Challenging the business consultancy status quo
New Cambridge-based advisory firm brings decades of Big 4 experience to contribute to regional Phenomenon
CAMBRIDGE (26th February 2018) –
There’s a new game-changer to Cambridge businesses and it isn’t bound by industry or technology. Catering to the most ambitious scale-ups to those established industry heavyweights, this team of innovative forward-thinkers is ready to shake things up.
Cambridge Advisory Partners (CAP) is a boutique practice of highly-experienced consulting partners who work with entrepreneurs to accelerate business growth and routinely win in the market. They’ve been quietly perfecting their craft since setting up in 2017, but now CAP is ready to take the Cambridge business world by storm, opening eyes and minds to unimaginable possibilities. CAP is all about creating industry leaders through differentiation and agile opportunism.
CAP Managing Partner Stephen Warburton said,
“Having led Big 4 consultancy businesses for as long as I have, I could see a better way of working and with Cambridge Advisory Partners I have an excellent team who all share the view of looking for answers where different industries collide, and in the spaces in between.”
Cambridge is a hub of knowledge and innovation, but amongst its expertise opportunities are missed to turn them into business strategies due to a lack of overview. CAP is addressing this problem with its industry and technological neutrality, and distributed network of international experience in various capacities.
In their new approach to consulting, CAP wants to get to the very essence of business consultancy in the ever-connected digital society we live in. The art of going slow to go fast, a part of the Business Growth Paradox they subscribe to, is a difficult one to master but as a team of experts CAP knows its strengths and plays to them unashamedly.
ABOUT CAMBRIDGE ADVISORY PARTNERS
CAP is a boutique practice of highly-experienced consulting partners comfortable with success and accustomed to ensuring clients accelerate business growth and secure market leadership.
CAP is all about creating industry leaders, ensuring our clients achieve significant differentiation and secure unrivalled market leadership, and then driving home that advantage.
CAP knows that when the most relevant insights are assembled, shared and challenged from multiple perspectives, the best opportunities and outcomes will emerge. CAP knows this is best achieved when you harness both behavioural drivers and technology differentiators to truly motivate, and when you are unbiased towards industry norms and perceived wisdom.
Are you wondering if we can do this for your business? If yes, please contact us and we'll be happy to help.
Our year in review
For us, 2017 will forever be remembered as the year that Cambridge Advisory Partners was founded. A year of seriously hard work but rewarding in ways we could never have expected. The creation not just of an organisation, but the founding of a completely new way of working, embracing diversity because it makes us whole, exploring different because that’s where development thrives and creating collaborative systems that morph and evolve.
By February 2017, we had the nucleus of a vision. By March the leadership team was emerging and in May we were officially formed. The energy was immense and the team dynamics truly creative. We had a web site up and running within a month and, three months ahead of plan, we were delivering engagements. It can be honestly said that across three of the “Big 4” partnerships, nothing has been so exhilarating, so real and so meaningful.
By the start of September we had signed a lease on new office space and by the end we were delivering engagements in Cambridge and London for SMEs through to FTSE 100s. We were doing it through Specialists, experts in their own fields, each committed to giving practical, pragmatic advice that was always advancing through a commitment to continuous development. Not the “repeatable” propositions that are the domain of large scale consultancies, but tailored, partner led, targeted interventions that got to the heart of matters without delay.
In October the concept of “consultancy repurposed” was gathering pace and after our mid-year partner strategy review in November, we concluded that we needed to redevelop our website to deliver the full #ConsultancyRepurposed experience. The focus for December was developing our “capability” offer for earlier stage growth companies.
So, roll on January and 2018 for more momentous developments here at Cambridge Advisory Partners! If you want to be part of our journey then let us know!
A transformative view
With a vision to challenge the Consultancy status quo, we aim to redefine how our clients achieve their business outcomes, creating greater value sooner and in ways that are difficult to replicate.
#ConsultancyRepurposed©
CAP knows that when the most relevant insights are assembled, shared and challenged from multiple perspectives, the best opportunities and outcomes will emerge. We do not re-invent the wheel unnecessarily, but instead use a range of techniques to capture, analyse and repurpose this breadth of insight, looking at where worlds collide and also the gaps between. A small but perfectly formed suite of approaches enhanced exponentially by perspective. Creative thinking across industry boundaries to give our clients transformational results, quickly. We have the inside-the-box thinking of the big consultancies, but the unique ability to deliver outside-the-box thinking without constraints.
#BusinessGrowthParadox©
When we look to grow and scale organisations, we talk about go slow to go fast. By this we mean helping businesses to move with speed, but importantly to get the right building blocks in place from the outset, #SettingUpForSuccess. This is an important part of business growth and we are proud to work as a critical friend to help challenge, resource and commission your path.
