Management consulting industry continues its unprecedented growth in global marketplace integrating automated process and innovative strategies to improve performance and business assistance. Making it scalable in the high-tech market might not seem easy but through enhanced management practise, consultation firms are apprising their statistics with primary focus on areas of client satisfaction.
Accelerer is one such name in the consulting sector who’s foundational premise lies on expediting business outcomes by working closely with clients to plot a practical pathway for measurable returns. Raechelle McLean, MD of Accelerer had a conversation with the CEOViews team to share details on how they accelerated the growth of their company.
Inspiration and Mission
Raechelle has been working in the consulting space for more than 20 years and has seen inside the box of many different models of frameworks that had been developed in house or purchased by the client. In most cases the focus was on time and cost, but it missed the people measurements (internal people AND external people). She believes the key to return on investment is people being on board and ready to move to a new way of working. You can build the most incredible technology, process, model or framework, the last thing you want is no one using it or finding a way around using it.
Measuring returns comes in various forms, but her focus is on the people – understanding blockers and identifying the process to reduce those by introducing additional change levers can help the business realise the benefits.
Journey
Accelerer has been recognized as one of the “Innovative companies to watch in 2023”. Speaking about their business journey so far, Raechelle shared, “We do change differently by breaking it into bite sized chunks, a little like agile, not overwhelming the people that are impacted by the change. There is always an overarching organisational view to align with the strategic intent and making sure people understand where they contribute to the outcomes is imperative for success. A lot like bringing end users on the adventure with simplified non consultant language “meeting them in their space” to find out how best to break down the effort and engage with their business.”
Their journey to date has seen some great metrics with positive feedback from senior stakeholders and sponsors, with one recently saying, “I see what you are doing, the others don’t, it’s like change leadership and coaching by stealth.”
Services it provides
Accelerer conducts a rapid assessment via the Accelerer compass to swiftly identify where the hot spot for their clients is, and then ‘brainnovate’ as a team to look at some possible solutions. Working with the clients, they facilitate several workshops to identify patterns and strategically prioritise work based on aligned outcomes. Moreover, the team also analyse the client information along with their initial assessment and see where the core work or heavy lifting is required. Once they identify the ‘what’, they work towards the ‘how’ and ‘when’, and again, work with the clients on the ‘who’.
Accelerer project delivery applies rigorous, appropriate controls and risk management standards to enable transparency through reporting and governance applicable to the piece of work and client need. To achieve this, we have created consistent processes and management standards that encompass regular check points, internally and externally, including client check points at 6, 12 and 18 months to ensure any changes and improvements that have enabled or eroded the original problem statement.
Collective Network
Accelerer consultants are cross-skilled professionals with hands on experience. The ability to understand the unique customer needs is enabled by PMO leads who have morphed into change leads, business analysts to solution designers and tech developers into end user journey mapping experts using human centred design. Accelerer places the most appropriate resource into the right role leveraging their ‘love’ of their roles,
Adding to that, Raechelle shared, “When we don’t have the skillset the client needs, we look to our Accelerer collective network and identify who can bring the skills to the table using some innovative ways to profile them with specific tools. The goal is to ensure we are matching the right kind of people to the client requirements.”
Staying updated and standing out
The team are constantly learning and adapting personally and as a collective. From formal completion of leading edge training via organisations such as INSEAD or IDEO, to round table discussions leveraging others experience, learning how others are using different tools and/or techniques to achieve great outcomes, the learning process is still on. However, Raechelle feels that staying connected to the network is most important “Being open to feedback is tough, when you think you have the solution or the best idea in the world and someone challenges it. You have to step back and think about the pros and cons of each variable, eliminate unconscious bias and most importantly focus on the right thing at the right time.”
Welcoming new ideas
Innovation is the driving force for successful business growth. Embracing new ideas instead of leaning heavily on conventional concepts accelerate market growth. Accelerer apply a technique when assessing the viability of a new idea. The starting point is Ideation (Identifying the Idea, challenge or problem need to be resolved), then presentation (Framing and presenting the idea, visually, verbally and in written form), identifying and understanding ability (how much sense it makes?), what will be required for building capability and skills (having the right skills or the need for new ones?), and finally determining the viability (where a rating is given and parameters are tested). Once completed, they know whether to hit GO or NO.
Process of Innovation
Accelerer believe collective voices are better than a single voice and give people time to absorb, process and reflect allowing the creativity to flow and provide the space to bring back responses.
Using tools like Miro to collaborate or hosting prioritisation sessions helps to create, challenge and stretch in a structured way using our SASS method, to succinctly summarise the Situation, Analysis, Solution/s and next Steps in a meaningful way. Bringing the idea to life using the SASS method and spending the time to fully appreciate what else can be done, or how we can do things differently. When challenged we will also bounce to the network to land the right outcome.
Accelerer believe collective voices are better than a single voice and give people time to absorb, process reflect allowing the creativity to flow and provide the space to bring back responses.
Challenges
The agility of methods for testing and iterating is critical for delivering in a fluid and dynamic environment. Often for a client the scope expands as they seek to understand the problem more deeply. The decision makers will have an overall view, but once the lid is lifted, there may be additional elements to bring true end to end value. Communication is critical during this assessment and working in this way reduces the challenges as they are included or excluded quickly, see the driving factor, and whether it will have a positive or negative impact on realising benefits.
Future Vision
Over the coming years Raechelle plans to expand the team further to support clients holistically. “In 2023, we are looking to support 4-6 new clients on their works, and scale Accelerer in a practical way not moving from our vision of delivering tangible results. Moving into APAC more broadly has helped us to understand the cultural differences of our clients and bring the change to life for them in a way that best fits their organisation and customer needs.”
Accelerer internally focus on client satisfaction, delivering quality outcomes to or above their expectations.
