Consultancy Awards 2015

Consultancy Awards 2015 presented by

Changing the Face of Managing Consultancy MarketCulture talk us through their new tool which is set to revolutionise organisational cultures.

Accentuating Corporate Services Specialising in nonprofits, Accenture offers a wide range of professional services.

Editor’s Note Welcome to the 2015 Consultancy Awards.

Consultancy is a vital aspect of the corporate landscape and covers a broad range of businesses, from healthcare to technology and law. Offering expert support and advice is a huge responsibility, and as such firms operating in this sector have to content with constantly changing laws and regulations.

In addition to changeable regulations, firms in the industry have to contend with the constant evolution of technology, which affects both the advice they give and the way in which they give it.

As such, firms in the industry have to work harder than most to stay ahead of emerging developments in order to provide their clients with the best possible advice.

With this in mind, we created the 2015 Consultancy Awards to highlight and give recognition to those consultants who really deserve it. We have left no stone unturned in our search for the best consultants the world over and have covered industries across the globe, ranging from medical to image and management to transport, putting consultants in the spotlight and focusing on their individual attributes and skills.

Cover photograph courtesy of Moss Media Carmel

Contents 4. Accenture Federal Services Best Management Consulting & Outsourcing Company - USA 6. MarketCulture Best Culture Assessment Consultants 2015 & Best Staff Survey Tool: MRI 8. AcuteNet Best Patient Data Consultancy Service - Ontario & Healthcare Software Provider Consultancy of the Year - Canada 9. Andrea Walmsley-Chemistry Solutions Best Chemistry & CMC Consultant - UK 10. Aneela Rose Pr Best B2B PR Consultancy Firm - UK 11. AskAskew Early Years and Childcare Business Consultancy Best Childcare Business Consultancy Firm - UK 12. Bridgewater Best Independent Management Consultant - Ireland 13. Candia Communications Best High-Tech Sales & Marketing Consultant – USA 14. Conduit Consulting LLC Best Strategic Management Consultancy Firm - California 15. DAHEUIN Image Management Academy Best Image Consultant - Korea 16. FTI Consulting, Inc Best Strategic Communications Consultancy - Singapore 17. Global Regulatory Services Best Life Sciences Regulatory Affairs Consultancy - UK 18. Griffin Security Group Best Security Consultancy Firm - UK 19. HedgeSupport LLP Best FCA Consultancy Boutique - UK 20. Houblon Communications Best Financial Services Copywriting Consultants - UK 21. Instrutech Engineering Ltd Best Electrical Engineering & Automation Consultants - UK 22. Johnson Associates Consultancy Ltd Best Management Systems Consultant - UK 23. Liberty Marketing Ltd Best Digital Marketing Consultants - UK 24. MARJAR Consultancy Services Best Chemical Hazard Consultants - UK 25. Orion Initiatives Ltd Best Organisational Culture Consultancy Service - UK 26. Persistent Agility Inc Best Space & Systems Acquisition Consultants - USA 27. PGI Best Business Collaboration Consultants 2015 28. SquarePeg Most Innovative Change Management Consultants - UK

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Company: Accenture Name: Elaine Turville Email: Elaine.k.turville@accenturefederal.com Web Address: www.accenture.com Address: 800 North Glebe Road, Suite 300, Arlington, VA 22203 Telephone: 571.414.3344

Best Management Consulting & Outsourcing Company - USA

Accenture Accenture is a leading global professional services company, providing a broad range of services and solutions in strategy, consulting, digital, technology and operations. Accenture’s Nonprofit Practice has brought these services and solutions to more than 1,000 social sector clients, bridging their aspirations and the ability to execute.

With more than 358,000 people serving clients across more than 40 industries and all business functions, Accenture works at the intersection of global business and technology to help clients improve their performance and create sustainable value for their stakeholders. Accenture’s Nonprofit Practice brings this experience to bear for nonprofits, foundations, and multilateral development institutions, Connecting vision and practice to help nonprofits improve outcomes.

We have helped more than 1000 nonprofit, foundation, and multilateral development institutions clients differentiate through strategy, technology and innovation. The services we bring to our nonprofit clients—including change enablement, technology infrastructure support, experience design, application development and more—are bolstered by our extensive prior experience and industry research. With Accenture’s help, these nonprofit organizations have successfully bridged the gap between their aspirations and the ability to execute with high performance.

Accenture always seeks to bring emerging commercial practices to the nonprofit sector by leveraging our global network to help create innovative partnerships between nonprofits, governments, and the private sector. The social sector is more innovative than ever, with new business models, collaborative aspirations, and technology-enabled missions. Now more than ever, our greatest asset is our trusted relationships with our clients. By working together to bring respective areas of expertise to the table, we can help define and execute on the cutting edge.

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Receiving this award is validation to our practice, our contributions, our people, and to our clients.

Accenture is sincerely grateful for this recognition and will continue to work for our clients in the nonprofit industry.

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We believe that we have the responsibility to proactively engage in the communities in which we work and live. We utilize our differentiated capabilities, the talents of our diverse people, and our cross-industry insights to help us achieve this goal.

More and more, nonprofits are competing with for-profit organizations in a saturated, complicated market, while often at the same time, struggling with internal change and operational challenges. To overcome these challenges, nonprofits must distinguish themselves and answer the demands for accountability and performance.

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Company: MarketCulture Strategies Name: Chris Brown, CEO Email: info@marketculture.com Web Address: www.marketculture.com

Best Culture Assessment Consultants 2015 & Best Staff Survey Tool: MRI

MarketCulture MarketCulture are a Management Consulting Firm with a unique focus on helping leaders create customer centric cultures in their organisations. We speak to CEO Chris Brown about the firm’s dedicated approach and their revolutionary tool which is changing the way businesses around the world manage their organisational culture.

MarketCulture was founded in 2003 by Dr Linden R Brown (PhD in Marketing). Dr Brown saw first-hand that no matter how good a company’s marketing strategy was, it often unravelled by the organisation’s culture.

Over the next 10 years he dedicated his time and resources to research in this area. In order to build his award winning research tool the team at MarketCulture surveyed the most customer centric organisations in the world including Amazon, Apple, Ikea and Virgin. This process resulted in a model that defined the core behaviours that make up what we call a “Customer Culture”.

This research-based approach was designed to ensure that clients could feel confident that by taking action on the insights gained they would be following a proven roadmap to a healthier, high performing organisation culture.

Our “Cultural Sense-Ability” approach is our way of describing the ultimate “Customer Centric Culture”.

It is one where every employee is not only focused on their role in delivering a customer outcome but also helping others, in the organisation, deliver an even greater customer experience.

For example, we believe that ideas to improve the value an organisation delivers to its customers can come from anywhere in the organisation. These ideas come from customers and partners but also from employees observing things that can be improved in a way that will benefit the customer and ultimately the business. Without a culture that expects people to contribute to the business in this manner these opportunities are lost.

An example of how our tools and approach have supported our clients is our work with BlackRock.

BlackRock had been receiving complaints from large clients that their reporting and responsiveness to questions was lacking. Not only was this frustrating their clients but it was impacting their client’s own customers. As a result a number of clients had either stopped doing business with BlackRock or reduced their allocation of investment funds to BlackRock portfolios.

As such the challenge for our firm was to inspire and align the organisation to get back to basics and deliver what they had promised to clients in terms of reporting timelines and responsiveness to inquiries despite the fact that front line staff were struggling to translate the impact these inefficiencies where having on customers.

In an attempt to rectify these issues BlackRock implemented the MRI to benchmark its customer culture and found that there was substantial room for improvement in cross-functional collaboration.

