ConfluCore

Our Results

Our Client Successes

We have a flawless track record because we are particular about the client projects we take on and clearly define the deliverable outcomes beforehand. We pursue performance improvements that last, ranging from rapid turnarounds to extended implementations. We assist our clients in becoming better than the best in their respective situations.

We take on fresh challenges to clarify fresh opportunities for our clients. We solve real problems with real solutions. We do not offer run-of-the-mill solutions and shun template-driven projects that provide partial answers that overlook secondary effects.

“ConfluCore chairman Usman A. Ghani is a master of large systems. He’s a designer, builder and change leader.”
– James A. Champy
   Chairman of Consulting, Perot Systems Corporation (2011)

"ConfluCore is among the finest thought leaders I’ve [worked with] in my chief executive career.
They are able to leverage considerable intellect and experience to be a leader among leaders in a very 
elite group of 99th percentile of management consultants."
– Ari Reubin
   President & CEO, Nichols Applied Technology, Inc. (2009)

“I applaud Usman Ghani for showing leaders the why, what and how of harnessing metaphors to ignite
 passion and deepened understanding.”
– Professor Shlomo Maital
   Technion, Israel

“Utilizing ConfluCore in my executive career over two decades, I am captivated by
their profound intellect and extensive experience, unparalleled in top management
advising and executive development. They are outstanding, distinguished and yet
unassuming in the elite position they maintain.”
− Vinod Nanu
   EY Executive Director; CEO Moviynt; Founder Saviynt

“Since our inception in Malaysia, Novugen and Oncogen have utilized the excellent
professional services of ConfluCore. Starting with 2, we grew to 20, then to 200,
and now to 2,000 with our plants running (even during the Covid-19 crisis).
ConfluCore has advised us in strategic management and leadership development
from the start; we owe tremendous gratitude to them for their invaluable services
for over a decade.”
− Rahil Mahmood
   CEO, Novugen & Oncogen

“By providing a taxonomy of metaphor types as well as ways of matching the metaphor to the moment, 
Usman Ghani has designed a system to make us all more effective communicators and influencers, 
and by extension, more effective leaders and managers.”
− James L. Heskett
   UPS Foundation Professor, Harvard Business School

“With Usman Ghani’s Metaphorus, we will now be adding mastering metaphors to systems thinking,
working with mental models, sensing emerging realities and growing people as the new sources of 
genuine distinctiveness.”
– Peter M. Senge, M.I.T.
   Author, The Fifth Discipline


Here are a sample of our successes with our clients around the world. These are by no means exhaustive of our professional span of work delivered. If you have a specific need that is not reflected here, please Contact Us to engage in a meaningful dialog regarding our services.

Management Consulting

MARKET GROWTH THROUGH PRODUCTIVITY:

We studied, recommended, and helped improve a Fortune-100 energy company’s distribution processes and related systems, developed an operational excellence implementation roadmap which also included tailored training. This provided our clients a 25% rise in productivity and 10% increase in market share over 2 years.

BUSINESS GROWTH THROUGH INDUSTRY MARKETING:

We analyzed the product portfolio of a Fortune-500 High-Tech company, changing management from traditional product sales to industry marketing solutions and also restructuring its marketing and sales organizations. This complete change took 18 months and yielded 20% enhanced revenues and 25% increase in profitability.

ACCELERATED GROWTH THROUGH LEAPFROG STRATEGY AND INNOVATION:

For a generic pharmaceutical firm, we worked with the CEO, his direct reports and staff to develop a catapult strategy that took the company from small to medium, then to large scale on 3 continents in 5 years, providing an average of 10% annual growth, becoming the second-largest in each of its specified geographies.

CUSTOMER RETENTION THROUGH SERVICE QUALITY REDEFINITION:

Assisting a global transportation company, we surveyed their entire offering set and the quality of their services and personnel. Through a combination of fresh solutions implemented over 2 years, the company achieved best-in-class rating, retaining its customers and employees, and achieving 5% jump in ROCE.

ACQUISITION SYNERGY THROUGH CONSIDERED M&A:

We assisted a regional telecommunications company in selecting an acquisition to gain complementary advantages. We carried out a thorough valuation of products, services, and markets, identifying NPD agendas, assisting in its implementation, fusing two cultures, and yielding synergy in the order of 35%.

