Christopher Formant is not the type to back down from challenges. Three years ago, Formant took over BearingPoint's global financial services practice, which was at the time the worst performer of the firm's three business units. Today, global financial services is Bearing Point's top-performing business, thanks to Formant's leadership, restructuring skills, eye for talent, and tenacity.
"We've created something special," he says. "I feel privileged that we have such a great team that has played through adversity to create what I believe is, pound for pound, the finest financial services organization in the world."
The difficulties included executive turnover and issues with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, all of which Formant believes have helped "create an exceptional, tough breed of consultant with high-quality aspirations who delivers client satisfaction that is clearly superior to other firms'."
A seasoned financial services expert, Formant sounds as much like a client executive as a consultant as he rattles off his business's latest growth and win rates and taunts competitors for their lower growth and win rates. He clearly relishes the opportunity to go toe-to-toe against the financial services practices within IBM and Accenture. If Formant were a boxer, he probably would have a wealth of blows and ring tactics at his disposal rather than be relying on a single punch.
A former executive vice president of MBNA, Formant later served as global banking practice leader of PwC Consulting, which was the largest financial services consulting practice during his time with the firm. After that firm's proposed sale to Hewlett-Packard was scuttled, Formant left to become president and CEO of Scient and iXL, respectively.
Both of those "Fast Five" consultancies "really took it to the big firms for a couple of years" during his stint at the helm, recalls Formant, who has pulled from his full range of experience to reinvigorate BearingPoint's global financial services business. "I've tried to create much of the same excitement, buzz, and major differentiation in terms of technical quality that those Fast Five firms possessed," he explains. "And I've tried to meld that with the durability of a Big Five model. I think it's worked pretty well."
Recent reports from CoreBrands, Gartner, and Forrester Research (which gave BearingPoint the top client satisfaction rating among its peers) confirm Formant's sense. His business grew more than 30 percent in 2004, while most competing financial services practices posted growth rates, at that time, south of 10 percent.
Formant turned the practice around by adhering to the BearingPoint mantra of "our client's agenda comes first, not our own." He and his team also scrutinized the marketplace and competitors for opportunities and weaknesses, respectively; assessed the trajectory of purchase patterns; gauged the economic cycle; brought in a wealth of new talent (the practice has tripled in size during the past 24 months); and then poured that information into a decision matrix that helped refocus the firm's business and solutions mix.
"We pick our shots very precisely, load up all the heavy artillery, and focus right on those areas" Formant adds. "This allows us to create the mismatches in the marketplace.”.
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