Download Guiding theWay - Tenzing Consulting

WINTER 2016
tenzing consulting solutions
www.tenzingconsulting.com / Headquarters: Pittsburgh, Penn. / Consultants: More than 500 / Specialty: Consulting /
Thom McLeod, co-founder and managing director: “We feel that in order to fix a problem quickly and confidently, your entire team should be experienced.”
Guiding the Way
Tenzing Consulting’s independent consultant-based business
model guarantees its clients an experienced team. By Jim Harris
In 1953, Nepalese
climbing guide Tenzing Norgay guided Sir
Edmund Hillary to the
top of Mount Everest.
Norgay’s experience
THOM MCLEOD
in the Himalayan
Managing Director
mountains, as well as
his leadership and other positive
qualities, proved invaluable during
the historic summit.
Today, more than 60 years
after Norgay assisted Hillary’s
accomplishment, a consulting
firm inspired by his spirit and
bearing his first name is similarly
dedicated to bringing its clients to
the top. Founded in 2002, Tenzing
Consulting draws on the experience and know-how of more than
500 independent consultants and
industry experts worldwide to
provide solutions to its clients’
biggest operations, supply chain
and procurement challenges.
Tenzing’s teams are composed
entirely of subject matter experts,
which distinguishes Tenzing’s
approach from traditional consultant firms. “Traditionally, firms put
project teams together with the
available resources they have on
Tenzing’s business model
includes a network of more than
500 seasoned independent
consultants who are called upon
to provide expert knowledge.
hand, which include everyone from
the most senior members of management to people who recently
graduated college, so teams might
be working with 23-year-olds as
well as 60-year-old firm partners,”
says Thom McLeod, co-founder
and managing director of the Pittsburgh, Penn.-based company. “We
feel that in order to fix a problem
quickly and confidently, your entire team should be experienced.”
Building the Right Team
All of the independent consultants
within Tenzing’s network have a
WINTER 2016 Supply Chain World
55
solutions tenzing consulting
Founded in 2002, Tenzing
Consulting focuses on consulting
mid- to large-sized global clients
on supply chain, operations and
procurement issues.
minimum of 10 years of first-hand
consulting experience, industry
expertise, or both across the value
chain from operations through
procurement and supply chain
operations. The company carefully
selects the consultants it works
with based on their expertise,
work style and other factors, then
teams them with complementary
consultants to tackle client needs.
“A typical client of ours might be
a global manufacturing executive
with a service level performance
issue in one of their distribution
centers,” McLeod says. “Once we
understand a client’s issue, we will
assemble an expert team with the
specific industry-, function-, and
issue-specific experience that they
need to quickly understand the
situation and implement practical solutions to the problem. We
also make sure that our teams fit
together culturally and style-wise
– this is very important to us.”
The company uses an extensive online database to organize
independent consultants by
specialty and background. “We
know our people well because we
recruit them, screen them, and
invite them into our network,” he
adds. “They are not just resumes
in a drawer to us, they are our team
in every sense of the word. When
we search our database to find the
right people to help our clients,
we can be confident of who we are
assigning to the engagement.”
Consultant teams typically travel to client locations for specified
lengths of time, but increasingly
engage remotely for shorter
periods of time, days or even a few
hours. “We don’t have just one
way to solve a problem,” McLeod
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Supply Chain World WINTER 2016
says. “We feel there are as many
creative ways to solve a problem
as there are creative experts in our
network. We use what our experts’
experience tells them will work
and combine that with what our
clients think is best for them.”
Tenzing’s clients are typically
large, billion-dollar national or
global manufacturing, retail or
service providers with large and
complicated supply chains. The
company also often works on the
behalf of private equity firms.
“Investors like that a smaller team
of our highly focused experts can
go into one of their companies
and quickly improve performance
working at a peer level with the
management team,” McLeod says.
A New Model
McLeod and co-founder, Bill Angeloni, started the company in 2002
after working together at consulting firm A.T. Kearney as well as at
FreeMarkets, a pioneer in the use
of online bidding in the procure-
ment world. “We had worked
together so much and had such an
enjoyable career in consulting we
decided to start a firm together,”
McLeod says. “When we were getting started, we realized that some
of the best people we ever worked
with in previous firms were still out
there as independent consultants.”
At the time of the company’s
founding, the independent consultant market began a period of
high growth. The ubiquity of cell
phones and emerging availability
of high-speed Internet connections, made mobile and home
office setups easier and more
viable for everyone. Many veteran
consultants also opted not to work
for a single firm permanently after
previously being laid off from large
consulting firms amid changes to
that industry in 2001. “Our model
of working with independent consultants started as a practicality,
but has really evolved and worked
well for us,” McLeod adds. “We
began to realize that this could be
tenzing consulting solutions
The company’s consulting experience
includes advising clients on sales and
operations planning processes as well as
distribution and warehouse operations.
stronger than the traditional firm
model, so we decided to develop it,
commit to it, and be the best at it.”
The company’s success in using
an independent contractor-based
model has earned it positive
attention from clients as well as
its peers in the consulting world.
“Consulting firms typically don’t
work well together, but the fact
that some of the largest and most
prominent consulting firms in
the world have partnered with
us, trust our capabilities and our
ability to serve their clients well is
an incredible source of pride for
us,” McLeod says.
Expertise Demonstrated
Tenzing’s project expertise includes consulting on matters from
lean manufacturing to distribution
strategy and strategic sourcing.
“We can pretty much cover any
issue in the value chain of a client
that involves improving performance, cost and capabilities,”
McLeod says.
The company’s recent projects
include an 18-month-long analysis
of a global manufacturer’s use of industrial gases within its operations.
The client, who spends $300 million annually on industrial gases,
engaged Tenzing’s team of experts
to execute more effective and
standardized ways to buy, handle,
and use gases. In addition, Tenzing
developed better ways to design its
fabrication plants to optimize the
storage and placement of the gases.
This effort resulted in more than
$30 million in benefits to the client.
Tenzing is also consulting a
first-tier automotive manufacturer on the best way to configure
its sales and operations planning
process (S&OP). This client also
approached Tenzing about finding
a new supply chain leader for the
organization. “Many of our experts
possess significant industry
leadership experience — we call it
having ‘sat in the chair.’ So, instead
of a consultant, we assigned to
them a new interim head of supply
chain that will both lead the improvement efforts and the client’s
people while they search for a
permanent replacement,” he adds.
Purposeful Growth
Tenzing continues to build its network globally, which is now over
500 experts worldwide. Its network in Europe comprises nearly
50 independent consultants,
experts and interim managers.
The company believes in growing its network in an “inside-out
and outside-in” manner. “We
start with the people we trust,
and through them, are introduced
to people they know and trust,”
McLeod notes. “We make sure
that everyone we meet has been
referred from someone already in
our network. This has allowed us
to develop a consistent culture and
set of values in our network.”
Tenzing also recently retained
a professional recruiter to find
consultants who have skillsets the
company currently does not possess. “When we do bring experts
in from outside the network, we
do so in a very purposeful way; we
may comb through 30 consultants
to find two or three that are the
best fit,” he adds.
The company’s purposeful
approach has ultimately given it
a network of which McLeod and
Angeloni take great pride. “Every
time I go out to a project or meet
one of the consultants in our
network personally, I’m amazed at
the talent and skill they have,” he
says. “I sometimes refer to myself
as being the ‘dumbest guy in the
room,’ because the talent in our
network is far beyond what Bill or I
could hope to have.”
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