Laudicina: We have the stability, and now the growth trajectory has been restored. That is clearly important to us, and I think that we're in a very good position to seize what are considerable opportunities moving forward, much as we have been seizing them since the beginning of the year quite aggressively.
CM: Since the MBO, has your relationship with clients changed at all?
Laudicina: I want to mention that 85 percent of the fees that we've generated over the past three years have been from clients who have renewed business with us. We have the loyalty of our clients. And so this MBO transition has been largely an intramural AT Kearney passage that we've gone through, and we, the consultants responsible for client relationships, have kept our eye on the ball and have really continued to deliver for our clients. Most of our clients, I think, if you were to ask them, would say that they don't discern any difference, except that we know that intramurally, when you put the selling and execution and ownership in the same hands, it changes the kind of entrepreneurial spirit and puts a spring in the step of an organization — and that's what drives good financial performance.
CM: What can you tell us about turnover within ATK's workforce?
Laudicina: If you look over time, we actually are now better than where we were last year, substantially better, because last year was a somewhat turbulent year, given, obviously, the transition we went through as well as given the competitive environment. Of course, the Bureau of Labor Statistics points out quite clearly that there is a growing worker shortage, both in the United States and certainly in Europe. So there's going to be more competition for human re-sources, which is going to create churn. But the fact of the matter is that since January of this year, our retention rate is at or above the industry norm and certainly substantially better than what it was for us last year, which was an important transitional year where we were subject to both internal and external dynamics that I think were somewhat unique to last year.
CM: Has there been any discussion around offering incentives or trying to bring some of the people back, some of the talent that helped build the firm in the past but left?
Laudicina: Well, the curious thing is that a lot of the alums have been reaching out to us. I have had scores of e-mail messages, first just acknowledging the important transition AT Kearney went through with the MBO and secondly expressing an interest in talking about their future in the context of AT Kearney.
CM: ATK has often been characterized by its consulting offerings around sourcing. How and why should we expect ATK to become better known beyond its sourcing offerings?
Laudicina: I was elected managing officer of AT Kearney. My background isnot in sourcing. The intellectual capital that I've been responsible for personally is very different from sourcing. It has been consistent with and capitalizes on AT Kearney's core competencies, driven from our inception on delivering tangible, bottom-line results to our clients by rolling up our sleeves and helping them understand how they can improve their performance. So AT Kearney is going to build off its traditional core capabilities for which we have been known and through which we have been successful throughout our 80-year history, combined with a sensitivity to and understanding of the strategic dynamics that are helping to shape the operational performance drivers of the bottom-line performance of our clients. I think that my election as managing officer and chairman of AT Kearney is a reflection of the importance that the partnership of AT Kearney attaches to this kind of evolution of the firm over time.
CM: What can you tell us about your client relationships? In fact, is AT Kearney selling results these days?
Laudicina: AT Kearney has always been results-oriented. We have never simply delivered inert insights to our clients and then walked away.What's changed over time is that clients have become more sophisticated, more demanding of what kinds of results they want, have often internally incorporated many of the capabilities in the past that consultants have brought to them, and, therefore, you have to constantly move the marker to ensure that you're bringing real insight and creativity to the new-world realities of global supply chains that are lengthening and becoming more complex and more closely tied to changes in the overall strategic environment.
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