Private Companies Can Be Better Served

Privately held companies especially in the lower end of the mid-tier range of $5-500M, 50-5000 employees have a bank, an accounting firm, an attorney, etc., but are typically not served as well by a focused business improvement adviser.

Edwin G. Booz determined that companies could benefit from the expert, impartial advice of someone outside their own organizations. This led to management consulting. Arthur D Little, Accenture, Booz Allen, McKinsey & Company, The Boston Consulting Group, and Bain & Company advise leading corporations (Fortune 1000 companies for the most part), but these consulting firms tend not to match the needs of the numerically larger tier of higher-growth potential smaller companies with employees of 50 to 5000 or annual sales of $5-500M, whose owners tend to be more independent and distrustful of outside professionals who charge highly for their time, not necessarily bottom line value.

Michael Gerber/e-myth targets this tier with educational information. George S. May offers a service that has been characterized as “one-size fits all” approach. Other service offerings come from Vistage, IIB, and a variety of boutique consulting and coaching firms and individual specialists.

There is an opportunity to improve how to provide (for a more modest retainer plus value-based incentive compensation) highly customized value improvement services especially for companies in the high-growth-potential mid-tier.

Advances in best practices in some industries, e.g., Agile project management and Scrum in software development, can be adapted for much wider application in other industries.

Improvements can be made in how members of boards of directors, advisers, consultants, educators, etc., can be more practical and applied to really help improve the cash flow, profitability, valuation, and overall health and well being of their corporate “clients.”

In a time of increased government regulation, those dedicated to private enterprise have an opportunity and obligation to help our market economy by doing more to improve the value of private enterprise.