Billable consultants: 56
Offices: 3
Starting a new consulting firm isn't rocket science. It requires a handful of seasoned partners, some funding, a set of services with a zippy theme, a dose of vision, and a database brimming with client contacts. A bold message also helps.
"Our clients come second," proclaims Dean Fischer, president and one of the founders of Chicago-based West Monroe Partners. "Probably every consulting firm says that their people come first, but their clients and their partners — or, in more cases, their shareholders — really come first. We will provide better client service than those who say clients are number one because people deliver the service to clients."
West Monroe Partners is 100 percent owned by its employees, each of whom owns a meaningful piece of equity and shares in the earnings, Fischer reports.
The firm was founded by a group of former Andersen and Accenture consultants, provides a full range of business and technology service offerings to the middle market (companies with annual revenues of $20 million to $500 million), and relies on its consultants' existing business relationships to help guide expansion in middle market–friendly cities such as (so far) Washington, DC, and Montreal.
Fischer and his 11 colleagues who together comprise the firm's senior team strongly believe that consultants are not happy if they live on planes or are taken advantage of. Fischer left Andersen in 2000, before its Enron-related implosion, because he was disappointed that the firm's partners were, as he saw it, exploiting lower-level consultants by taking larger portions of profits.
West Monroe Partners provides midsize companies (and some $1 billion-plus clients attra cted to the firm's midmarket rates) what Fischer describes as "service offerings that are very similar to a very large consulting firm's business and technology offerings." The firm's services fall into four buckets — customer solutions (CRM, channel strategies, etc.), enterprise solutions (business process optimization, ERP), supply chain, and integration and infrastructure solutions — and are delivered via project-based consulting and, in some cases, through outsourcing arrangements.
Fischer, who headed Andersen's advanced technology practice, trumpets his firm's deep technology expertise — the sort of database, application-development, and networking know-how that serves as the foundation for its CRM, supply chain, and ERP service offerings.
Treating people right also means providing them with sufficient growth opportunities. The firm, which currently has 56 billable consultants, expects to grow significantly but wisely thanks to its infrastructure, expense management, and leadership team.
"You won't see 'West Monroe Partners' on Phil Mickelson's golf visor," Fischer points out. "But, if you took a look at our systems, processes, and methodology, you would say that we have the infrastructure of a massive consulting firm."
And, Fischer says, the scope of the current leadership team's past oversight and management responsibilities far exceeds the firm's current size. "This team is capable of running a firm of 10,000 people," he boasts.
Not that West Monroe Partners will shoot for the Moon right away. Within the next three to four years, the firm's objective is to reach a size of 250 to 300 consultants with very little, if any, outside funding.
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