With these results as evidence of what needed to improve we developed a localized version of its “Service Alpha” initiative designed to bring teams together to create a unified customer mindset and skills across the business through a series of workshops that linked “operations” and “client service” functions around the customer. These were designed to create substantially enhanced service for customers in terms of what customers wanted and expected. Customers participated in and contributed to these BlackRock workshops to infuse a custom-

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er viewpoint. As a result, the shared view of jointly solving the customers’ problems led to more relevant and timely information as well as joint proactive ideas to lift customer service.

By bringing in customers and exposing all parts of the BlackRock business to them, employees could see the bigger picture of how their work positively or negatively impacted those customers. By having customers describe their challenges and what they need from BlackRock, employees were motivated to collaborate more effectively around what was needed.

The overall outcome was an improved customer experience that increased client retention levels by 10% over the following 12-month period.

This example illustrates the positive impact our approach and tool have on our clients. It has been proven that customer centric organisations are more innovative, faster growing and more profitable along with being a powerful competitive advantage, and as such the MRI is an essential tool to support and sustain successful transformation programs We have also found that customer centric organisations have higher levels of employee engagement and are generally described as healthier places to work.

Employees actually look forward to going to work and gain greater satisfaction from their working lives.

By using MarketCulture’s MRI we can benchmark where you are today and plan where you need to be in the future to continue to be relevant create the ultimate customer experience.

Looking to the future, 2016 will be an exciting year as we are building out a deeper consulting partner network in order to help us scale and reach more customers.

This is a deliberate strategic decision to work closely with partners that can benefit from our customer centric culture tools and take them to an ever-increasing number of organisations globally.

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Company: AcuteNet Name: Fariba Anderson Email: fariba.anderson@acutenet.com Web Address: www.acutenet.com Address: 5915 Airport Road, Suite 600, Mississauga, ON, L4V 1T1 Canada Telephone: 416-625-3127 or 1 (888) 95-ACUTE (1-888-952-2883)

Best Patient Data Consultancy Service - Ontario & Healthcare Software Provider Consultancy of the Year - Canada

AcuteNet Based in Toronto, AcuteNet Inc. delivers robust, secure and user-friendly Software as a Service solution for the Health Care industry, with customers in Canada, US and Asia. Fariba Anderson talks us through the firm and their dedication to client satisfaction.

Since its inception in 2011, AcuteNet has strived to utilize the power of cloud computing to solve some of the wicked problems that Frontline Health Care Providers face every day with filling multitude of forms in order to deliver care to the patients.

Through its innovative and robust form digitization capability, over 1,800 Frontline Health Care Providers utilize AcuteNet SaaS capabilities to deliver care to over 60,000 patients in Canada, US and Asia.

Therefore, as we move into 2016 we are keen to ensure that we continue providing the highest possible standard of service to our clients to ensure that they are supported through this tough challenge. Our plan for the New Year is to complete the roll out of AcuteNet across the province of Ontario for the SaaS solution that we are delivering to Ontario Association of Community Care Access Center and affiliated 14 Community Care Access Centres.

In order to ensure client satisfaction every AcuteNet client has effectively their own private cloud AcuteNet SaaS framework utilized for the purpose of patient assessment to deliver the right care at the right time to the right patient.

Our overall philosophy at AcuteNet is to utilize the power of cloud computing to enable the Frontline Health Care Providers to be able to determine the right care to the right patients through a set of digitized form that improves the quality of the Frontline Health Care Providers.

Currently we are finding that the healthcare industry is struggling as people live longer and require more care in later life. This drive has led both the public and private providers of healthcare to rely on care outside of hospital setting. Simply put hospitals cannot keep up with the demand for care and both government and insurance companies are looking to home care and community care to address the structural challenge that healthcare industry is facing.

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This implementation will boost AcuteNet Patient Records from +60,000 to 5 million while number of Frontline Health Care Providers will increase to 8000.

Name: Andrea Walmsley Email: andreawalmsley4@btinternet.com Web Address: www.andreawalmsley-chemistrysolutions.com Telephone: 07806 600 635

Best Chemistry & CMC Consultant - UK

Andrea Walmsley - Chemistry Solutions Andrea works with pharma companies as an independent Chemistry & CMC consultant, offering a high level of project management and efficiency, either as an additional resource to complement existing in-house expertise, or as a standalone service.

Based in the UK, Andrea has 20 years direct experience of small molecule Chemistry gained from working within the Pharmaceutical industry. Post University, Andrea spent 10 years as a Medicinal Chemist at Roche, followed by ever increasingly responsible roles within smaller pharma companies. Prior to becoming a consultant, Andrea spent 5 years working for a ‘virtual pharma’ responsible for managing the outsourced Chemistry & CMC activities to support the portfolio of discovery & development programmes.

Having spent many years working for large Pharma and smaller biotechs, I understand client objectives, timelines and budgets which has enabled me to work with global Chemistry vendors to successfully deliver each project. Operating in a virtual world of CMC demands exceptional communication and organisational skills. I am able to ‘best match’ a client’s project demands with appropriate vendors, and once awarded I am able to keep projects on track and in budget.

Andrea has now been a consultant for almost 8 years, and she has a wealth of experience of working with service providers throughout the EU and Asia. Her key areas of expertise include chiral chemistry and drug re-profiling, and her key specialities include due diligence, lead optimisation, PRD & GMP, formulation, regulatory submissions & patent strategy.

Andrea commented recently on her thoughts regarding winning this award, and more generally her thoughts of the industry in which she works: “I was surprised and delighted to hear that I had been nominated for this award, and subsequently very pleased to hear that I had won! I have worked hard to develop a good reputation as a reliable and diligent consultant over the past few years, and so it is very pleasing to receive this public recognition.

I thoroughly enjoy working, and continuing to learn, with all of my colleagues. I am privileged to work with a wide variety of people & experts in all disciplines, supporting discovery and clinical programmes within a range of therapeutic areas.

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During my time as a consultant, the pharma world has definitely evolved, with more focussed and shorter projects dominating pipelines. The locations and skills of chemistry vendors is also ever-changing. For successful outsourcing, this leads to a demand for very efficient project management, cost effective strategies and communication. My experience of working in different sizes of company, and ‘wearing different hats’ has certainly helped me in these respects! For the future, I hope to continue developing my business and ultimately playing my part in the delivery of new therapeutic medicines.”

Company: Aneela Rose PR Name: Aneela Rose Email: aneela@aneelarosepr.co.uk Web Address: www.aneelarosepr.co.uk Address: 3rd Floor, The Martlet Heights, 49 The Martlets, Burgess Hill, West Sussex RH15 9NN Telephone: 01444 241341

Best B2B PR Consultancy Firm - UK

Aneela Rose PR Aneela Rose PR is an inspirational public relations firm offering bespoke services to a wide range of clients.

Founder Aneela Rose talks us through her company and its personal approach.

Founded in 2004, Aneela Rose PR (ARPR) offers a creative, effective and bespoke range of media relations, marketing and social media services to businesses across the UK.

Our services have grown rapidly over the last four years to include social media and digital marketing, and through this success we launched ARPR’s sister agency Purple Rose Digital in 2014.

Based near Gatwick Airport, the firm works in a wide variety of industry sectors including leisure and tourism, retail, arts, charities, festivals, manufacturing, engineering and construction.

Looking to the future, our plan for the next three years is for ARPR and PRD to work together on joined-up offline and online campaigns, offering advanced social media solutions to medium and large size companies.

Alongside this we will continue to advance our knowledge and share our expertise with clients to help them to be more profitable. Becoming our clients ‘partner for growth’ is our overall mission for the future.

