Quartz Associates is a global consulting firm covering all industries. You bring the knowledge of your industry. We bring the knowledge of what it takes to change organizations. Our projects have covered the following industries and geographies.
INDUSTRIES COVERED
GEOGRAPHIES COVERED
Quartz’s leaders also have significant previous
experience in energy, utilities and infrastructure.
QUARTZ CASE STUDIES
Quartz Associates does not disclose its clients, but references are available on request
Global technology company
Quartz Associates was engaged by a global technology company with $10bn of revenues to design and deliver a new organizational model. This project was typical of many of our projects in technology: the company had developed a formula for success that had been wildly successful in its chosen market, but that market was becoming saturated and other competitors were entering.
The company was losing momentum and the share price had fallen significantly from its peak. The company now needed to enter adjacent markets where different approaches were required. Our diagnostic revealed a functional organization without any clear accountabilities for both the new markets and the core business, and with challenges moving beyond A/B testing into new product development.
We helped the leadership team agree a new organisational model with business units with clear accountabilities, and supporting technology function. We also helped the company design role profiles for its top 100 leaders and implement the changes in the model. As a result of our help, and other changes the company made, it was able to rebuild momentum and within 12 months the share price rose again to the previous peak.
Global technology
company
International business services firm
Quartz Associates was engaged by a $600m revenue North American business unit of a global business information company.
The company supplied its customers with professional information both through print and online. The print business was obviously declining. The company had one core online product, which was becoming dated. It planned to use its position to build new software products, but product development was proving slow. As a result, it was falling behind its P&L targets.
Quartz’s diagnostic revealed a highly complicated functional organization where accountability only came together at the CEO and staff found it hard working across organizational interfaces to get things done.
We ran a workshop with the leadership team, presenting them with options to fix the functional model or move to business units: they chose the latter. We then worked with the client to detail out the structures, roles, process and required capabilities to get the model to work. In particular, we focused on the product development process, bringing one of our associates who had been CEO of a large tech company to help in the workshops.
As a result of the changes, the Business Unit is now hitting its targets, has stopped a number of product development projects that were not going anywhere, and has focused its efforts on new, more prospective opportunities.
International business
services firm
European public sector organization
Quartz Associates was engaged by a new, large public sector funding organization, with spending of $6.5bn per year. The organization was in fact a merger of several constituent organizations, all of which had a similar approach to funding, but which each came with their own heritage, strengths and weaknesses.
The new organization was being asked by government to manage an additional $2.5bn of new spending per annum, which would cut across these individual organizations.
Our diagnosis was able to highlight the areas where the constituent organizations were performing well and where they had gaps. We also revealed that the resources being devoted to managing the “new spending” (which the government was prioritizing) were much less than those focused on the “old spending”, creating a significant risk.
Mindful of both the existing strengths of the constituent organizations, and the challenges of changing public sector institutions, we helped the leadership team to focus on three changes: increasing resources on the “new spending”; clarifying and standardizing roles within the constituent parts to make them easier to manage and to enable transfers across them; and designing a new common funding process and system across the organization. Like most of our projects, the majority of our effort was focused on getting these changes made.
One of the leaders of the organization committed after the project: “Unlike other consultants I have experienced, Quartz always focused on practical, meaningful issues rather than theory.”
European public
sector organization
African telecommunications company
This was an unusual project for Quartz where we were engaged by a private individual on an investment he had made in an African start up. The start up was focused on telecommunications and technology within a specific African country.
The start up had a dual mission: development and profit. Its founder was a charismatic man of many ideas, so the challenge was how to take these ideas, prioritize them, and design an organization that could deliver them. Given that this was a private individual, not a large corporation, we also had to be imaginative to plan a project that had high impact and low cost.
Using our network, Quartz engaged a project manager with in-depth personal experience of running African telco and technology companies. We combined our traditional interviewing and surveying techniques, with our project managers on-the-ground impressions from a three-day visit to the African company and the company’s various sites.
Through this, we were able to help the founder and investor agree on the core focus for the company and map a plan to profitability.