Billable Consultants: 50
Headquarters: Miami
As Simon Baker sees it, managing a high-growth consulting firm is similar to running a systems implementation unit within a Big Four consulting practice.
"It is not that different from what we were doing at Deloitte," says the co-founder and CEO of Miami-based EBPartners. "We're doing the same activities: staffing, visiting with clients, controlling the budgeting, overseeing the operations of projects. One difference is that we're now controlling the cash flow."
Another difference is that the firm has grown 400 percent since its inception in 2003, shortly after the spin-off of Deloitte's consulting business was scrapped. One more distinction is that EBP operates throughout the United States and Latin America, while employing a staff of 50 bicultural and mostly bilingual (Spanish and English) consultants
(including a bilingual CEO). There may be a final difference, which explains Baker's penchant for understatement. "We have a lot of fun doing our work," he says.
He and partner Jesus Cuenca, now the firm's CFO, founded the company three years ago and promptly landed a contract with Phillip Morris for an SAP rollout that stretched from Argentina to the U.S. The project succeeded. Baker, Cuenca, and their initial team of nine consultants also flexed their creative and strategic muscles — including executing multiple go-live dates in a single month — during the initiative, which immediately generated additional work for smaller firms and some subcontract work for Big Four system-implementation practices.
Companies often gravitate to a large consulting firm for ERP implementations, Baker believes, because they perceive that the large firm has the most advanced processes and offers a degree of security based on the size of its reputation. "But the methodology and the tools are exactly the same whether it's us or them because there's not much leeway there," he explains. "And the truth is that a smaller [subcontracted] firm is often doing the work."
EBP differentiates against other system implementers with its culture. "We think that's the main reason why Phillip Morris selected us three years ago," Baker says. "Setting up the system is 50 percent of the work. The other 50 percent is interacting with the client and understanding the client's business needs."
His bicultural, bilingual workforce gives Baker that edge — as does EBP's contact center, which is equipped for outbound and inbound calls, in Mexico City. Baker says that this option costs about the same as running a contact center based in India.
If clients do not want to pony up for internal ERP system support, they can call EBP, which offers three tiers of contact center services, the most valuable of which includes site visits to troubleshoot. The contact center, which is helmed by former call-center executives from two of the world's top financial services companies, opened in 2004 as a separate business line, although it supports and helps cultivate the firm's consulting relationships.
The contact center, like the rest of the firm, is equipped with the latest technology and a beefy training budget. Baker views those investments as a crucial way to continue to distance EBP from competitors. "We don't have much overhead, but we do a lot of training with our new hires," he adds. "This helps us to remain more compact and flexible, even as we grow."
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