As of May 9, Mercer Oliver Wyman, Mercer Management Consulting and Mercer Delta Organizational Consulting have united under a single brand: Oliver Wyman. The new consulting firm, a 2,500-employee business unit of Marsh & McLennan Companies (MMC), is helmed by President and CEO John Drzik.
Drzik will also lead the $1.3 billion Oliver Wyman Group, which includes Oliver Wyman and boutique brand design and strategy firm Lippincott and NERA Economic Consulting. The newly organized firm's other practices include financial services; manufacturing, transportation & energy; communication, information & entertainment; retail, consumer, life sciences & process industries; actuarial; and Delta Organization and Leadership.
Drzik, who launched the re-branding effort shortly after stepping into the president role at Mercer Specialty Consulting in June 2006, is familiar with the Oliver Wyman name: he joined the former Oliver Wyman & Company, a financial services consulting firm, in 1984 and was appointed chairman in 2000, shortly before the firm joined MMC's Mercer in April 2003.
Drzik took time to explain the reasons for the re-branding as well as its impact on clients, employees and competitors (three of whom roll off his tongue very quickly, now that his newly named firm is nipping at their heels).
Consulting Magazine: What is the rationale behind this change?
John Drzik: We're putting the three entities under a shared brand. As we looked at what the comparative advantages of each of the entities were in how we were delivering to clients, we saw a shared vision for the marketplace. We see ourselves as delivering greater economic and organizational impact to clients. We see ourselves as possessing deeper and more specialized expertise than the competition. And we share a belief that those will be winning attributes in the consulting marketplace. Rather than continuing to operate under three brands that effectively represented the same vision, we decided that we would be stronger by positioning these entities under the common brand of Oliver Wyman.
Consulting Magazine: Why 'Oliver Wyman,' which is perhaps associated more with financial services consulting, as opposed to continuing the 'Mercer' name?
John Drzik: If you think about the Mercer name, it has represented two things historically: HR consulting and management consulting. The HR business is about three times the size of the management consulting business. Our feeling was that we could benefit from having an identity that was focused in the management consulting space exclusively … We want to have an identity in the management consulting area to compete against McKinsey, BCG and Bain. And we thought we would be stronger with a common identity, but a focused identity, in the management consulting area whereas a Mercer name would continue to stand for world-class HR consulting. We think that Oliver Wyman stands for excellence in consulting in the financial services sector and for specialized expertise and a high degree of client impact in our work. We thought it had all of the attributes we wanted for the vision of the new entity. It obviously needs to be stretched from focusing only on financial services to covering a broader range of industries and capabilities. We thought that doing so would be easier than picking a brand new name.
Consulting Magazine: What will clients notice about the change?
John Drzik: As a client, I expect that you'll see a wider range of capabilities from Oliver Wyman than you did from any of the three legacy entities. You should see all of the same high-quality service and people who previously served your account and worked on projects. We expect that clients will experience a higher level of coordination to bring in capabilities from elsewhere in the group. It's not as if we didn't collaborate in the past – it's more that the re-branding effort convinced us that we can deliver more for clients than we have in the past by pooling together these capabilities under a common brand and also by extending our global network of offices to more locations [than the 43 current locations].
Consulting Magazine: How will the change affect your consultants?
John Drzik: Internally, people should see an ability to draw on a wider range of capabilities to bring to their clients. Hopefully, they'll see that their power as a professional is expanded. I think they'll also see an opportunity for a wider range of career directions that they can take across the different entities whereas in the past, perhaps they only would have only seen the opportunities within their existing entity.
Consulting Magazine: What are your growth expectations for Oliver Wyman?
John Drzik: Our organization has been extremely successful over the last few years. We've been the fastest-growing large consulting firm in the market. We have a lot of momentum now and believe this change can further energize growth in all of our businesses. Each of our businesses is looking at doubling over the next four to five years, and we think that's achievable.
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