ENHANCING “CORE” PERFORMANCE USING ORGANIZATION DEVELOPMENT:

Deploying The Leader Integrator, one of our globally acclaimed offerings, we studied the culture and leadership of a large healthcare organization, developed its OD platform, and trained their management, resulting in an average of 12% increase in its most critical performance indicators.

STREAMLINING SUPPLYCHAIN DYNAMICALLY TO ENHANCE TIME-TO-MARKET:

For a middle-market manufacturing firm, we studied holistically the faulty dynamics across end-to-end supply chain, achieving a rise in productivity of 15% and gains in sales of $ 75 million within 1 year. This also developed synchronized links across the demand and supply chains of the firm’s alliances.

DEVELOPING AN INTERACTIVE REAL-TIME PROJECT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM (PMS):

For a Global-300 corporation, designed and developed a web-based, real-time, interactive Database Management System to replace an existing document storage system operating in multiple countries. This not only centralized an authentic dataset for project management and tracking, its savings resulted in a return on investment of 25 times.

REDESIGNED MANUFACTURING & THE REPORTING OF OPERATIONS:

We assisted one of the world’s largest metals and mining corporation in redesigning their operations across multiple divisions in 3 countries. Along with redesigned processes, new metrics were also implemented and monitored by their own personnel. Efficiencies and productivity escalated by orders of magnitude, yielding $36 million savings within the first year.

CYBER & DATA VULNERABILITY ASSESSMENT STRATEGY:

Assisted the Board of a rapidly growing middle-sized business in engaging with the CEO’s team to institute a strategy for tracking cyber-vulnerability as an ongoing behavioral process in the company and developed strategy for a reorganized system that established proactive procedures and rapid recovery methods. The company’s cyber and data vigilance has been multiply enhanced.

IMPLEMENTING EXECUTIVE & DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEMS:

A mid-sized service company wanted timely information and decisions to address their customer issues and queries directly. We developed data flows and decision models affecting crucial decision points in the company (DSS) and those affecting the senior executives (ESS). In addition to dependable, timely information, this resulted in an estimated time savings of 30% by the executives within 1 year.

ENHANCING THE VALUE OF A PUBLIC SERVICE ORGANIZATION:

U.S. Federal regulation changes in 2011 impacted one of the largest corporations guaranteeing student loans in 50 states. We helped restructure the organization to a private nonprofit, reinventing it as a government contractor, helping build its strategy (mission, goals, objectives, rollout plans) and aligning it to newly identified market segments. This hugely enhanced access to loans, success in higher education, and systematic repayments of student borrowings.

DEVELOPING OPERATIONAL EXCELLENCE STRATEGY & ROADMAPS:

To define operational excellence, the Board of an Australian manufacturing firm assigned us to review of their company’s operational performance and also assess the tools and techniques used in their operations processes. Our recommendations helped the company streamline multiple operating flows and adapt dynamic assessment approaches, leading to 30% performance improvement. An execution strategy for periodic renewal was also developed and the client management trained to implement.

ENHANCING PERFORMANCE & PROFITABILITY THROUGH VALUECHAIN ANALYSIS:

For a North American telecommunications and media company, we analyzed its strategic value chain to identify performance gaps and opportunities for margin optimization and revenue enhancement (MORE). This resulted in consolidation of processes based on the core offerings and in the alignment of these offerings (products/services) with profitable B2B market segments.

ENTERPRISE SCANNING FOR STRATEGIC ALIGNMENT:

We did a complete, fast-track enterprise scan of a Fortune-500 company to identify its value-chain performance gaps and prepared a 1-year strategic alignment roadmap for all business unit leaders. Cross-business and cross-functional competencies were unified to gain synergies and reduce dependencies on external sources. The macro-level linkages alone led to fast gain in revenues, reduction of 10% in cost and cycle-time, with profitability rising by 17%.

REDESIGNING OF MEMBERSHIP PROGRAM:

We served one of the world’s top-10 airlines in assessing and redesigning its frequent flyer program and integrating it with frequent user programs of its alliances in the rental and hospitality sectors, thereby increasing the airline’s member retention and loyalty and cutting defections by over 35%.