Our ethos is to build a two way relationship with our clients to fully understand their business, their market, their aspirations and what they want to achieve. We firmly believe that a personal touch does matter and in an industry where automation is becoming more prevalent, human to human interaction is still favourable in the eyes of our clients.

As such staff are trained to ensure they communicate regularly with clients, and as technology is rapidly changing there is a greater need for a high level of client satisfaction. We provide detailed reports to our clients, either weekly or monthly with regular face to face meetings too. KPI’s are monitored and new measures put in place as required. Regular reviews with all clients is part of our process and included in our client contracts, which ensures that everyone is in check and the project is on track.

The Rosy team in character

It is this personal approach that has led us to work with a range of highly successful clients. ARPR has successfully delivered campaigns for the City of London Corporation including Tower Bridge, Guildhall Art Gallery, The Monument, City of London Festival, Kate’s Cakes and fast expanding global food brand itsu, owned by Julian Metcalfe (the founder of Pret).

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Company: AskAskew Early Years and Childcare Business Consultancy Name: Maureen Askew Email: maureen@askaskew.co.uk Web Address: www.askaskew.co.uk Twitter: @askewmaureen Address: 3 Chapel Close Trawden Lancashire BB88QZ Telephone: 01282 864208 Mob: 07791552767

Best Childcare Business Consultancy Firm - UK

AskAskew Early Years and Childcare Business Consultancy AskAskew was established in August 2011, with the aim of providing pre-start, newly opened and established single site and small chains of early years and childcare providers with business support.

Our service is designed to meet the individual needs of each client and could be a one off support visit, a series of visits or an ongoing contract. I am able to provide help and support with all aspects of operating a childcare business, be it writing or updating a business plan, developing and implementing a marketing strategy, monitoring cash flow, managing fees and bad debt, implementing government policies or updating nursery policies and procedures.

Having worked extensively throughout the childcare industry I am able to draw on my vast wealth knowledge and experience to fully understand the needs of my customers. In my opinion excellent Customer service is essential in any business, I always aim to provide a high quality service, delivering projects on time and on budget, I provide a guarantee that if I do not meet the agreed terms and conditions I will complete the project at no additional costs.

Although price is important to my clients, it is not necessarily the main concern, I aim to offer a transparent service which provides value and quality. I provide a ‘at no cost to the client’ 30 minute initial telephone consultation. Anyone signing up to my database, receives a free guide to choosing and working with a consultant; for many people hiring an external consultant is not an everyday occurrence and a little guidance on choosing and agreeing terms has proved to be very useful.

In addition to my paid work in consultancy; I firmly believe in the importance of giving something back to the business community; for the past few years I

have been a mentor for the new enterprise allowance scheme, providing eight hours of free support to people starting their own business, these have included a glass engraver, a number of people setting up as registered childminders, a graphic designer, a care company, quite a variety of different fields, I enjoy helping people just starting out in business, a bonus is I always learn something new. I am also a mentor on RDF projects for Community and Business Partners in Blackburn.

Within the childcare industry there have recently been a number of new developments which continue to provide fresh challenges to both myself and my clients, such as changes to Ofsted regulations and Inspection resulting in Ofsted are now the sole arbitrator of quality. in addition, there’s the introduction of the revised EYFS standards and changes to qualification requirements for level 2 and 3, the increase from 20% to 40% of 2 years olds eligible for free entitlement, the increase to 30 hours free childcare for eligible working parents, the introduction of Tax free childcare and workplace pensions all alongside the reduction of the universal support by the local authorities, more and more are now only providing the minimum level of support to childcare business, additional LA support now becoming a paid for service.

These new developments are vastly important to the work I do, therefore being able to keep up to date with constantly changing policy, challenges and advances is essential, in ensuring I am able to continue to provide my clients with the best possible support and advice.

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As such I work hard to ensure I am always ahead of emerging developments, by reading appropriate periodicals, attending conferences, talks and networking opportunities in addition to being active on a number of online forums. Twitter notifications provide instant access to sector specific and government policy announcements.

One of the issues I find with childcare providers is they often miss announcements relating to developments that could/will have an impact on SME’s in general.

Childcare providers, particularly standalone childcare providers are so busy trying to manage the day to day business they don’t have time to see what is going on in the wider business world that may have an impact on their early years and childcare business.

Moving forward, the childcare industry faces a number of challenges which I will be supporting my clients through, for example the continued under funding of the free entitlement for three and four year olds, and concerns providers are expressing about the increase to 30 free hours for parents working 16 hours or more will have on their longer term sustainability.

Alongside this many of my clients struggle to balance keeping childcare fees affordable with continued viability of the setting. Over the next 6 to 12 months’ settings will have to introduce a workplace pension and the living wage, all childcare providers would agree that highly qualified childcare staff deserve to be paid a living wage and more, the problem they face is keeping the level of fees affordable and the continued viability of their business.

Company: Bridgewater

Best Independent Management Consultant - Ireland

Bridgewater Bridgewater, formally known as Carey & Associates Limited is a dedicated and professional Irish Management Consultancy firm.

Established in 2001, Bridgewater was designed to meet the needs of companies experiencing strategic challenges and undergoing significant business transformation.

mal effect. This is often due to the difficulties owners face in clearly determining the requirements of their business, critically assessing their options, and then arranging and managing the necessary finance.

Since formation the company has built a client base of successful multinational, blue chip clients and has been instrumental in adding significant value to these organisations. As such the firm has a strong track record of success with an estimated ‘delivered value’ to clients being in excess of €50mn in 2008.

The firm possesses a breadth of experience that allows them to tackle their clients’ most complex business problems and deal with them in an integrated way. Therefore the firm can deliver specific services tailored to specific needs, or can combine services and capabilities to set up a whole physical business or e-business - from the strategy and proposition through web design and marketing, all the way to fulfilment systems, processes, plant design and partner selection.

Overall the company operates as a specialist team of multidisciplinary professionals dedicated to assisting start-ups and growing Irish businesses. The firm understand the corporate landscape, the businesses operating within and the issues affecting it. This knowledge ensures that the firm are able to provide its clients with constructive and proactive advice on how their business can be improved.

This detailed knowledge includes a unique understanding of the Irish business landscape. The firm acknowledges that it has become more and more difficult for businesses to manage their affairs to opti-

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As such the firm is dedicated to ensuring their clients are able to navigate this tough corporate market, by providing them with the skills and tools to do so.

Company: Candia Communications Address: P.O. Box 2040 Saratoga CA 95070 Phone: (659) 619-2874 Email: tcandia@candiacomm.com Website: www.candiacomm.com

Best High-Tech Sales & Marketing Consultant – USA

Candia Communications Candia Communications is an international marketing consultancy providing hands-on services in strategy, tactics and implementation to companies around the world. Tanya Candia talks us through the firm’s work and how their client focused business model has helped them to achieve the success of winning this highly coveted title.

At Candia Communications, we view ourselves as a part of the client’s team. As such, all of our actions are taken with the same care and regard for confidentiality and ongoing success we would provide if we were fulltime employees of the client.

In order to ensure that clients receive the best possible service from us at all times, we work with the philosophy that nothing but the best will do. Everyone who works on behalf of a client is an expert in their field, and quickly becomes an expert in the client’s specific market sector.

Additionally everyone at Candia Communications engages in constant learning, as this is a necessity in a fast-changing market like information security. We work with clients in a variety of areas, affording us the opportunity to stay on top of emerging trends. Our clients are our biggest source of education, and help us quickly understand the nuances of a variety of markets, which is why we work hard to build relationships with them through our quality service and high level of customer support.

