Wednesday, August 11, 2010

The Cost Effective Way to Drive Business Success

How do you get the expertise required to drive to your business goals and still be able to keep costs under control?

The Problem
Companies both large and small have tried a variety of methods and models and have had limited success. Training and developing the expertise is expensive, resource consuming and takes a long time to germinate results. Hiring from the outside is risky since what you see on resumes and in interviews is not always what you get. Additionally, there is the added expense of recruiting and then once the hire is made, knowing that more than half will turn out to not fit well for very long.

The Solution
A better model for today’s economy is one that takes advantage of the services and talents that are readily available and does so in a cost effective manner. Our experience has been that the staffing model for today is a mixture of consultants and in-house talent. Having been personally involved with this model and its success with a number of companies, as well as participated with the other models, we know it works!

The Need
Expertise is required to quickly identify the opportunities and develop the plans required to reach the goals. It is also required to oversee the execution of those plans, since strategy and execution cannot be separated. Hiring this expertise as part of your company’s ongoing staffing can be cost prohibitive for small to medium sized companies and difficult to assimilate for larger companies. The requirement is for the brain power, not the administrative, paperwork and supervisory capabilities. Yet, for management employees, most of their days are spent on tasks other than creating.

Concurrently, there is also a need for the legwork and the administrative talent that will actually execute the plans and make certain that all the details are followed and completed in a timely manner. This is best achieved through in-house talent familiar with the organization with productive relationships to make it happen smoothly and quickly. This talent is not quite as specific as the expertise talent and from a cost standpoint can be quite reasonable.

How it works
The plan would be to put several high powered consultants, NOT consulting firms, but specific consultants on retainer, so that they can help you directly create and then oversee from a distance the strategies, plans, programs and execution. The actual labor of putting the plans into the market would be done by the in-house staffing.

In today’s marketplace, senior level expertise can be found in every function and is readily available. So, too, is the basic labor that is required.

The Benefits
A sample cost comparison might be:
Complete staffing in house
Senior executives (2) – Compensation, benefits, overhead, expenses etc –
annual cost $375K
Lower level management (2) - Compensation, benefits, overhead, expenses etc –
annual cost $125K
Total $500K

Recommended Model
Senior executives (2) - 2 days per month each –
annual cost $120K
Lower level management (2) - Compensation, benefits, overhead, expenses etc –
annual cost $125K
Total $245K

In addition to the significant cost savings, there are several other benefits. The consultants should bring fresh ideas with experience from multiple other companies. This can provide competitive advantage vs other companies in your industry. There is also no severance when projects are completed or alternative talents are required and flexibility in usage of time required.

An added benefit is that the company can get exactly the expertise and fit needed at any time and require existing management to take on tasks that are not squarely in their sweet spot. We all know how ineffective and expensive that can be.

Think about it. Doesn’t this model make more sense and not just because the Maver Management Group are consultants? Aren’t the benefits apparent for your company? Doesn’t this expand your capabilities and bandwidth most cost effectively?

Contact us if we can help get you started. We have the experience.

Thanks

John


John MaverPresidentMaver Management Group(925) 648-7561Maver Management
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