By the end of 2016, Chuck Ritter, President of Point B, says he had started to hear murmurs of a slowdown, although Point B hadn't really felt it yet. And then it did. In early 2017 the firm had started to see the signs and decided to do something dramatic. "It was the ideal time for us to re-examine Point B and determine what could help make 2017 a successful year," Ritter says. "We decided to survey the leadership at our clients, more than 400 current and prospective clients, to find out what they were thinking and what they wanted from us." After looking at the data, Point B identified The Top 5 Emerging Business Initiatives. "Our research found the most important emerging trends for businesses today fall into five categories: regulatory compliance, data analytics, cloud transformation, customer experience and loyalty and employee engagement," Ritter says. The next step was clear: reposition the firm to meet these five critical demands.
Consulting: Can you take me though how you repositioned the firm early in 2017?
Ritter: In many ways, 2017 feels likes an enigma. The strategic shift we made was really a positive thing for us. The year got off to a rough start but we ended growing at over 16 percent for the year; and we had a very strong fourth quarter. Right now we have the deepest pipelines we've had in quite some time. We're really excited about how 2017 played out, especially after the way it began.
Consulting: What was the process of how you implemented the changes?
Ritter: Our clients had some pretty big and significant challenges. We took in a lot of data from the survey and spent a lot of the second quarter trying to figure it all out, looking at the information and deciding what we were going to do; how we were going to change; what skills and capabilities we were going to put together to make sure we were the most relevant to our clients. We did most of the work over the second quarter and it happened pretty rapidly.
Consulting: It must have been challenging trying to shift strategies mid-year.
Ritter: We had no choice. In today's world there's this fast-approaching disruption that's coming and for us that meant shifting into more of a product focus. What I mean by that is this: the way we talk to our clients can't be about the skills we have internally; it has to be more about understanding their language and their challenges. That was one of the big shifts internally—becoming obsessed about what clients were telling us. We had to make sure that voice of the customer stayed at the forefront. That was one of the biggest internal shifts—hearing clients clearly and having the confidence that making a shift like this was going to be impactful to our business.
Consulting: You ended up identifying five areas of focus. How's that working out? Would you say they are all equally important?
Ritter: We believe those five are the most important challenges facing our clients, but I don't think we know enough yet to say which ones are the most critical. Where we've gotten the most energy so far I'd say is cloud, analytics, compliance and on the engagement side. That's not to say that loyalty isn't as important, but three-quarters of a year into this and this is what we're seeing. This work is going to evolve; one other thing we realized after diving into this data is that we're going to need to do this on a regular basis. Every six months or so, we're going to have to go back to our clients and continue to ask them what's important so we stay relevant.
Consulting: Where do you see the most opportunities from a client industry perspective?
Ritter: Financial Services, healthcare, retail and manufacturing are the ones that initially stand out, but it's funny, almost every single industry is experiencing massive disruption or a heavily regulated environment or at least a very rapidly changing environment. No industry is immune but those are four areas where we're spending the most time right now.
Consulting: You mentioned your strong pipeline, what else can you tell us about your overall business forecast for 2018?
Ritter: We grew 16 percent in 2017 and I see an even stronger year in 2018. We do have the strongest pipeline we've ever had so that's really encouraging. We see a great deal of opportunity out there, and I think we'll have over 20 percent revenue growth this year. I can see our Minneapolis, Houston and New York offices launching officially. We also have plans to become international in 2020, so we'll be looking at that at the end of 2018.
Consulting: How have clients' expectations shifted over the last several years?
Ritter: Our buyers are really more savvy now so the challenge is how do we bring experienced perspectives to the table that are meaningful to them along with a vision for those clients? We have really smart people buying our services. They sit down at the table and they can articulate very clearly where they want to go and what they need. That's certainly evolved over time. We want to be our industry's best choice. That's audacious and we want to help our clients get to their Point B. That's how we think about our work. We relied so heavily on our own ideas about the right things to do and that's certainly valuable and continues to be a guide for us, but it's so much richer when we're more frequently getting feedback from clients and letting their voices be the loudest we hear.
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