Strategic consulting solutions are unique to each client. There is no one single good model of operation; solutions are built based on the field of business, position in the market, operating culture and the skills and goals of the client’s company. A strategic consultant’s core area of expertise is to recommend a strategy-based management practice suitable for the client company. The most important thing is to get management to participate and to commit staff to operate according to the chosen strategy.

We have helped clients:

A.    Form an ownership strategy

The first question to an SME entrepreneur should always be: what are my goals for my company as an owner and within what period of time? The answers are not always easy and enough time must be spent working on them. We offer analytical tools and direction that facilitate the process. The ownership strategy should be clear before it is used as the basis of drawing the company’s business strategy.

B.    Build a growth strategy and/or business plan for a small or medium enterprise

Our way of working with a client has always been solution-oriented. The client brings in their own business expertise and experience, and we provide a diverse perspective to expertise with methods and often also the development of business. We build a growth strategy together with the client. Konsulttiyhtymä AIKA’s expertise in strategic market surveys has also been diversely utilized in these projects.

C.    Facilitate the strategic process of a large company (listed companies)

We also offer solutions for strategic processes based on the annual clock. We offer tools suitable for the analysis stage. On intense strategy days planned with the management group, we work on the strategy of the company or group based on pre-submitted materials, often focusing on a specific theme. We facilitate the management’s work by bringing to the situation the most suitable methods and direction of the strategic process. If necessary, we can also bring in perspective to and expertise with best practices from other fields of business.

D.    Improve strategic manageability as an expert in strategic methods (small and medium enterprises and listed companies)

Lengthy experience and expertise also provide a perspective for evaluating the methods used. If necessary, we can act as an outside evaluator and development partner. If the materials produced during the strategic process have grown into a size and shape that is difficult to manage, we offer help in crystallizing it. It must be possible to express the things essential for manageability in a short and comprehensible way.

For small and medium enterprises seeking strong growth, we offer a management director service after the growth strategy work. We participate in the work of the management group and ensure a connection between the strategic view and operative action. We offer as a service a strategic management system that allows easy management of dozens of different development projects using an agile management model.

A STRATEGIC MODEL CLARIFIES STRATEGY

Regardless of what methods have been used or how the strategy work has been done, one must finally form a clarified and crystallized image of the strategy. After lengthy comparisons, we have decided to use in most of our client projects strategy modeling that forces one to clarify the strategy, making it easy to manage and update.

Konsulttiyhtymä AIKA does strategic consulting in collaboration with the software company Cone Advisor. Cone Advisor has developed a method based on strategy modeling to clarify the key elements of strategy from strategic policies to practical actions. A visual strategy model provides an opportunity to see the company at a glance: the strategy as a whole, strategic development projects and strategic indicators.

Cone Made is the first software that allows a genuinely agile strategic process. This is a full paradigm shift in strategy work: from annual clock to agile process. Cone Made allows individual elements, projects and indicators to be changed flexibly during management group or board meetings. Strategy also becomes an everyday matter, and it is possible to start managing companies in a strategy-guided way.

Cone Advisor’s methods are related to the strategic maps of Kaplan & Norton, but they give a greater degree of freedom for building a strategy that looks like the company. The Finnish mentor for strategy modeling was the late Doctor of Science Juha Näsi, who was also the instructor in the research work of Cone Advisor’s founder, Doctor of Science Jukka Ala-Mutka. Jukka has studied and consulted companies for more than 10 years. While studying fast-growing Finnish companies (Basware, Ramirent, Sulake and MySQL), he discovered that their strategies had been built through iteration, through decision-making criteria, in sprint-like projects, and if necessary, with very agile changes. Strategic management needs a new theory. Jukka Ala-Mutka wrote a general presentation, Strategiamalli (Strategic Model, 2008). The book is available from major bookstores. Postgraduate education at Aalto University and the Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences utilize Jukka Ala-Mutka’s book, training and Cone Made software. For more information about Cone Made, see www.coneadvisor.fi

 

Partner Antti Lehtimäki, +358-40-7226448