As we deal primarily in information technology and information security, keeping up to date is particularly vital as these areas that are subject to constant change. With IT, virtualization has changed everything, and the software-defined data centre, software-defined storage and security are at the core of most clients’ initiatives. With security, the wealth of innovative ideas, coupled with the rapid growth of the Internet of Things, have heavily influenced the way clients plan for and deal with security.

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Despite these changes Candia Communications is dedicated to being at the forefront of industry developments, and is fortunate to be based in the US as this gives us the opportunity to work with clients around the world, sensitive to time zones and regional differences. From San Francisco it’s an easy journey to any part of the globe, and we are accustomed to working early and late to accommodate clients’ schedules. In addition, being based in Silicon Valley gives us access to the latest technologies and trends, so we can better serve our customers.

Looking to the future we have big plans for 2016, including two company launches and enablement of rapid growth in a variety of regions.

Company: Conduit Consulting LLC Name: Jillian Alexander Email: info@conduitconsulting.com Web Address: www.ConduitConsulting.com Address: 2530 Wilshire Boulevard, Second Floor, Santa Monica, CA 90403, USA Telephone: +1 (310) 260-9765

Best Strategic Management Consultancy Firm - California

Conduit Consulting provides client-specific, confidential advice and efficiently leads strategic initiatives on behalf of its clients, which range from large multinational corporations to small private enterprises. Jillian Alexander talks us through the firm’s work and how it came to win this prestigious award.

At Conduit Consulting we are dedicated to ensuring that our clients receive the best quality advice and support.

We work with our clients on a variety of growth enhancing strategies including developing in-demand products and services; creating investment-attracting business plans and award-winning marketing

campaigns; improving customer and employee satisfaction; increasing revenue, market share and profitability; assisting start-ups in achieving successful exits or continually operating as going-concerns; and enhancing businesses’ intrinsic and shareholder value.

Additionally, our strategic advice and deal-making support have resulted in buy-side and sell-side clients realizing more than $3.4bn in value via completing mergers & acquisitions, private placements, IPOs, and divestiture transactions.

Our team is proud to be recognized for our success in this competitive and fast-paced industry. We compete with Boston Consulting Group, McKinsey, Strategy+, and other boutique strategy and general management consultancies. What many do not realize is that Consulting has its own unique set of skills and competencies which are necessary in addition to management, industry, and business function expertise to quickly and effectively recognize highly profitable opportunities where others saw none, identify and mitigate risks in ways that enhance client companies’ value, transform chaos into calm, and get valuable deals done that others could not close.

Saving clients time and effort while accelerating their companies’ profit growth and enhancing enterprise value is Conduit Consulting’s forte and what sets us apart from our competitors. The firm’s ongoing success is due to our professionals continually and mindfully not only honing their skills and knowledge and being quick learners, but also adhering to our values.

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As such we place a high value on providing appropriate guidance, creating high-quality relevant deliverables, performing work right the first time, and completing projects on-time and on-budget. Conduit Consulting’s professional staff work diligently using our proven holistic value-added approach to quickly understand the current situation and evaluate various plausible future scenarios, then devise client-specific strategies, customized solutions, and pragmatic work plans engineered to catapult our clients to success.

Going forward Conduit Consulting will continue enhancing capabilities and value within client organizations. As they seek to realise greater value from their companies and develop or acquire new assets, we will help clients with new market entry; product innovation; new venture development; reorganisation and other goal-setting transition planning; and M&A, joint venture, and franchising transactions; as well as by leading business transformation management activities.

Company: DAHEUIN Image Management Academy Address: 1916, Century building, Suyongro312, Nam-gu, Busan, Busan, Korea, South Phone: 82-10-3868-4546

Best Image Consultant - Korea

DAHEUIN Image Management Academy Established in 2005, DAHEUIN Image Management Academy is a specialist Korea based Image Management Academy.

Founded by Kim Hyeri, DAHEUIN Image Management Academy offers lectures and consultancy services across a broad range of specialisms including brand consultancy, personal image, leadership and communications.

Image management is a growing industry across Korea and the Asian market in general, as competitive markets lead businesses to focus on brand diversification and personal image.

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Looking to the future the firm will be keen to capitalize on this growth by moving into new specialisms and expanding their experience.

Company: FTI Consulting Strategic Communications Name: Natalie Carter Email: natalie.carter@fticonsulting.com Web Address: www.fticonsulting.com/services/strategic-communications Address: 8 Shenton Way, #12-02, AXA Tower, Singapore, 068811

Best Strategic Communications Consultancy - Singapore

FTI Consulting, Inc FTI Consulting is a leading global business advisory firm providing multidisciplinary solutions to complex challenges and opportunities. Natalie Carter talks us through the secrets to the firm’s success.

FTI Consulting Strategic Communications is the leading communications practice in Asia-Pacific with more than 75 communications consultants in Singapore, Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai, Mumbai, Perth, Sydney and Melbourne.

Together with best-in-market affiliates in Tokyo, Taipei, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, Jakarta and Seoul we offer unparalleled regional coverage for our many international clients coupled with a unique service offering that helps apply communications strategies to help companies achieve their business objectives.

Overall we offer a full arsenal of capabilities in corporate finance and restructuring; economic consulting; forensic and litigation consulting; technology and strategic communications.

Our highly regarded and award winning strategic communications practice designs and executes communications strategies for clients managing financial, regulatory and reputational challenges.

For over 25 years we have served as trusted advisors to management teams and boards of directors seeking to seize opportunities, manage crises, navigate market disruptions, articulate their brand, stake a competitive position, and preserve their permission to operate.

This dedicated practice is made up of the best and most experienced people in the industry including former government relations leaders, bankers, analysts, financial journalists and local and international communication specialists.

With over 700 communications consultants in more than 25 countries worldwide we combine a truly global reach with local knowledge and ‘on the ground’ execution that makes us the perfect partner for both large international companies as well as smaller regional clients.

The Asia-Pacific region, within which our firm is based, is a highly fragmented and diverse area whose individual markets hold unique opportunities and challenges. Having operations in Singapore provides us with access to the burgeoning economies throughout South East Asia. From here we gain invaluable insight into regional business trends and a better understanding of the myriad cultures to which we are exposed.

Whilst businesses regionally must take into consideration China’s slowing economic growth, volatile capital flows and increasingly complex regulatory environments they should be encouraged by the launch of the Asian Economic Community which sets the stage for further financial integration, inclusion, and stability in the region.

Looking to the future our region offers us the ideal platform within which to continue to offer our clients the best quality service. In Singapore and across the Asia Pacific, companies, investors and governments are increasingly aware of the importance of effectively communicating with their stakeholders and the impact this can have on their operations.

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FTI Consulting’s track record, depth of expertise and extensive regional network places us at the forefront of this trend and well placed to offer our clients a best-in class service that is fully integrated across multiple geographies and whilst applying in-depth local market knowledge.

Name: Greer Deal Email: greer@globalregulatoryservices.com Web Address: www.globalregulatoryservices.com Address: Global House, Painters Lane, Sutton, Ely, Cambridgeshire CB6 2NS, UK Telephone: 01223 750638

Best Life Sciences Regulatory Affairs Consultancy - UK

Global Regulatory Services A global company offering a holistic approach to the regulatory requirements of the Life Science Industry GRS has a network of reputable independent professionals and specialists, operating at the forefront of technology, dealing with the more ‘challenging’ medical products. We caught up with Greer Deal from GRS who was able to elaborate on their key strengths which allowed them to win this award.

Our people have both scientific skills and regulatory expertise with the ability to communicate effectively with the regulatory agencies, so as to achieve the best outcome for innovative companies. Our clients include one-man-bands, start-ups, biotechs, innovative life science companies and multinationals.