DEVELOPING WORLD-CLASS INTEGRATED SALES & MARKETING:

For a Global-500 high-tech corporation, we developed an integrated program for sales and marketing that, through platforming and re-segmenting, catalyzed its product throughput and delivery times, while also enhancing its topline by 20% over two years in the specified segments. We helped them implement a disciplines quote-to-cash approach that was measured and monitored through both, sales and marketing systems.

BENCHMARKING BEST-IN-CLASS CAPITAL MANAGEMENT PROCESS:

Benchmarked capital management and asset utilization processes across multiple sectors and industries to identify leading-edge practices and capital management flows (change decisions) for a Global-500 services company. This was completed within 4 months, along with an implementation plan that was executed by client management.

SEGMENTING TELECOMMUNICATIONS MARKETS FOR TARGETED SALES:

A world’s top-5 telecommunications and media company hired our services to review afresh all segments in the business and consumer markets given changes due to combination of landline, mobile, multimedia, and service offerings. This started as a marketing exercise but was extended to include the development of targeted sales strategies for the identified high-value segments in specific geographical regions.

SYNTHESIZING CUSTOMER INTERACTION & OPERATIONS PROCESSES:

For one of the world’s top-5 energy companies, we analyzed the entire B2B methods and procedures that spanned across finance, marketing, sales, and supply chain. Synthesizing information and decision needs of these 4 functions, we designed a simplified process and introduced automation for routine/redundant paperwork. Within 8 months, the process efficiencies rose by 70%, paperwork was reduced by 85%, customer flows enhanced by 250%, and information provision to the 4 functions was instantaneous, expediting executive support and competitive preemption.

TURBOCHARGING REVENUE EXPANSION STRATEGY:

A Global-1000 company, suffering from declining sales despite its new business strategy (developed by another consultancy), utilized our services to review revenue expansion strategies emanating out of the business strategy and advise executives on how to turbocharge the sales processes. Our integrated sales roadmaps, developed by market-product segments, was developed within 4 months and implemented within 6 months to support the business strategy.

ARCHITECTING SALES & SERVICE PROCESSES:

For a manufacturing firm losing market share, we architected an integrated sales and service process and redesigned the sales organization. We also established account management systems that identified specific responsibilities for (and measured profitability of) large customers. Using Service Dynamics™, we recommended a streamlined flow of products, services, and contract renewals.

DEVELOPING & IMPLEMENTING A PEOPLE SYSTEM FOR A FAST-GROWTH COMPANY:

For a fast-growth generic pharmaceutical company, we developed and implemented a dynamic people system that spanned all people matters as the key resources of the company. This included talent acquisition, cultivation, retention, succession, and branding that attracted the right people to the company. Implemented within 14 months, this project reduced turnover down to 2%, enhanced morale, increased teamwork, and took the company to the next level, doubling it over the following 3 years.

DEVELOPING BUSINESS CASES FOR STRATEGIC DECISION-MAKING:

For an entrepreneurial business, we analyzed their offerings and mapped onto the appropriate markets. The small company had a stellar product line being pitched broadly and indiscriminately. By developing business cases for product-market mixes, we helped the client adopt targeted selling and also reassess the markets by technology maturity.

DESIGNING & IMPLEMENTING A DYNAMIC SOURCING STRATEGY:

In a Global-1000 company, we assisted in redesigning its sourcing strategy, reducing suppliers to those with high-reliability and optimizing supply planning based on business dynamics modeling adjusting multiple demand profiles. At the core was a model we created with client management so they can routinely use it for up/down-stream planning; it shifted the company’s operations philosophy from just-in-case to just-in-time. This cut inventory costs by 40% and transportation costs by 30%, fundamentally improved supplier performance, and cut company paperwork overtime to zero.

REDESIGNING REALISTIC PROJECT DYNAMICS DECISION PROCESSES:

A complex project in a Fortune-100 company with 50,000 hours of budgeted efforts and an established schedule developed quality issues and execution challenges. We redesigned their project decision processes by including project dynamics and uncertainties, recovering our client’s investments. The new, dynamic processes resulted in a drastic reduction of rework and impact of the uncertainties, 15-20% abatement of development costs, 10% gain on the timeline, and significant improvements in quality of output, without any burnout effects.

