John Kovalchick
Project Director
Proudfoot Consulting
Excellence in Client Service
John Kovalchick likes to say that Proudfoot Consulting sells bottom-line results to clients. Many consulting firms, of course, make this claim, but Kovalchick and Proudfoot have the numbers to back it up. In his 30 years with the firm, Proudfoot estimates that Kovalchick has been directly involved in some 85 projects that have lead to more than $1 billion in savings for clients. During the past few years alone, Kovalchick has led Proudfoot teams that have delivered between $120 million and $150 million in savings to two separate clients—one in manufacturing and one healthcare. Needless to say, Kovalchick has been in high demand.
"I get great satisfaction in going into a client with my operating team and doing a business review to scope the magnitude of the opportunity for the client," he says. "The client often says they would be happy to realize half of the savings of the estimate that we present. We always deliver 100 percent of the number and often even exceed it by 20 or 30 percent."
One of the reasons Proudfoot has been so successful, he says, is because the firm customizes the application for each and every client. "We install permanent changes that drive bottom-line results," he says. "The whole key to that is rolling up your sleeves, working with the client's front-line supervisory group, understanding what's preventing them from being effective, and then designing a customized solution for them."
Kovalchick says Proudfoot works very hard not be seen as a third party but rather to fully integrate itself into the client's environment. "That way, when we leave, those improvements in productivity or whatever we were brought in to do not only continue, but they continue to be improved upon year over year," he says. "That's really important to me."
Kovalchick says he was recently with a client he had worked with in 1992. "At the time we finished the project, we had saved the company $15 million," he says. "[The client] went back and showed me additional savings every year. Through 2007, it was more than $400 million. That's powerful stuff and one of the reasons I'm still in the business after 30 years."
—Joseph Kornik
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