April 28, 2020 (ATLANTA) - Leading change and transformation consultancy North Highland has been named a Market Leader in the ALM Intelligence Pacesetter Research Report on M&A Services for 2021-2022. The report analyzed 21 firms across five segments including management consulting, insurance, financial advisors, legal and multi-services. North Highland is one of 10 service providers identified in the management consulting segment and recognized for its emphasis on driving strategy in parallel with people, culture, and process as core transformational competencies in M&A consulting partnership.
“The new path for North Highland has been to drill down into the nature and science of transformation, and reconfigure its entire consulting offering around planning and delivering effective client transformations,” wrote ALM Intelligence. “Drawing on its own service heritage, North Highland identified in this design thinking exercise three key elements – called lenses – which are critical for success in transformations: customer, operational, and workforce.” North Highland stands out with its focus on end-to-end experience and its commitment to transactions that are inclusive of results across multiple dimensions.
“By more intentionally bridging deal strategy to execution strategy, M&A opportunities provide businesses with a platform to make transformational improvements in how they serve their customer, their operational interests and, most importantly, their workforce. As we saw the effects of 2020 disrupt the market, we remained committed to partnering with clients to guide them from strategy to execution, with an eye towards the essential role that workforce would play as businesses navigated a post-Covid future,” said Navid Ahdieh, Managing Director, Operational Transformational Lead at North Highland. “By using a nimble, people-centered approach, we build strategies aligned with organizational objectives to propel firms against their competition and realize bottom-line results.”
The report details that, “North Highland believes there is a disconnect and a lack of alignment often between those early stages in deals and the implementation planning and execution, so that the firm has brought forth in its capabilities (alongside its traditional strategy strengths) in deals and organizational structure (including supply chain optimization), realizing efficiencies and synergies in deal planning through process automation and culture.”
The ALM Pacesetter research evaluates market leaders against five core criteria: business model, value proposition, service delivery, client enablement and brand eminence. The report recognizes North Highland’s high impact across value proposition, service delivery and client enablement, noting that “North Highland is engaged throughout the deal process, from deal strategy, due diligence, integration strategy, integration planning, Day 1 & launch, and the implementation (PMI).” North Highland stands out as an early deal partner, focused on the cross section between people and results and enabling more than simply transactional outcomes.
“2020 saw many organizations pushed over the cliff,” said Tomek Jankowski, lead analyst at ALM Intelligence. “But it has rewarded those which spent the previous years focusing on long-term resiliency, providing them the means to calmly make decisions during a crisis, and to use M&A as the precision strategy tool it can be.”
Click here to learn more about North Highland’s approach to strategy.