REPLACING CLASSICAL DECISION-MAKING WITH DYNAMIC STRATEGY:

A large bottled drinking water business growing steadily started losing money while using its classical strategy from the prior years. Additionally, economic conditions and market competition slowed their growth. We developed a fresh, dynamic strategy that provided deep understanding of their internal slowdown and external challenges, then introducing scenarios to fix their problems and providing resilience. It included a confluence of changes in sourcing and supply management, training sales teams, planning capacity, and replacing classical management approaches with fresh decision making. Our client saw a quick turnaround, regaining specific regional market shares and profits, and readying sales teams for multiple market scenarios.

Talent Development

OUTCOMES OF CONFLUCORE TALENT DEVELOPMENT & TRAINING PROGRAMS

We advance and enhance the capabilities of our clients practically. Three principal methods for these include:

  • Offering tailored courses, seminars, and workshops designed and delivered with specific goals, objectives, curricula, practice materials, and follow-ups as desired by our clients.
  • Including learning transfer sessions within clients’ consulting projects by building hands-on briefing sessions with identified talents at appropriate junctures.
  • Facilitating executive summits and offsite meetings with specific agendas (strategy sessions, inter-functional collaboration, brainstorming/problem-solving, etc.) set by the Board or executives.

We fortify all our talent development and training programs by judiciously including the three components of learning:

  1. Knowledge updating
  2. Skill building
  3. Attitude coaching

Additionally, we structure these learning components by selecting one or more of the most appropriate processes for delivery enrichment:

  • Andragogy
  • Pedagogy
  • Synergogy

Our talent development and training programs have resulted in multiple outcomes validated by our clients as enhancing:

  1. Bonding & Teamwork
  2. Commitment
  3. Creative ideas
  4. Effectiveness
  5. Efficiencies
  6. Loyalty
  7. Morale
  8. Productivity
  9. Quality talent selection and retention

A short sample of our many offerings and experience in talent development and training follows.
[For a specific program, please contact us to discuss details].

THINKING SKILLS FOR EXECUTIVES:

Our seminar consolidates the 9 thinking skills that every executive must practice to lead business. From causal, closed-loop thinking to dynamic, operational thinking, clients develop expertise in important skills to make crucial decisions and solve complex problems. This seminar is designed around our deeply-held belief of Leading Thought ↔ Leading Business.

ENHANCING MANAGERIAL CAPABILITIES:

This workshop engages managers and executives in exercises that equip them with key capabilities in 3 dimensions of managerial work. The importance of interactions across business logic, management science, and psychology are highlighted. A confluence factor for each participant and department emerge, with a discussion on areas for improvement.

BECOMING THE LEADER INTEGRATOR®:

Based on the best-selling The Leader Integrator, this workshop builds skills to integrate across departments, functions, and alliances. It provides an integration factor which can be monitored on a continual basis for improvement. It helps individual talent move from “me” to “we” and fosters “deliberate diversity” to expand their perceptions and connect with multiple cultures and functions. The relationship between these skills and the success of the company is also covered.

ENHANCING SERVICE QUALITY:

Based on our extensive field research and fundamental development of Service DynamicsTM, this is a series of short workshops that develop organizational talent serving clients and customers at the “front-end” as well as in other parts of the organization. The continuity of service excellence is emphasized and individual and team roadmaps are developed/updated for implementation and measurement.

MEETING METAPHORS©:

We use metaphors a lot in organizations as these are the reflections of our mental models. Understanding the principles of metaphor usage, the 9 types of metaphors influencing business decisions, and the impact of changing metaphors are explored. Participants leave with their own metaphors and those for their priority 2-3 projects.

BOARDS & CYBER-VULNERABILITY:

A series of half-day seminars for Board Members, and executives who work with Boards, to continually advance their understanding of cyber- and data- vulnerabilities, acquire frameworks for policy-making, create response plans, and manage their exposure risks. Our SIGOMO™ approach is used to examine the broad swath of value chain of a company and its interdependent issues.

BUSINESS DYNAMICS FOR MANAGEMENT:

Business leaders must understand complex business processes and interconnected organizational issues to make superior decisions, improve execution, and produce results. Business Dynamics is a game-changing approach to realizing these effects and develops mental and simulation models that become fundamental to making differentiated strategies.

BUILDING STRATEGIC ACCOUNT NAVIGATOR:

Designed for marketing and sales teams, this workshop develops roadmaps for Strategic Accounts of a business by market sector. It applies our proprietary approaches to identifying and continually evaluating changing markets to gain greater shares in the segments of the company’s strategic choice. An advanced workshop delves deeper into New Product Development where the emerging needs of clients and customers embed a feedback to targeted marketing offerings. Account Navigators have been developed for a wide variety of industries.

