How we work
Anyone considering an advisory engagement
has a right to know what happens before committing.
This page describes the path from first contact to delivery, step by step.
An engagement starts from a concrete problem: a decision to take, growth to sustain, an organization to make more solid, or a result that is not arriving.
Before talking about activities, we settle with management what the problem is, which decisions are at stake and what evidence is needed to address it.
The path follows from there: framing conversation, proposal, engagement and delivery.
The team is built around the problem
Every engagement is sized on the competences it requires. The team is built around the situation to be addressed and is introduced before the work begins.
The four steps
The framing conversation
About an hour, at no obligation. It brings into focus the situation, the complication that made it urgent and the decision question underneath. At the end AC Retail Advisory says whether the matter can be addressed, and how deep it goes.
It takes place with the people who decide, on site or remotely. The client is not asked to prepare material: the conversation works on what the management already knows.
The proposal
It sets out the scope, the question the work answers, the data required, the timing, the deliverables and the commercial terms. It also sets out what stays outside the scope.
It arrives within a few days of the conversation. The scope comes from the decision question that emerged in the framing, and every deliverable listed corresponds to something the company will be able to use after the engagement ends. The proposal reads on its own: understanding it takes no meeting.
The engagement
The work proceeds in steps, with a mid-point review where the client sees the progress, reviews the evidence and can stop or change direction.
The work alternates time in the field with time spent building. The people inside the company are involved in the steps where their knowledge is indispensable, and left to their own work the rest of the time. The mid-point review is set in the proposal, with a date.
The delivery
The recommendation with its economic proof, the tools that stay usable inside the company, the implementation sequence with an owner and a target for each step, and the risk register. The people inside the company are put in a position to maintain what has been built.
The delivery is a document and a working session with the leadership. The work done and the tools needed to apply it are handed to the company in usable and editable form.
What the company has to put in
An engagement consumes management time, and the point is written into the proposal.
Three things are needed. Access to the data that exists — P&L, management system, working files — in whatever form it is in. Some hours from the people who know the process, concentrated in the fact-finding steps. And one person inside the company who can say the last word when a choice has to be closed.
Where the data does not exist, building it enters the scope and is quantified: it is work that stays with the company after the engagement ends.
After the delivery
The engagement ends with a delivery, and from there the company proceeds with its own people.
The delivery is followed by a review every three months: what has been implemented, which numbers have moved, and where the sequence has stalled. It is the step that separates a recommendation put to work from a document filed away.
