Case Studies Overview: Stories of successful client interactions

Use the links below to read individual examples of how clients have benefited from my consulting services.

A small, rapidly growing company reduces risk through scenario analysis and process improvements

Terrific sales led to more business than a small investment firm could support with its existing processes, people and technology. The CEO worried that the company might miss signs of major risks as the company grew so rapidly. This very successful firm on the West Coast regularly competed for clients against a much larger, much older and much better known financial services firm based on the East Coast. It was a classic “David vs. Goliath” business scenario. My client, whose reputation for excellent investment results was beginning to become much better known. It started to win all new accounts when it competed against its East Coast rival.

That was the good news.

The bad news? In addition to the CEO’s fears about missing important cues of trouble in the midst of rapid growth, teams of people in investment, account management, customer support and administration who had to deliver the excellent service that sales promised were not sure they could continue to do so. They did not trust that the processes, technology and skills that had worked well in the past were up to the challenges of the higher volume of business that they were facing now. In fact, they thought they were almost guaranteed to fail – or could only succeed in meeting customers’ deservedly very high expectations if they invested many, many hours beyond a normal work week, all at potentially very high personal cost. Learn how scenario analysis of possible "edge of cliff" conditions helped the company to prioritize and begin to make essential process improvements, preventing risks they were worrying about.

Visioning process launches highest performance year ever for dedicated team

A very customer-oriented team of people felt that they were always missing the mark, never fully achieving their very high team and personal goals, no matter how hard they worked. Charged with meeting support needs of disabled students at a large university – and viewing it as a mission, not just a job – members of this team found it hard to “de-prioritize” activities even though they found it hard to keep up. Their plight was even more of a concern when they looked ahead to the growing population of students they would probably need to serve in the future, perhaps without much of an increase in the resources available to them to do so. Learn how a rapid-cycle visioning and planning process helped the team to prioritize, and became a major catalyst for a great year.

An Internet startup stretches cash and gets new products on the market faster with an improved development process

A 125-person biotech internet startup company was regularly introducing new software products and updates, but used an often-unwieldy and unpredictable development process to do so. The result was that their new product introduction delivery dates and results were unpredictable. In addition, development costs were very high. As the market tightened, the leadership team looked for ways to stretch their venture funding in order to ride out uncertain times. They realized the company needed to make the product development process simpler, more user friendly and more predictable. That way, the company would get new products out faster, better, at lower cost, with more features customers wanted – and fewer they did not. Learn how simplifying the product development process, and making it more consistent, helped the company reach its new product development goals more predictably, more easily.

Cross-company process design offsite enables telecom firm to meet aggressive product introduction date, and exceed first year sales goals

Profitable delivery of a new telecommunications service would not happen unless many people at three different companies, each using different and potentially conflicting software, agreed to a service delivery process and then followed it each time a new business customer ordered the product. What’s more, the clock was ticking as the telecommunications firm raced to complete the complicated service delivery design, and get the product on the market before competitors did. Many groups were dependent on the process design team’s success. There were many opportunities for things to go wrong, and the new product might fail if early customers had bad experiences with service fulfillment, and gave the product bad reviews. Read how taking the guesswork out of the service delivery process led to a smoother experience and first-year sales that exceeded the company’s goals.

Facilitated process design offsite helps to simplify and streamline the merger of processes, people and technology when two banks merge

Two very different banks, one on the West Coast and one in the Midwest, were merging. As with all mergers, this required that they effectively combine different cultures, systems and business processes. There was little time to complete the merger work, and even less time for teams of people from both banks to do the work they needed to do, working face to face. In addition, some employees who were not moving to the new bank were unhappy and starting to “shut down” well before their much-needed input about changes underway had been gathered. Learn how the process design offsite produced a better credit card conversion process than had been used at either of the two banks that were merging.

Steadily growing biotech firm ramps up for rapid increase in product volume through supply chain business process improvements

A biotech firm was growing steadily. Product volume was increasing, and supply chain complexity was growing, too. Soon, processes that had worked in the past to ensure excellent product quality and consistent product availability were not going to be adequate to handle the challenges of rapid and continuing growth. Learn how a business process improvement group was created to help the company improve and prepare its supply chain processes for much higher production volumes.

Baldrige assessment makes priorities clear and kickstarts new revenue growth

A consumer services company wanted to add services to attract new customers and “reattract” customers who had started to buy from their competitors. Divisions started to fight among themselves as pressure grew to increase revenue without an increase in the resources available to deliver new customers and services. In addition, the company was trying to improve customer service to retain current customers. Making so many changes all at once created conflicts between divisions as people fought for money, headcount and management time and attention. Read more to learn how a full company assessment based on the Baldrige criteria resulted in clear priorities and goals, while it improved teamwork, leading to new growth.