From the very outset we realised that the life science industry had to operate at a global level in order to be successful. Therefore, we decided that the best way of supporting our clients’ global ambitions was to establish a network of professionals and specialists, around the world, who not only have the necessary scientific knowledge but also have country specific knowledge; can speak the local language; and, importantly, already have a working relationship with local regulatory agencies.

Great scientific knowledge is essential but the industry is dominated by people thus relationships are critical to the success of a product’s development and eventual commercialisation.

All of our professionals have been personally recommended which builds confidence.

We spent the first couple years focusing on establishing and expanding our global network of professionals and specialists. Within this network, we have built up teams with similar complementary skills, meaning that if a professional can no longer support a client there are others in the team who have the right skillset and experience to take-over the reins with minimal or no impact to the team or the client. For those with complementary skills we can build teams as and when appropriate which are bespoke to the client.

In addition, a lot of our work is providing strategic regulatory advice. This advice will influence a company’s commercial decision making process and therefore, it’s important that we are commercially aware. For example, a mobile app can be a lifestyle product or a medical device. If the App is a lifestyle product then it has to comply with the usual consumer regulations. This requires minimal investment. If it is making healthcare claims and therefore is a medical device, this means that there is a significant regulatory burden not only

in terms of finances but also time to market. In this scenario we will advise the client on the two different options and what impact they will have on their business. The usual result is to start the mobile app as a lifestyle product in order to get the product onto the market, raising brand awareness and getting a return on investment. Then when funds allow, to re-invest in the product and develop it further as a medical device.

Bobby Deal, Managing Director, is a visionary who embraces new technologies and new markets. He started his career working at the world famous Addenbrooke’s and Papworth hospitals during the time of the first heart and liver transplants.

This kindled his interest in innovative medical solutions which today has translated into him becoming involved in the advances of stem cell therapy and regenerative medicine.

Having worked in hospitals he is well placed to offer advice from the perspective of the end user.

The key role of Bobby Deal, Managing Director, is business growth and development and his main activity to support this role is to search all the media sources to pick up any news on changing or new regulations or if there are any particular trends appearing in the life science sector. This is then analysed by the team with decisions made on what the company should focus on. We are very comfortable working with new regulations because it gives us the opportunity to become leaders in a new space and thereby, be the ‘go to’ company for clients to turn to.

Not only do the Directors of GRS have commercial ‘know how’ but also many of the GRS professionals have direct experience of helping start-ups become successful companies and therefore are aware of the many opportunities, challenges and pitfalls which may lie ahead. The aim is that, through our knowledge, GRS clients can avoid the pitfalls that others have experienced and thereby maximise their chance of a successful outcome.

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We aim to exceed the expectations of all our clients and indeed, non clients! We do this in a number of ways which includes sharing information about new or changing regulations which may have an impact on a particular client and/or their product – this is all free-of-charge. We are also known as a “company of connections” and often put people in touch with each other if their requirements are outside our core area of business. At the end of the day we want to help people to achieve their goals and if we can contribute to this in some way then this makes us happy.

The life sciences industry is most definitely a global industry so those developing products must have an awareness of global economies. What is proving to be more challenging now, however, is that the boundary between MedTech and traditional pharma is blurring and this means that there are more and more products falling under the category of “borderline”. Technology itself is becoming ever more complex which means that the regulators themselves are struggling to understand these advanced technologies.

We are delighted and extremely proud to have received this reward. It is great to have recognition for the truly great work our professionals do, they are a fantastic team and this award is a big ‘thank you’ to them and not just for the company.

Too often regulatory professionals are overlooked but, in my opinion, they are the hub of the life sciences and this award will help to raise the profile of regulatory professionals and the wonderful work they do.

Greer Deal, Director, has a Degree in Management and is perfectly placed to co-ordinate and manage client projects. Over many years she has gained inside knowledge and experience of the workings of Medical and Regulatory Affairs Departments along with the commercial aspects of running a business.

She is well known in the industry for being patient and clear headed under pressure. With her particular skills and experience, Greer can ensure that work undertaken by Global Regulatory Services will be of a consistently high standard throughout the lifecycle of a project and beyond.

Company: Griffin Security Group Name: Colin Braziel Email: colin.braziel@griffin-group.co.uk Web Address: www.griffin-group.co.uk

Best Security Consultancy Firm - UK

Griffin Security Group Griffin Security Group is an independent security consultancy whose constituent divisions have been providing consultancy services to corporate clients and government agencies for the past 22 years. The company has extensive experience of undertaking global physical security reviews of offices, information security/cyber security audits and recommending counter-terrorist precautions for property and personnel. We spoke to them to find out more.

For our process, we regularly undertake risk analysis and management reviews and security audit/ compliance check projects. This includes security ‘health-checks’, the production of security policies and other key security control documents. Our client base ranges from UK Government, to ‘household name’ commercial organisations covering all sectors of business.

Furthermore, we operate in a global market and have a worldwide client base. While security consultancy in the United Kingdom has declined in recent years, particularly in respect of government contracts for small businesses, the global marketplace has been expanding. We are currently engaging in new contracts in Saudi Arabia where the British security expertise is in demand.

As independent security consultants, our mission is to represent our clients’ best interests and provide impartial security advice and solutions based on recognised business best practice and applicable legislative or regulatory requirements. We believe that our success is based on a culture of working collaboratively with clients to develop innovative strategies and solutions that address the specific business challenges and needs of the client.

Our unique selling point has been our experience, and for 22 years we have developed contacts throughout the security industry and around the globe.

Furthermore, Griffin Security Group is an independent security consultancy and has no allegiance to any manufacturer or installer of security countermeasures.

This means the advice we give is always independent and professional, and ensures that our clients’ security is always fit-for-purpose. Additionally, we provide a valued and cost-effective service to our clients.

We work in an industry where we need to be consistently upgrading and innovating our services.

As a result, Griffin’s security consultants are members of the UK Association of Security Consultants (our managing director is a former chairman of the ASC) The Security Institute and the USA-based International Association of Professional Security Consultants (IAPSC).

Through membership of these associations and attendance at seminars and conferences, we are able to keep abreast of emerging technologies and processes.

Alongside these attributes, Griffin’s tried and tested consultancy approach is very much a team effort and whilst a fully experienced and specialist consultant is chosen and nominated to lead on any given project, he or she can always call on additional support for any particular specialist expertise from the team as a whole. This approach provides clients with the assurance of the best possible quality and continuance of service during the course and life of the project

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Looking towards 2016 and beyond, we are committed to improving the service we provide to all our clients to ensure that they are able to adequately protect their staff, assets and business premises from physical and cyber security attacks in the years ahead.

Company: HedgeSupport LLP Phone: 020 7839 8088 Email: info@marchcompliance.com Website: www.hedgesupport.com

Best FCA Consultancy Boutique - UK

HedgeSupport LLP HedgeSupport, also known as March Compliance, is a dedicated compliance, management and operations consultancy company.

Established in 2002 the firm provides professional support to a variety of regulated firms including Hedge Fund Managers, CTA’s, Property Fund Managers, Venture Capitalists, Corporate Financiers, Brokers, Advisors and Hedge Fund Marketers.

Central to the success of the firm is their unique knowledge and experience of the principals and the consultants who have worked within the industry, as well as for the regulator.

This wealth of expertise allows the firm to quickly understand their client’s business and suggest practical solutions to business opportunities. The company’s services are always customised entirely to each client, and the firm has a proven track record of working with new businesses as well as firms with existing FCA authorisation.

Their professional and hardworking team is the firm’s greatest asset, and they are dedicated to building and growing relationships with their clients to ensure that they offer a unique service tailored to their individual needs. As such a high percentage of HedgeSupport’s new business is referred from existing clients.

