological breakthroughs and advancements, new markets and complex needs, and disruptive and increasing competition. A successful customer strategy must clearly define its ability to provide unique customer experiences that meet the company’s goals, values and needs
Business & Nonprofits Strategy
Strategy consultants specialize in a variety of organization types. We work with businesses and nonprofits of all sizes to ensure your organization meets its mission in a sustainable fashion to continue the mission indefinitely.
Competitive Advantage
A company is able to create a competitive edge and unique customer desirability that guarantee profit maximization by enriching its capabilities. Strategic consulting aims to help define and utilize strengths that make up the business’ core and purpose so that it outperforms its competitors. We help identify the right determinants to focus on to broaden opportunities for growth and ensure business sustainability.
Organizational Efficiency & Effectiveness
Improving business processes while minimizing expenditures are key objectives to every business’ success. We assist companies in implementing their business strategies by going in depth with the factors that drive up their employees’ potential. High performance and team effectiveness contribute immensely to the company's culture and brand which ultimately enhances its ability to achieve goals. To consistently meet ideal results, operations consultants comprehensively evaluate management systems in order to appropriately apply necessary changes without affecting chances of advancement and improvisation. We recognize gaps in the system that keep an organization from being a functional and efficacious one.
Cost of Strategic Consultants
Strategy Consulting is one of the most specialized and boutique aspects of consulting. Thus it comes with a higher price tag than other forms of consultancies. However, when dealing with decisions at this level, it’s essential to get as much professional advice as possible to ensure the results can be expected rather than hoped for. Strategic consultants will provide one of the highest multiples of return for the investment because they deal with major improvements or changes at the organization. Whether you are focused on saving money in some form of reduction or expanding to new heights, strategic consultants can help you define the right path for you and your organization.
Universal Creative solutions serves as your trusted advisor and lead expert on strategies in corporate, consumer, operations, marketing and management. We influence leaders to think creatively to overcome major challenges that directly affect the company’s ability to achieve optimal growth. Universal Creative Solutions has over a decade of professional strategy experience guiding organizations to meet and exceed their goals. We help organizations build the teams, skills, and products needed to thrive in today’s complex world. We work to achieve sustained profitability, develop strategies that maximize any segment of the company, and implement the tools and technology required to achieve your goals. Our strategic planning opens up new market opportunities enabling you to grow your business and achieve your ideal return on investment (ROI).
