It's been an active two years since C.E. Andrews took the reins as CEO of MorganFranklin Consulting. The company started its employee-ownership program in earnest and has tirelessly worked to attract and retain a talented and diverse team. It also continues to punch above its weight class, often surprising clients with the size and complexity of engagements it successfully completes given its size. Over the last 12 months the company has notched 170 percent growth in its emerging company/growth space, largely on the strength of its IPO Readiness business. Consulting sat down with Andrews to bring us up to speed with the direction the firm is heading.
Consulting: What have you been concentrating on so far as CEO?
Andrews: We've done a number of things that are all directionally positive and accretive to the long-term growth and development of our firm. We've really refined the solution sets we offer to the marketplace. We've given some fairly intense focus to what does the marketplace want us to do and what do we need to be able to do in order to be successful. We've identified areas we want to strengthen our depth and our talent pool and we've been able to successfully attract a number of people to add to our already solid team. There have been several of those in several different areas all with a specific purpose in mind. I'm very much a believer in growing very well organically and also growing in other ways whether that be by acquisition of talent or of companies. We've focused on some acquisition of talent who we also make certain will be a cultural fit and not just a capability or technical fit. It's extremely important—In an organization our size one person can make the difference good or bad.
Consulting: What differentiates MorganFranklin from competitors in the growth space?
Andrews: There are lots of good firms of all sizes that refer to themselves as IPO Readiness firms. What we bring to that space is a much more complete package of solutions. We really go in and help the companies put in place controls, put in place systems, stand up their finance function not only for today but to be ready to be successful as a public company. To implement their systems and manage the entire financial registration process and be with them on the back side of that to get them out of the box as a public company. Your typical IPO readiness firm works within one dimension of that range of services, be it accounting advice or help with an S-1 registration. But all the other things that actually make a company successful they're less attentive to. We approach it far more broadly; we're kind of a soup to nuts solution set. Now that we've really ratcheted up our attention to that space there is no question in our mind that we have a one of a kind approach. We've grown 170 percent in the emerging company/growth space over the last 12 to 14 months.
Consulting: What are some of the big challenges facing clients?
Andrews: If you get over out of the growth space their challenges are how do we transition ourselves more into the enterprise type client world. Everybody from making sure their own business is competitive, everyone's wrestling with how to use big data for competitive advantage. Use of data in every industry is on a very accelerated track, I don't care what industry you pick. Clients in almost very industry are dealing with some fairly significant escalation of regulation and compliance they've got to deal with for the first time. Because of technology almost every company is going through some kind of major transformative change. Corporations are still stockpiling liquid assets and not spending as freely as they did but they're spending a lot more and on a lot more important things this year than a year ago. It's a solid market, not the greatest it's ever been but certainly better than two or three years ago.
Consulting: What are your goals for the company?
Andrews: We want to grow, I want to complete our ownership transition, we want to grow and for that growth to be solid double-digit organic growth but also we want to have the right kind of inorganic growth which will likely see us deepening some of the areas we're doing but also help us with some geographical diversity. Last year we had assignments in 20 different states as well as things outside the U.S. but we only, technically, have one office. We have a goal to have a serious presence in a few other markets, which we're working on. We're moving fairly quickly on some of those fronts but we're not going to do anything recklessly. We're only going into markets where we have a rock solid base already there to build around, but I see us instead of one location three years from now probably in four or five. We know where we want to be it's just a matter of orchestrating those in a way we know will be successful.
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