About the Client 

Looking Beyond the Ordinary 

Delivering value at the intersection of strategy, design, and engineering is the sweet spot for this leading global technology consultancy firm. It takes this unique approach to help clients gain a competitive advantage, helping them develop practical strategies that place both business agility and customer experience at the forefront of innovation. 

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The Situation

Developing a Cohesive Organization-Wide Strategy 

Q4 is well-known for being a planning season. It's a time when companies look at what lies ahead to understand the levers they must pull to ensure business success in the upcoming year, even more so when the future looks uncertain. 

Such was the case for this leading technology consultancy firm. With planning season in full swing, it wanted to develop an operating model within its highly federated organization. The goal? To drive efficiency, ensure alignment across its multiple business units spread across 17 countries, and improve performance. 

Having undergone the exercise to refine its planning cycle, it was identified that a subject matter expert would be needed to help guide the development of complex operation models. To ensure the project was on track for success, the firm wanted to onboard a subject matter expert with prior experience at a tier-1 or global strategy consulting firm. 

It was also important that the select expert have experience with complex multi-business unit/operation planning across a global organization within a professional services business. Not to mention experience in driving the initiative at this scale from end-to-end, along with the ability to prepare complex financial models and templates.  

Because the firm wanted to finish this project within two months, finding an expert quickly was a top priority. Rather than undergoing the traditional approach of finding and onboarding talent, the firm decided to undergo a different approach: on-demand talent acquisition. 

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The Solution

Using On-Demand Talent Acquisition to Find Business Unit Strategy Expert  

After conducting market research, reviewing vendors, and connecting with peers, the firm decided to explore Graphite. Intrigued by its deep network, ease of use, and ability to find an expert within 48 hours, the firm connected with an Account Executive (AE) to learn more. 

The AE explained how the platform worked, the quality of experts in the network, and how the firm could manage, communicate, and pay the expert on the platform. Excited by the prospect of having all of its needs met with one solution, the firm moved forward with setting up its first project. 

In the follow-up meeting, the firm provided the details of its requirements. Among them were strong communication skills, the ability to tell a story around complex financial topics, and strong financial/economic modeling skills. 

Understanding what the client was looking for, the AE set out to curate a list of the top three experts from the 55 identified on the platform to present to the firm. Then the AE coordinated interviews via Graphite's video conferencing tool between the three experts and the firm. 

Of the three experts interviewed, the firm moved forward with a mid-level planning and analysis expert with 10 years of experience working directly with C-suite and remote executive teams. What ultimately won the firm over in selecting this candidate was their prior experience working as a functional FP&A user with Adaptive planning. 

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The Results

Building a Cohesive Global Operating Model

Once the expert was selected, the AE set up a kick-off meeting between the expert and the firm. In this meeting, the firm was able to level set on the scope of work, expectations, and measurements of success. Likewise, the expert was also allowed to ask any clarification questions before starting the work. 

Having completed the first meeting, the expert was ready to get started. The first step was to understand the business unit's current state and get caught up on the work that has been done to date.  

After participating in several country and functional business planning meetings, the expert moved forward to develop an operational plan. Throughout the process, the experts met periodically with key business unit leaders to gather their input, benchmarks, and current financial model.  

From there, the expert dug deeper to help the organization model costs and investments into operational plans/budgets. By working with each stakeholder, the expert could clearly articulate costs and ROI. 

As the scope of work evolved, the firm extended its engagement with the expert. By onboarding an expert to take on this challenge, the firm was able to address a key subject matter expertise gap on their team, while achieving flexibility to extend the project as their needs evolve.

Pleased with their experience, the firm has continued to work with Graphite as a premier partner in helping them hire subject matter expertise on demand.