The 2022 Fastest Growing Firms: Insight Sourcing Group

Number of Billable Consultants: 180

Client Industries Served: Retail, Manufacturing, Private Equity, Colocation, Financial Services, Health Care and more.

Consulting Service Lines: Procurement & Sourcing, Supplier Diversity, Spend Management & Analysis, Energy & Sustainability

Website URL: https://www.insightsourcing.com/

Insight Sourcing Group is North America's leading procurement consulting firm focused exclusively on strategic sourcing and procurement-related services. Procurement responsibilities have grown in recent years to include supporting initiatives such as sustainability, supplier diversity, energy management and supply chain resiliency, which are key practice areas available within Insight Sourcing Group.

Consulting: What were the main factors that contributed to your firm's exceptional growth?

Beaty: We built our firm on a fundamental belief that we must deliver outstanding results without fail for each and every client. Our goal is to have 100% client satisfaction and we strive to achieve that through excellence in execution. Additionally, we place a great emphasis on people and relationships. As a firm, we think people and relationships matter more than anything else. We know that every client interaction matters, and we invest in one person at a time to ensure both our team members and our clients receive the maximum benefit from our time spent together.

Consulting: How would you say you've managed to maintain growth during the unprecedented past three years?

Beaty: Since our inception, we have invested heavily into the overall firm culture and have done even more around firm culture during this unprecedented pandemic, where there was less connection due to 100% remote working conditions. These investments in people and culture helped to minimize attrition and ensure we are working in a highly collaborative and innovative environment regardless of where someone sits. Our investment in firmwide culture has resulted in happy employees, which in turn manifests happy clients, with which we enjoy long-term relationships. The happy client's comfort level and confidence in our team continues to produce abundant references, and referrals, for our firm. Additionally, we continue to embrace new technologies in our service stack, including our recent spin-off, SpendHQ. We recognize agility is critical when there is supply chain disruption or economic turmoil and our customers need to be the first to identify how to pivot quickly in order to maintain their competitive market position. We ensure we are equipped not only with expertise and data, but also with the most cutting-edge technologies to ensure they can do just that.

Consulting: How is this year shaping up for your firm?

Beaty: In a very challenging year with continued inflationary pressures and a seemingly inevitable economic downturn, we are above our goals for the year and have achieved 20% more revenue than at this time last year. Just this week, we are onboarding 15 new employees and we have continued to rapidly scale our employee base to keep up with client demand. This is true for all three of our business units within Insight Sourcing Group, including management consulting, energy optimization & sustainability, supplier diversity, and helping clients with ongoing savings sustainability. We are extremely confident in our ability to hit our targets in 2022 and set the stage for continued hypergrowth into 2023, despite the economic headwinds. Insight Sourcing Group is in a unique space, focused on procurement-related savings and cost reduction, which tends to fare well in environments of economic discord due to the fact that most clients are looking for rapid savings acceleration and ways to get creative with profitability. Procurement fits well into helping companies grow margin despite rising costs, inflationary pressures and negative headwinds, which has been beneficial for our firm.

Consulting: How would you describe your firm's outlook for 2023? Where do you see the most opportunities?

Beaty: Despite the economic headwinds, we continue to believe that procurement and sourcing will be in the forefront to help companies navigate some of the economic tension that is expected to arise in the market. We saw this in 2008 during the recession. When companies got out of the initial crisis, they leaned into cost reduction and procurement heavily in an effort to increase profitability. We expect the same kind of situation as we step into the economic environment that 2023 presents us with. We have seen continued disruption in the supply chain space over the last 24 months, and while the focus has traditionally been on cost reduction, we are still seeing an increased importance in things such as supplier continuity, supplier collaboration, and investment into the responsible side of procurement, such as the importance of supplier diversity programs to support the corporate mission, as well as energy and sustainability programs such as decarbonization, renewables, and a focus on net zero goals. We believe that in 2023 we will see continued growth around traditional cost reduction and strategic sourcing initiatives, but we must also ensure that there is a responsible procurement element and that companies are protecting against risk relative to supplier and logistics issues that have become more prominent over the last 24 months.

Consulting: What would you say are your firm's biggest challenges in 2023?

Beaty: Attracting and retaining talent is continuing to be a challenge for most companies. We expect that there will be less attrition due to the tighter labor market, but we plan to continue making large investments in our culture to make sure that we can attract and retain the best talent in the market to support our clients' needs. The economic headwinds present their own set of challenges for 2023, but we hope that companies will not be in such crisis mode that they are still able to strategize around opportunities for improvement and leverage our expertise in doing so.

Consulting: What does being named one of Consulting's Fastest Growing Firms mean to your firm, your employees and your clients?

Beaty: It is continued recognition that Insight Sourcing Group is the premier brand name in corporate America for procurement optimization. Being that there are many consulting firms out there, this is a true testament to clients that our firm is becoming the dominant leader in the space, and it is a testament to our employees that they work for a phenomenal firm that is focused on intelligent growth. To our clients, it means that we are continuing to invest in innovation and scaling the business in an intelligent way to meet client needs, and we can only do so by hiring the right talent and developing the right innovative approaches that can help get clients to the next level.

Consulting: Any additional comments?

Beaty: We are truly honored to have received this award. We want to additionally thank all of our team members for their vision, dedication and innovative spirits.