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Some of the firm’s services are standard products, however many assignments are more complex and the company is more than adapt to any challenge and produce a successful outcome for their clients, whether the project is short or long term.

One particular aspect of their work the firm particularly enjoys is working with businesses that are looking to review their current support infrastructure. They have worked in this area for both new start-ups and established firms and so have a wealth of expertise to draw upon when starting a new project.

Company: Houblon Communications Name: Alan Duerden Email: alan.duerden@houbloncommunications.com Web Address: www.houbloncommunications.com Address: 30 Mansford Street, London, E2 7AJ Telephone: +44 (0)20 3715 1406

Best Financial Services Copywriting Consultants - UK

Houblon Communications is a strategic communications agency that helps financial markets and B2B organisations engage audiences in meaningful ways. The firm provides a range of communications services from media relations, copywriting, social media strategy and event support to message development, crisis management and executive coaching.

All of our services are underpinned by the ability to create compelling content that stimulates different audiences through different media channels. This content may be written or visual; animation or video; for internal or external audiences.

We have over 20 years’ combined experience in financial services. This combination of deep industry knowledge, proven writing capabilities and profound understanding of the media environment enables us to deliver a range of communications services that are hard to match. Having worked both client-side and in agency also provides huge benefit to the relationships we have with our clients.

In our business, our people are what make the business succeed; you can never spend too much time thinking about them, nurturing them and encouraging them. We strive to attract people who are hard workers, look to innovative, can make tough decisions, inspire others and have high standards of personal ethics. Our clients see these qualities and that’s why they work with us.

As for the award, we are completely thrilled to be recognised for our achievements. It couldn’t have been

Alongside our experience, we are passionate about delivering success for our clients and work tirelessly to help them achieve their goals, even if it means burning the midnight oil. We are driven by results and believe that the greatest value we can deliver to a client is a campaign strategy that informs the sales processes and actively contributes to their bottom line.

In order to consistently deliver for our clients, we are constantly looking at any changes or developments that may impact their business.

From our experience, networking and knowledge is hugely important in staying ahead. We regularly attend both financial and PR industry events to ensure that we have the latest knowledge about the environment in which our clients operate so we can provide them with rich advice. We are also an active member of industry bodies such as the CIPR and PRCA.

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done however without the hard work and dedication of our staff or the trust, awareness and creativity of our clients. They are why we succeed.

Looking further down the road, Houblon Communications has set out ambitious growth plans for the future and is looking to increase revenues by a further 50-60% over the next 12 months. The firm will look to hire another two members of staff by the end of 2016 and has a target of attracting another blue chip or FTSE 250 client to its client base in the next year.

Company: Instrutech Engineering Ltd Name: Directer - Lotfee M Elshalaa Phone: +44(0)1332408025 Fax: +44(0)1332408028 Email: Enquiries@Instrutechengineering.co.uk Website: www.instrutechengineering.co.uk

Best Electrical Engineering & Automation Consultants - UK

Instrutech Engineering Ltd Instrutech Engineering Ltd is a newly established company specialising in the project management and consultancy of Electrical Engineering and Automation.

Instrutech Engineering Ltd assist its clients in all aspects of engineering and automation work, from the design and specification of automated control systems to the supply and installation of instruments and electrical control panels.

Additionally the firm offer after sales services such as performance monitoring, and accredited calibration should this be required.

Overall it is the company’s aim to offer the highest standard in designing automation, measurement and control systems for their clients.

To achieve this the firm offers one of the broadest ranges of services in the industry, and are continuously upgrading their standards and expanding their service offerings to better serve their customers. The company draws on its extensive experience working with all forms of electrical and instrumentation control systems and their extensive knowledge of working in many different manufacturing or processing industries to provide their clients with a top quality service.

The firm outlines their wide range of services and provides an insight into what they can offer clients.

“We can direct and co-ordinate manufacture, operation and maintenance methods to ensure compliance with your design specifications to keep your plant running as efficiently and as accurately as possible. We can recommend and specify the best possible process solutions to help with your needs.

“We also offer consultancy services and offer specialised engineering solutions to our clients faced with increasingly complex design and compliance requirements. We utilise our extensive experience and combine it with our ongoing commitment to define industry best practice.

“Design is another area within which we operate and we can design bespoke control systems to automate your plant and ensuring the delivery of compliant design to your exact requirements and recommend the best products available to achieve your goals. We can establish or upgrade existing control systems to monitor the performance and safety of production area.

“Additionally we offer a monitor for routine calibration service to UKAS standards to ensure the integrity of your Electrical and Instrumentation equipment. This is logged in our traceable database and certification is provided.

“In order to provide a full service we can administer and install electrical and instrumentation control systems including PLC control system with configuration to the highest safety standards on any sort of site. We are specialists in specifying and installing electrical and instrumentation in Hazardous areas.

“Finally we can specify and supply the best instruments to suit your needs. We have good contacts so that we can get the best products to you as soon as is possible.”

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This wide range of services ensures that clients will never need to seek another engineering consultancy firm. Working with one company provides clients with a singular point of contact, eliminating unnecessary administration and fees.

Based in the East Midlands the company are in a good central location which enables them to offer their services throughout the UK, with the potential to work internationally.

Company: Johnson Associates Consultancy Ltd Name: Russell Johnson Email: Johnson@quality-consult.co.uk Web Address: www.quality-consult.co.uk Telephone: 07789 482455

Best Management Systems Consultant - UK

Johnson Associates Consultancy Ltd Johnson Associates Consultancy Ltd is an established, ISO 9001 certified consultancy with 15 years’ experience in the successful design, implementation, improvement and approval of business benefit, ISO recognised management systems. We speak to Russell Johnson who provides us with an insight into how the firm came to win this prestigious award.

Johnson Associates Consultancy Ltd (JAC) delivers a management system implementation approach that is value adding, customer process based and people-centric. Activities are aligned with agreed customer requirements and their particular business requirements and objectives in order to ensure that our services are uniquely tailored to our client’s needs.

In order to achieve this we ensure that we are up to date with all current management system best practice through our own certification to the internationally recognised quality management standard ISO 9001:2008 and also through our professional body memberships.

As a firm we provide our management system consultancy services to a wide variety of clients and business sectors, including: electronics design and manufacture; software development; mechanical engineering; waste management organisations and technology start-ups.

These include the Chartered Quality Institute, the Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment and the Chartered Management Institute. JAC are also a consultancy recommended by certification bodies such as BSI, LRQA & BM Trada etc. All our work is supported through appropriate liability and professional indemnity insurance.

Additionally we also provide support to service industries including training, marketing communications and customer service organisations. As such we are highly experienced in providing our services to a wide range of clients, and we draw on this experience whenever we start work on a project to ensure our clients receive the very best service.

Moving forward, our current plans for 2016 are to assist all our clients in the efficient transition to the 2015 versions of ISO 9001 and ISO14001 (and also OHSAS 18001 change to ISO 45001 later in 2016).

In support of this, we are also looking forward to running our new training activities in relation to these updated standards.

In order to ensure that our clients were fully satisfied with our service JAC obtains direct customer satisfaction feedback on a regular basis, and our current satisfaction rate is 95%.

Whilst we are proud of this high level of client satisfaction we understand the need to constantly improve our services. Therefore we are always looking to develop, both in terms of client satisfaction and within our industry.

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Company: Liberty Marketing Ltd Website: www.libertymarketing.co.uk Address: 1 & 2, Purbeck House, Cardiff Business Park, Cardiff CF14 5GJ Phone: 029 2076 6467

Best Digital Marketing Consultants - UK

Liberty Marketing Ltd is a specialist digital marketing agency based in Cardiff. With a headcount of 30, we are the largest team of digital marketers in Wales. Our core purpose is to offer our customers some truly innovative services that both exceed their expectations and establish our company as a pioneer in digital marketing.

