Billable Consultants: 12
Headquarters: Portland, OR
Two years after leaving the consulting world, the founding principals of ACME Business Consulting asked a question that would launch their firm: "How do we roll up our sleeves and build a consulting model that is better than the one we grew up with?"
Taken by the profession and impressed by the recruiting and talent management approaches they witnessed during their tenures at Andersen Consulting, founding principals Scott Demorest, Peter Lizotte, and Dave Kelleher opened ACME in 2002.
They made two major changes to the consulting model they learned at Andersen. First, they decided to stay put, focusing on clients in the Portland area. Second, "we took away the leverage of junior consultants," says Demorest. "We offer senior project leadership. This has resonated with our clients because it makes better economic sense for them than it would for a big consultancy. So, we operate with a fairly low overhead in a local marketplace. We deploy smart, experienced, project leaders and get the leverage out of the client's team."
When a Silicon Valley–based software company wanted to sell a business, a previous acquisition that did not pan out as planned, it hired ACME to do everything necessary to turn the business over to a buyer in 150 days.
"We helped them design processes, build an organizational plan, hire people and design their roles to support the organizational plan, and put in all of the technology so that the company could be divested," Demorest recalls. "It was a track meet."
During the following six months, ACME helped the buyer streamline and automate the new company's processes. Those processes included shipping product to Europe, establishing the necessary bank relationships to collect cash from customers, quoting product prices to customers, and dealing with overseas tax calculations.
"We're general practitioners with a ton of experience," says Demorest. "Webring a specific approach and discipline to the process. But we really believe that our clients know their business, and what will and will not work, better than anyone."
For another client, one of the country's largest financial services companies, the firm automated a direct-mailing function that generates 50 million pieces of mail a month to market its core offering. ACME is currently helping the same client with another large project — building campaigns and managing the people charged with launching 14 new products, the purpose of which is to identify the two or three most successful products worthy of further investment.
This is a large, complex project, but it is still a local one. Both qualities serve as enticements in ACME's recruiting activities. "It's a really easy conversation," Demorest points out, "to talk to a senior manager at Accenture and ask, 'Do you want a local job with meaningful, challenging work where you don't have to get on an airplane? And where you're not going to have a senior partner getting in your hair while you're out there doing that project?
Where you're going to run that project on your own with the client team?'" Demorest and his principals also expect new hires to help figure out new geographies the firm can enter, while maintaining its "work locally" consulting model.
The pitch has worked — almost too well. For every 400 applicants so far, ACME has hired one new consultant. Of the 86 applicants who applied for an opening in January, four received an interview; none was hired. Demorest acknowledges that his firm's recruiting costs are high, but then again, so are the challenges and the benefits of the firm he and his fellow principals are growing.
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