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Because the U.S. enters month six of the Covid-19 pandemic, a number of consulting companies are shifting from short-term playbooks to extra strategic long-term options to longer-term distant work, rainmaking and aiding purchasers just about. It’s a problem, for certain. However with no definitive finish date in web site, a few of these early greatest practices have gotten extra everlasting normal working process, each for purchasers and companies themselves. Consulting caught up with Keith Denham, Managing Principal, CohnReznick Advisory, to debate how the agency is adjusting to the brand new regular within the age of Covid-19.
Consulting: What have been your largest challenges as Managing Principal of CohnReznick Advisory through the Covid-19 pandemic? How would you say the agency is handing the pandemic?
Denham: I’d say that my workforce and I needed to take the quickest 180 diploma flip of my profession—an enormous change of focus and a serious shift in priorities to handle instant consumer wants. As an alternative of advising our purchasers on issues like development methods, we instantly wanted to handle workforce and office enablement to assist them transfer ahead in direction of “the following regular.” This has included serving to them reinvent their actual property methods, determine new tech options that greatest align with their work cultures, improve their back-office methods and infrastructure to accommodate a digital workforce, and assist place their organizations for the workplace of the longer term. As we speak, as most of us have discovered, we’re studying to make remote-work collaboration extra private, fostering a way of neighborhood that after closely relied on face-to-face conferences. That is occurring not solely with the industries we serve—from healthcare to industrial actual property to monetary providers─however inside our personal groups as nicely.
Consulting: How are these adjustments impacting consumer service?
Denham: We would have liked to adapt our service mannequin to exclude the face-to-face conferences we had been accustomed to. Our groups are keen about rolling up our sleeves to ship high-touch, relationship-based consumer service. So, we wanted to get inventive about cultivating that very same connection just about. A part of that was getting higher at facilitating on-line conferences. Our consumer technique and enterprise transformation periods have at all times appeared to embed the newest applied sciences, together with using our on-premises Innovation Lab. These discovery engagements turned strictly on-line visioning periods.
Equally, we revisited privateness procedures to verify our workforce was up-to-date on the right way to securely share and retailer the knowledge we wanted from these conferences. As we emerge from the pandemic, it appears doubtless that organizations will completely undertake some stage of distant work. We’re working with our purchasers to design a long-term program that may assist their enterprise capabilities run seamlessly whereas additionally serving to staff keep each productive and engaged.
Consulting: How’s the enterprise been doing since March? How’s the Advisory pipeline look going ahead? Have you ever tried to forecast—or reforecast—2021?
Denham: March was a scary time for us, however over the previous six months we’ve skilled a combination with our purchasers – some are hurting, others are thriving. We’ve seen explosive development with our Authorities and Public Sector Advisory providers as we assist our purchasers leverage analytics and innovation to enhance their preparedness and response to emergencies. We’re leveraging applied sciences which might be serving to them optimize and expedite distribution of their FEMA catastrophe restoration/COVID funding to affected communities, whereas additionally minimizing their dangers of fraud, waste, and abuse.
On the federal facet, we’re serving to massive authorities businesses use essentially the most superior applied sciences discovered within the industrial area– modern new merchandise, methods, and Cloud options. Our work within the federal area is working the gamut: from the telecom sector’s development of 5G to serving to everybody working with the Division of Protection prepare for its upcoming Cybersecurity rules.
Other than the COVID-19 pandemic, I believe 2020 will probably be remembered as an inflection level for social justice and company accountability. So, am very excited that we’ve begun working with our purchasers to assist them outline their roles in driving change. As we glance to the tip of this 12 months and forward to 2021, ESG and variety will proceed to realize momentum as focus areas for corporations. So, we’re speaking to purchasers daily about the right way to kind and implement their very own ESG methods. We’ve additionally begun serving to them construct range portals to place better emphasis on minority hiring and procurement, and implementing greatest practices in driving tangible change.
Consulting: What are purchasers searching for proper now? What kind of labor are they in search of from the agency? What particular providers can the agency present through the pandemic?
Denham: Corporations need a “one cease store” to assist them clear up a number of points. They need complete options now—recommendation, merchandise, bots—and it’s simpler to rent a conductor to do it for you than to conduct the orchestra your self. Because the pandemic has put a pressure on their inner assets, they’re extra open to outsourcing and searching for advisors to ship complete options greater than ever earlier than. Effectivity is vital.
As I discussed, we’ve been working with purchasers on their remote-work methods which additionally consists of cybersecurity and privateness. When it was decided we needed to transfer to a remote-work surroundings, many organizations needed to rapidly undertake new applied sciences and insurance policies. We’ve been working with purchasers to assist decide if they’ve the fitting cybersecurity safeguards in place and make sure that their privateness insurance policies are compliant with present privateness legal guidelines. Enforcement of those legal guidelines has not taken a break.
Consulting: What’s morale like on the agency proper now? How tough has it been so that you can hold the agency’s tradition in place with everybody working from dwelling and little or no in-person interplay?
Denham: This has undoubtedly been a tricky time for all of us each personally and professionally. So, our interactions with our purchasers, and amongst one another, now include the next stage of compassion. We’re treating each contact level, whether or not it’s with a consumer or a colleague, with an additional diploma of empathy. Individuals are extra understanding if somebody is late to a gathering or if a gathering have to be canceled on the final minute.
Remembering that we’re all people adjusting to all-new circumstances has helped us stay optimistic and step as much as assist one another. It’s additionally given us an opportunity to get to know one another on a extra private stage. Whether or not it’s a son poking his mother’s arm, a cat strolling over a keyboard, or fascinating wallpaper within the background, it’s helped us all take the time to pause and be taught extra about one another.
Consulting: How do you see the pandemic shaping the way forward for consulting? In different phrases, do you see any greatest practices or new methods which will emerge from this time? Will it influence something long run or do you envision issues going again to “regular” as we come out of this pandemic?
Denham: The “subsequent regular” will probably be a hybrid, combining one of the best of the previous methods of doing enterprise with one of the best of the brand new. Now that we’ve seen {that a} “work from wherever’ method shouldn’t be solely attainable but additionally one thing many staff would require, it offers us, in addition to all corporations, the chance to take a contemporary take a look at the methods we’re utilizing know-how, optimizing actual property and operational methods, and redefine our work cultures.
Consulting: Any surprises—in any side of the agency, the folks, the purchasers or the trade—during the last six months?
Denham: Early within the pandemic, we skilled the primary shutdown with our Hong Kong workplace. I used to be rapidly impressed by how successfully and effectively these staff handled a work-from-home mandate. This gave us an early understanding of work-from-home and allowed us to organize for it when the identical factor occurred to us within the U.S. six weeks later.
I used to be amazed at how rapidly we might transition to a remote-work surroundings and work as a workforce to be extra productive and environment friendly in methods I by no means thought attainable. Necessity is the mom of invention, and lots of the classes discovered and methods we’ve come collectively to handle the pandemic will probably be carried via within the long-term.
I additionally discover it shocking that, for the reason that pandemic started, I’ve solely been to at least one face-to-face assembly and have none scheduled for the foreseeable future. And, for essentially the most half, purchasers will not be requesting our groups to be onsite at their areas as we discovered methods to make video calls simply as efficient as being onsite.
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