Cybercrime could cost your business thousands – The Tennessean

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Cybercrime could cost your business thousands The Tennessean Many small-business owners believe they are under the radar, but Mensel said this mindset can be “very dangerous.” Parker Rains, vice president of Fisher Brown Bottrell Insurance, agrees. “Just because your business is small fish, doesn’t mean you’re …

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Consulting is no longer a stand-alone strategy game – gulfnews.com

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Dubai: PwC’s acquisition of Booz & Company has created Strategy&, a global consulting behemoth with some 33,000 professionals and nearly $11 billion in revenue. PwC Advisory reported annual revenue of $9.15 billion in 2013, while Booz & Company’s 2013 revenue was about $1.5 billion.

Clearly the merger has created an incredibly robust global consultancy business and brand that can help clients with everything from strategy through execution like no other firm in the industry.

In a joint interview Hani Ashkar, PwC Middle East Senior Partner, and Per-Ola Karlsson, Senior Partner, Strategy&, told Gulf News that the combination of two global firms is a turning point, in the consulting profession and has huge implications for the rapidly growing consulting business in the Middle East and Africa region.

“The rationale for the combination is the clear synergies in the global consulting market. This is a global merger. PwC has an existing consulting business. Booz at the time of the merger was one of the leading consulting firms. The merger has been in response to the changes we have been seeing in the marketplace,” said Ashkar.

Logistically speaking, the way PwC has structured the Strategy& deal is different from the way it’s approached other combinations. Under this deal Strategy& will go to market together with PwC. The legacy of Booz & Company infrastructure is there but the combination is looking to optimise the business with the strengths of both firms.

“Our clients no longer want strategy advice or just implementation as a standalone service. They wanted the full scale proposition. They want their consultants to set a vision and execute that and implement that. Strategy& brings together that expertise as well as that expertise in executing, implementation and project management all the way through,” said Karlsson.

The trend in the Middle East’s management consultancy business is rapidly evolving. While issues are getting increasingly complex, solutions require multidisciplinary approach.

The ability to pull together skill sets and solutions from a much broader areas has become increasingly important. “In the past we pulled together these skill sets by using third party consultants. This now becomes much more of an opportunity to bring together these capabilities from within the same group,” said Karlsson.

Clients are increasingly looking for end-to-end strategy consulting, implementation and execution. In the post-financial crisis era, management consulting has undergone big change in customer demand and service delivery. “The good old days of being able to give clients a deck of strategy recommendations and give a seven figure invoice are numbered. What clients want today are solutions, they want execution,” Ashkar.

In the Middle East region, the demand for execution is much more amplified than in other regions because of the ambitious visions of the governments to be achieved in short time frames and acute shortage of talent to meet various competing market demand.

“The big issue in our region is talent shortage, particularly within the government sector where ambitions and projects are huge and they need the talent to deliver these strategies. So there is a big demand for consultants to address these complex issues and go out and execute these projects,” said Ashkar.

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The free lesson in MnSCU's $2M consulting contract – Twin Cities Daily Planet (blog)

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Minnesota State Colleges and Universities’ recently announced a $2 million contract with consulting group McKinsey & Company to assist with a system-wide initiative, Charting the Future. The contract made headlines when Chancellor Steve Rostenstone did not mention McKinsey or the contract after a student asked about the cost of the initiative. Additionally, Rosenstone did not update the Board of Trustees on the contract agreement.

For a bit of background, Charting the Future is a MnSCU initiative, announced in November of 2013, which, according to their website, strives to “work together to improve transfer [student experience], marketing to increase the number of students each campus serves and collaborating on expanding programs that prepare students for the careers of tomorrow.” This system-wide project is meant to lay out a sustainable road map for MnSCU as the public higher education provider for a strong majority of Minnesotans.

McKinsey & Co., whose contract began in January 2014, recently finished their fact-finding mission and has made smaller recommendations based on preliminary data such as, if 10% of MnSCU’s five-plus year degree seeking students graduated in four years, the students would save $14 million dollars.

While Charting the Future initiative seems worthwhile and McKinsey has already produced some interesting analysis, the process has been bungled and deserved greater public discussion.

What this story points to, in fact, is that there is a gap in the oversight of Minnesota’s largest higher education institution. Currently, any contract expenditure under $3 million does not need to be approved by the board of trustees. Public reaction to the McKinsey consulting contract suggests a change in non-board approval triggers may be coming.

Lowering that threshold to $1 million dollars, would increase transparency and reduce concerns about the selection of consultants like McKinsey. While outside consulting firms can provide a new set of eyes on a project or problem, MnSCU stakeholders also need on-the-ground perspective about how to refine and finance higher education for Minnesota’s students.

Speaking for professors, administrators, and students by speaking past them instead of working with these groups about how to improve MnSCU educational mission isn’t the only option for answering problems. Higher ed consultants sift through data and make policy recommendations. Higher ed leaders make leadership decisions that create a prosperous organizational path forward, drawing community together. The latter is much harder than the former. Let’s not confuse the two.

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Bill Gates and Warren Buffett Love Business Adventures. You Will Too. – The Slatest

Brunswick sells retail bowling business to Bowlmor AMF – Chicago Tribune

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Fifty years ago, Brunswick Corp. didn’t run any bowling centers. It just sold bowling equipment.

Then came what Jim Fox, president of the company’s bowling retail division, calls the bowling bust of the 1960s. Too many bowling centers were built, and business owners had trouble paying Brunswick for the pin setters it had installed, Fox said. When the bowling centers went out of business, Brunswick found it easier to just take over rather than performing the labor-intensive process of removing the setters. Over the next five decades, Brunswick expanded to 87 locations nationwide.

Now it’s leaving the bowling center business again. On Thursday, the company announced an agreement to sell its retail bowling centers to Bowlmor AMF for $270 million.

Brunswick also plans to say goodbye to the bowling industry itself, which it entered in 1890. It intends to sell its bowling products business by the end of the year, but hasn’t found a buyer yet.

“It’s a very emotional day at Brunswick today, to be perfectly honest with you,” Fox said.

The company has decided to focus on its boat products and fitness businesses in the face of changes in the bowling industry, Fox said. Business from bowling leagues his in decline, he said. There’s been growth in casual visitors to bowling alleys, but they expect amenities like nice restaurants.

“What’s happening is people have more things to do and more ways to spend their money,” he said.

Brunswick has responded to the changes by adding restaurants serving dishes like porkbelly tacos and Cobb salads to three of its bowling centers, and had some success, Fox said. But the company decided it would rather devote its energy to its fitness, boating and billiards businesses than spend the money necessary to revamp all its bowling centers, he said.

Bowlmor AMF’s offer to buy the bowling centers, which made about 8 percent of the company’s revenue, was unsolicited, Fox said. After receiving the offer, the company also decided to try to sell its bowling products business, he said.

New York City-based Bowlmor AMF has 272 locations of its three stores – Bowlmor Centers, Bowlero Centers and AMF Centers, according to its website.

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3 Tips for Launching Your Labor-of-Love Business – TIME

Gates's and Buffett's favorite business book is out of print – MarketWatch