Since 2008, we have been providing digital consultancy, training and services to companies throughout Wales, the UK and internationally. We have offered these services in areas such as search engine marketing, social media marketing, content marketing and online advertising. Due to the outstanding results we have achieved for clients, we are now trusted by some of the world’s most respected brands to deliver their digital marketing campaigns, advise on their strategy and troubleshoot their problems.

As an agency, we chose to specialise in certain areas so that we can master these disciplines and therefore provide a superior service and deeper insight levels than our competitors. From our experience, full-service agencies either bolt these services on to their other main services, or outsource them. Although we are not a sector specific agency, we have worked extensively within the certain industries, where we now consider ourselves experts. These include: online retail, financial services, health and life sciences as well as IT and technology.

terclassing, as well as more general marketing events like Chartered Institute of Marketing. We also have speakers at business events, such as those from the Federation of Small Businesses. From our perspective, preparing and delivering these topics helps us stay ahead.

In terms of our culture, we like to have friendly, informal and quite relaxed environment, but at the same time we take client projects very seriously and always try to innovate as much as possible. The team acts like a family, where we help one another learn and develop.

Furthermore, we have in-house ‘innovation days’ where the entire team puts down their tools for one day each month and explores what’s new out there and how we can use those tools and techniques to improve our work. Additionally, team members have dedicated paid time each month to train themselves up, whether that’s at conferences, reading blog posts, or watching webinars.

To be acknowledged for our success feels great and serves as a pat on the back for the guys here who have developed the consulting services and worked on the projects recognised in this award.

As well as the level of specialisation we deliver for our clients, receiving and building upon their feedback is also important in providing the best possible service.

We send out regular staff satisfaction surveys to monitor how team members are doing and how projects are progressing. We also monitor the number of referrals we are passed from clients, which thankfully is very high.

In order to stay ahead in our industry, we also attend a lot of industry events and even speak at many of them too. Six members of our staff are regular speakers at digital marketing events like Figaro Digital and Mas-

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Company: MARJAR Consultancy Services Name: Martin Richards - Principal Consultant Email: support@marjarconsultancyservices.com Web Address: www.marjarconsultancyservices.com Telephone: 0800 002 5818

Best Chemical Hazard Consultants - UK

In the summer of 2010, Martin Richards identified the need to provide a service to deal with legislation developing across Europe and beyond. To facilitate this, Martin’s main focus has been to provide training support for those who require expertise in this complex area. Five years later, his company has grown from strength to strength and we spoke to him to find out why this training has been so vital for his clients.

We primarily provide in-house accredited training, especially for the healthcare sector. At MARJAR we pride ourselves in being constantly aware of the ever changing regulatory requirements concerning chemical hazard communication and associated matters.

This is achieved through taking part in regulatory conferences and workshops as well as representing the UK industry on a stakeholders panel that deals with future regulatory implications.

When dealing with our clients, we are great believers in the importance of currency and accuracy, so we regularly engage in continual professional development in all relevant areas. As a result, we are constantly looking at new areas of regulatory concern that we may be able to support. Furthermore, we also pay attention to news bulletins and alerts together with networking with our peers on a regular basis.

other requirements. Over the past few years, this has become more and more challenging.

In our region, East Anglia is a generally rural but is also a developing area. With the expansion of the A14 corridor and Cambridge Science Park, it is a region that will soon become a centre of excellence.

However, it also needs the support services that we can provide. We also have clients wider afield but by staying current in modern technology we are able to support clients nationally and potentially internationally in the future by way of web conferencing etc.

What makes us unique is that we provide a highly focussed and personal approach at a cost effective level, but at the same time without any compromise on standards and professionalism. Our philosophy is to offer a professional resource for clients who may well be experts in their own field but need external support in these specialist areas. We recognise also that while we may be able to teach skills and knowledge, there will always be the need for experience which cannot be taught but we can provide by way of consultancy.

Working an in an ever-evolving industry such as ours encompasses a number of different challenges. At the moment there is increasing regulatory pressures on businesses but also customer demands for quality assurances and conformance with MNC, NGO and

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Looking further down the road, we have every intention to look to a more comprehensive support service and expand our accredited training provisions to support businesses. On the whole, we look forward to a successful future for both ourselves and our clients, and are very positive that our services will continually improve and develop along with the demands that modern business requires.

Company: Orion Initiatives Ltd Name: Fiona Hayes Email: fiona.hayes@Orioninitiatives.com Web Address: www.orioninitiatives.com Address: 5 St John’s Lane Invoice Smithfield London EC1M 4BH Telephone: +442075493650

Best Organisational Culture Consultancy Service - UK

Orion Initiatives Ltd Orion provides a complete approach to innovation and change for NGO’s, Corporations and Medium Sized Companies. Fiona Hayes provides us with a unique insight into the firm’s work.

At Orion Initiatives Ltd. we believe every company has a unique value in the world and can discover a way to build that in a truly sustainable and extraordinary way to make this world a better place.

If clients are to find the unique value in your company and truly become extraordinary then they have to become explorers; exploring how their business works and how it could work. They have to use their imaginations to envisage the potential for this business then be prepared to put in the hard work to make this a reality.

The best organisations have the biggest impact on society and the biggest impact on their people; and this enables them to create change and transform themselves, whether in incremental improvements or in leaps and bounds.

Our expertise is not in any specific sector but rather in being a business’s guide and support.

Our approach involves guiding our clients through a structured programme, walking them through and honestly evaluating the culture in their business, division, department or team then helping build the business case for change and co-creating the ‘Vision’ of where they are going and how to get there. We help in building a strategy to bridge the gap between the culture they have now and the culture they need for the future, and finally we help them implement the plan.

We have worked in various sectors including: • Construction, • Public Sector Services, • Agriculture, • Finance • Manufacturing • Pharmaceuticals • Professional Services

How a business portrays itself and builds the brand is entirely dependent on the beliefs, attitudes and behaviours of the people working in the business.

One thing we have found in common across all sectors is the need for good people. People who want to be proud of the work they do; who want to develop and progress; who want to appreciate and be appreciated.

We build our client’s understanding and expertise, enabling them to fully engage all their employees, from the shop floor to the boardroom, in building the culture that creates and defines your brand, embedding company values and following the firm’s vision.

Our philosophy is: ‘Developing your unique qualities becomes an exciting journey’.

To support these people we provide • Full Organisational Culture Design and Consulting Services: • Clear Goals and Direction/alignment of business planning integrated with team development • Review Organisational Governance at team and project level

Consultancy Awards 2015 Corporate Vision 25

• Developing and Measuring Culture • Executive and Senior Management Leadership Coaching Looking to the future we are building an on line community, which will function as a collaborative and creative environment and peer leadership group to help clients identify and take advantage of the opportunities right there in front of them; so they can grow and evolve their culture and business.

Company: Persistent Agility, Inc Website: http://persistent-agility.com/ Address: Persistent Agility, Inc. 19309 Winmeade Drive #414 Lansdowne, VA 20176 Phone: +1 703 283-6586 Email: info@persistent-agility.com

Best Space & Systems Acquisition Consultants - USA

Persistent Agility, Inc Persistent Agility, Inc. (PAI) is a Veteran-Owned small business with deep procurement, government acquisition, and business services expertise in the fields of space and government procurement. We speak to the firm’s CEO and President, Gary Kyle, about this dynamic and innovative company and the work it does.