STRATEGY SUMMITS:

We have helped design the structure and process of strategic summits and facilitated offsite as well as boardroom meetings to develop business strategies, corporate strategies, functional strategies, and implementable roadmaps that deliver on these strategies and plans. We have also facilitated and periodic performance assessments emanating out of these summits. When combined with a consulting project, we also build a simulation experience for testing a variety of scenarios and management options.

DEVELOPING INDUSTRY MARKETING SKILLS:

Designed for developing the knowledge and skills of marketing and sales managers and executives in industry-focused packaging and solutions. This program enables salespeople to engage in deeply meaningful discussions with their customers to provide them competitive advantage. It also covers strategic partnering to facilitate the forming of a high-performing sales organization and development of long-term account plans. Emphasis is on reorienting to clients’ customers to catalyze their serving these customers for rapid deployment of existing products.

CULTURE DYNAMICS©:

One of our originally researched flagship offerings, this program builds a dynamic understanding of the cultural goings on in a client’s organization. We survey the organization based on our proprietary questions and develop a dynamic picture with the participants. In an interactive manner, we explore their various cultural options and help them shape their desired cultural content and framework. After sharing this with the client organization, their executives develop “cultural competence” and can continue to use the insights on their own and take these to implementation.

LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT OF PARTNERS IN MANAGEMENT SERVICES FIRM:

For a Top-3 global Accounting, Auditing, and Consultancy firm, we developed and delivered training modules to their partners on leadership and conflict management which helped them interact deeply with their clients, leverage conflict – local and virtual – as an opportunity for mutual development, and win strategic clients. Parts of these modules also included elements of meeting management and developing roadmaps for implementation handover.

LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT OF PARTNERS IN MANAGEMENT SERVICES FIRM:

For a Top-3 global Accounting, Auditing, and Consultancy firm, we developed and delivered training modules to their partners on leadership and conflict management which helped them interact deeply with their clients, leverage conflict as an opportunity for mutual development, support peer-to-peer learning, and win strategic clients. Parts of these modules also included elements of meeting management and developing roadmaps for implementation handover.

BUILDING ONE CULTURE WITH DIVERSITY:

In this 21st century, we have diversity of sorts: age groups, cultural upbringings, educational backgrounds, national origins, professional practices, sexual orientations, and more. Each of these can be helpful or hurtful, depending on how an organization defines, develops, and continues its culture. For example, the onboarding and integration of 4 workplace generations – silent, baby boomers, generation Xers, generation Ys – provides both challenge and opportunity. But few organizations are able to create a confluence combining their respective strengths, core values, and communication preferences. Our program provides hands-on exercises to discover these and learn ways to live together and respect each other in real-time leadership journeys.

BUILDING A FINANCE TEAM:

A 7-star hotel and resort hired us to design and facilitate an Integrated Finance Team across the various departments and regions they operated in. The growth of this esteemed organization was sound and they used the opportunity to explore the “hidden issues” to build a common strategy and implementation plan to take it to the next level. A 3-day program, chaired by the CFO, was participated by SVPs, VPs, and AVPs from all regions and their finance functional teams, where we facilitated their teambuilding. We also individually coached these executives in their change agendas.

ESTABLISHING & RUNNING CORPORATE SIMLABS:

Corporate Learning Centers (CLCs) are the training and development systems of companies who run these themselves and cater to specialized knowledge transfer and specific skills building. Organizing the CLCs most effectively, building their agendas and methods, and assessing their effectiveness are part of internal management of these companies. We have assisted companies of several sizes in enhancing the effectiveness of their CLCs (they may use different terms for these, like: onboarding hubs, resource development Clusters, training centers, and the like).

AMERICAN CULTURE FOR NON-U.S. NATIVES:

We organize English as a Second Language and American Business Cultural Sensitivity training programs on special requests for companies headquartered in other countries/cultures and either hiring or relocating non-natives to the U.S. It is crucial to the foreign employees that they succeed in the U.S. and are comfortable with the dynamic work environment. Such programs surely enhance the performance of non-natives in the U.S. These programs are part-time, usually conducted for half-day sessions over several weeks and also involve social interaction.