Our Unique Offer

We have moved our successful big business consulting practice to the mid-market and start-ups where high growth companies live. We grew weary of trying to “boil the ocean” which is common to all large corporations. We decided to stop fighting bureaucracy and work with clients who shared our sense of urgency for getting things done. Our offer is equal to the large consulting firms with one significant difference; we have eliminated price point as a legitimate objection.

After two years of development by researchers with over a half-century of delivering results to the Fortune 1000, we have created a new business model for delivering knowledge to business.

Our extended team represents recognized thought leaders in the issues essential to growth: Market Intelligence (competitive advantage), Brand Superiority (core competence), Talent (discretionary performance), and Operations (productive capacity).

Where do we look to achieve Optimum Growth for our clients?

• Core Measures – Measuring to Manage: what are the most significant (and few) measurements in your business that will determine success and failure?
• Leading Indicators – Predicting the Future: based on core measures, which metrics identify barriers and opportunities for growth, and drive this yearÂ’s strategy?
• Real Time Indicators – Leading in Real Time: based on leading indicators, what can be measured daily (weekly) to indicate progress?
• Trailing Indicators – Evaluating to Learn: what was the impact of the business strategy on financial performance, and what can we take forward to next year?

The team members at AKL all have long-standing reputations for achieving results, helping clients reach the next level. Each member has years of industry experience within specific areas of consulting practice:

• Strategy and Optimum Growth
• Product and Service Quality
• Human Capital

Given the nature of the consulting business, the challenge of measurement presented us with two problems. Starting inside our company, how do we effectively measure performance in a labor-intensive business? Then transferring our attention to clients, how do we measure the impact of partnerships? In both cases, our added value was the application of knowledge. Since you cannot manage what is not measured, how do you measure the application of knowledge internally to become the lowest cost provider? How do you manage the application of knowledge externally to create a return on performance for clients? These concerns have occupied our best minds for years.

Our journey brought us to a simple understanding of the role of measurement in business and the demands of management.

The application of business measures has just three objectives:

• Predict: based on a set of Leading Indicators, if nothing changed - what will happen, if we make change – what should happen
• Describe: based on a set of Real-Time Indicators, how do we measure performance daily and weekly to ensure progress is being made or obstacles identified
• Evaluate: based on a set of Trailing Indicators, the ability to match the cost of actions taken against the return achieved

The AKL has collected an extensive list of best practices over our half-century of driving business results. Our organizational assessment FORECAST measures the best practices in four critical strategic elements of growth.

• Competitive Advantage
• Core Competence
• Productive Capacity
• Discretionary Performance