Established in 2012, Persistent Agility, Inc. (PAI) provides clients with expertise on space system acquisition and strategy. Additionally, we support our clients with proposal development and related business strategies resulting in obtaining lucrative government contract awardss. Our dynamic track record in both the government and private business sectors demonstrates the unique value we share with our clients-- an unmatched level of expertise and experience in resolving complex and disparate space issues.

Our alliance partners greatly expand our capability and talent through the significant and credible expertise in specialized satellite, launch vehicle, information technology, ground systems, and business case analysis. We seek to selectively add additional alliance partners that bring additional recognition, synergy,

Since our inception we have been highly successful in teaming with our clients. One of the main reasons for our success is intensely listening to our clients and understanding their business goals and and challenges. As a firm, we engage closely with our clients, help them to clearly define issues, and then develop a success-oriented strategy..

Additionally, we share with our clients significant insight and essential information we gain from our personal network connections to ensure they understand the market. Some clients tend to focus on a specific aspect or problem, but may not have the experience or expertise to look at the interrelationships with other factors or conditions that impact their issue..

Consulting in the high visibility and large dollar space market is exciting! We take proactive steps to attend space industry conferences and industry association activity to stay informed about emerging trends. We also read the latest industry and government publications so we understand the different players involved with and perspectives surrounding space issues

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and creative energy. This enables PAI to maintain an advantage over other companies that provide more tactical, day-to-day performance and effort. We will continue to excel at obtaining desired results and outcomes for our clients.

Company: PGi Web Address: www.pgi.com Address: Atlanta, Georgia, USA 3280 Peachtree Road NE, Suite 1000 Atlanta, GA 30305 Telephone: 404-262-8400

Best Business Collaboration Consultants 2015

PGi PGi is the world’s largest dedicated provider of collaboration software and services. The company’s flagship product, iMeet®, is an expanding portfolio of purpose-built applications designed to meet the daily collaboration and communications needs of business professionals, with solutions for web, video and audio conferencing, smart calendar management, webcasting, project management and sales productivity. PGi’s award-winning unified communications and collaboration (UC&C) solutions help nearly 50,000 businesses grow faster and operate more efficiently.

Our legal team at PGi have daily interactions with all departments, as regular contact is imperative to earning our internal clients’ trust and ensures that we are brought in early in the deal process. Regular interaction also assists us in comprehending and continuing to further develop our company strategy.

In terms of what makes us unique we have an entrepreneurial culture and are a very sales-driven company. It is particularly important for us to understand our product portfolio, industry trends and process for partnering with businesses, as these factors can all directly impact the bottom line.

As far as our philosophy is concerned, in order to maintain high standards, we use our company products in everyday interactions within a variety of settings. Knowing what your company is selling is essential to negotiating all types of contracts; whether they are customer, strategic alliances, or vendor agreements.

To maintain the culture within the company we have a top-down, wide team-based philosophy. Other business units frequently ask our department for a variety of advice, ranging from business to legal. Additionally, while we are a large global company and geographically diverse, our close company culture still allows us to feel close together and welcomes unique ideas from all levels.

We keep on top of both global and legal developments affecting the company, such as the recent EU privacy challenges and business trends at PGi, such as the company’s transformation from legacy audio conferencing to SaaS licenses. For each occurrence, we analyse what impacts any decision will have companywide, ranging from revising our terms and conditions to understanding how accounting will affect other elements of the organization.

PGi is based out of the US, but is a global firm which operates in 25 countries, including emerging markets in China, India and Brazil. When operating in a different region, we have found that it usually works best to partner with a local company first, after which we may pursue the required licenses etc. on a stand-alone basis.

The recent EU privacy challenge has been a particularly prevalent trend in the industry, as it was at the forefront of many US based global companies who have been relying on the FTC safe harbour certifications.

To have been given the ‘Best Business Collaboration Consultants 2015’ award feels immensely satisfying. I think the key to our success has been to truly understand business needs. Driving value to all constituents we service from shareholders as a public company to customers and employees we support is at the forefront of our duties on day to day basis.

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As we look ahead to the future given our publicly announced, current proposed merger/go private transaction with Siris Capital, we are excited to move on and adapt to this new challenge.

Company: Square Peg International Ltd Address: Briarfield House, 40 Brockham Lane, Betchworth Surrey, RH3 7EH, UK Telephone: +44 (0) 7717 665007 Email: info@squarepeg.com Website: www.squarepeg.com

Most Innovative Change Management Consultants - UK

Founded in 2003 and with offices in the UK and North America, Square Peg has supported some of the world’s largest brands in their change initiatives in over 20 countries.

Square Peg International is thrilled to accept this award recognising it as the most innovative change management consultancy in the UK. It reinforces their pedigree as a global, boutique consulting firm focused on supporting organisations and their leaders through significant enterprise-wide changes – events that typically shock organisations such as M&As, restructuring, establishing new mandates and meeting new expectations.

Managing Director Doug Ross comments on the firm’s approach.

“We want the best of both worlds. We have combined all that we like about large global consulting firms with all that we like about small boutique change management practices to produce a new model of consulting.

Our vision is to continue to develop Square Peg as a firm that incorporates excellence as standard, has absolute client focus, is international in reach, and yet highly creative and flexible in approach.”

“What really marks us apart is our ethos. Our success formula is based on investing in building long-term trusted client relationships where we are seen as consulting partners and not simply suppliers of consulting and change services”, says Ross.

This approach has allowed Square Peg to build longterm relationships with some of the world’s leading brands such as The Coca-Cola Company (14 years), Birds Eye (9 years), and BA/IAG (8 years).

The Pegs work in a non-hierarchical fashion, eliminating consulting jargon, and undertaking change with a professional, can-do attitude.

Being in-play with the market is critical to the Peg’s success and on-going research and “thought leadership” demonstrates quality and innovation, allowing them to compete with the major consultancies and win work with significant clients. Square Peg differentiates itself from other small and mid-sized firms by underlining their innovative thinking with annual research, article writing, participation in industry forums, and through their links to academia.

In giving back to the communities where they work Square Peg strikes a balance between investing in their local and global societies. They sponsor local UK events such as the annual Square Peg Polo Challenge and a community rugby club in addition to providing hands-on support to the community volunteer activities of their clients in the countries where they work.

They are particularly proud of the pro-bono work they have done for the Coca-Cola Africa Foundation, support of an HIV+ orphanage in Kenya, and their support of the performing arts in the UK. Commenting on the future, Ross says: “We have truly tapped into the potential of leveraging the best of both large and small consulting firm worlds allowing us to keep one step ahead of the constantly changing innovative market place.

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Remaining open to change and excited by what the dynamic market brings will allow us to adjust our success formula in an agile fashion to provide future value to our clients when and where they need it – bring on the change!”

OC&C STRATEGY CONSULTANTS WINS DOUBLE AT AI M&A AWARDS 2015 OC&C are delighted to have been recognised for our work in Acquisition International’s (AI) 4th annual M&A awards where we were awarded the titles of Best for Traditional Media Acquisitions and Best for Business Unit Strategy for our work in the Technology, Digital and Media spaces.

Last year our UK team advised buyers and sellers on over 30 transactions in the corporate and PE sectors, delivering “stellar results and second to none client service”.

Who are OC&C? Founded in 1987, OC&C Strategy Consultants operate around the world to bring clear thinking to the most complex issues facing ambitious management.

Our TMT team covers all areas of TMT strategy globally with 27 strategy Partners across our international firm. Our M&A Practice covers all our sectors where we guide clients throughout the transaction process, from target search and screen through commercial strategic due diligence to business planning, post merger integration and profit / performance improvement.

For more information please email contact@occstrategy.com

www.occstrategy.com