#UniqueContribution© and #SettingUpForSuccess
Entrepreneurs by their very nature are dynamic able individuals, capable of doing most things that they put their mind to. But just because they can do something, it does not mean they should do it, especially if it stops them from doing what only they can do. Equally, in larger organisations time is often wasted and poor decisions made where there is insufficient consideration of who or where it’s best to take a decision, where delegated authority is inappropriate or where the clarity of the “ask” is missing. Our #UniqueContribution© test addresses each of these concerns, as well as applying a behavioural layer to prevent people becoming overwhelmed.
We will help you to stop doing what others can do equally well and give you the time back to be unique. We know how to ask the right questions to get the right answers and we do it in an interesting and engaging way.
#KillingComplexity
How often does that ‘quick fix’ or ‘workaround’ become embedded? How many of those “but it won’t take a minute” compromises become the new norm? Add these together, layer upon layer, and you rapidly get to ways of working that are compromised in so many ways; unnecessary complexity. The impact on profitability is obvious, the impact on people is often catastrophic and your ability to comply efficiently with regulation, devastating.
At the heart of what we do is #KillingComplexity©. Technology itself (inside the box) may be extremely complicated and intricate, but there is never a good reason why any organisation’s processes need to be complex. A well thought through operating model, which is simple to operate yet “genius” to design, is the nirvana. And this is what we do.
Outcome focus is essential. This means being clear on what is to be achieved and open to the ways in which that is delivered. It needs to recognise the #UniqueContribution© of individuals and refuse to compromise on optimising these or their motivational drivers. Done well, this releases huge amounts of untapped potential, exponentially increases productivity and associated profitability, whilst at the same time eliminates untold levels of stress. We call it #KillingComplexity©.
For a different approach, come and talk to us and be part of the change.
Contributing to The Cambridge Phenomenon
Our modus operandi is to be the breathing embodiment of the Cambridge cluster. We’ve embraced the well documented Cambridge Phenomenon, paying it forward where we can and sharing selflessly.
Part of the phenomenon’s success is to engage academia and entrepreneurship and be able to translate opportunities into real world strategies, and it is here we are playing a pivotal role:
- We provide access to a distributed network of partners who have worked internationally in companies of all sizes
- With many of our home-grown SME’s destined to be unicorns of the future, we help articulate the journey from start-up to industry-leading business and co-develop an achievable and supported route map
- We actively build initiatives to connect growth businesses with exceptional executives, relevant communities and complimentary organisations looking to embrace new challenges
Find out more about our commitment to Cambridge.
Why Cambridge Advisory Partners?
CAP is all about creating industry leaders, ensuring clients achieve significant differentiation and secure unrivalled market position, and then driving home that advantage.
We don’t accept that it’s ever enough to merely survive, and we only work with clients with a burning desire to thrive.
We are expert practitioners in the #BusinessGrowthParadox© of going slow to go fast, believe in #KillingComplexity© and utilise everyone’s #UniqueContribution©. Our overarching approach is #ConsultancyRepurposed© - to define the very essence of business consultancy in the connected digital society.
CAP knows that when the most relevant insights are assembled, shared and challenged from multiple perspectives, the best opportunities and outcomes will emerge.
We help you achieve this with pace and energy, embracing lateral thinking and delivering practical and sustainable solutions in an ethical way, always focussing on the outcome.
CAP knows this is best achieved when you harness both behavioural drivers and technology differentiators to truly motivate, and when you are unbiased towards industry norms and perceived wisdom.
We will not compromise on quality. We will never commit to more than our partners can oversee and we see our greatest abilities in being able to understand your business more clearly, identify opportunities more quickly and unlock the greatest realisable value.
To join our exciting client base, let's discuss how we can work with you.
A strong, stable and dynamic base
An U12 cricket squad and business. They’re more alike than you think. The success this season of this group of able, but not unnaturally talented, individuals can be attributed to the same skills and approaches used to consistently create successful businesses.
This team has always been good. It has always performed well but it often lacked belief and consistency. Over the course of the last 12 months however, it has won every match it has played and, in the course of that, won both the winter indoor league and the main summer league. No mean achievement. So, what has brought about the change?
This team does not rely on just one or two players, it understands that mistakes happen. It accepts that no one makes them on purpose. It also knows that when something doesn’t go to plan, the player(s) concerned know it and feel it more than anyone and don’t need to be told they got it wrong or what they should have done. This team is supportive, understands it’s strengths and looks to execute against them. It also has fun and finds ways to enjoy the time it has together, exactly what a good business should do.
An experienced cricketing coach has a number of tools in their kitbag:
- Instruct
- Demonstrate
- Analyse
- Observe
- Listen
- Question (and discuss)
- Silence
In the cricket team the balance of these tools has changed over time and, as players have taken greater personal responsibility for their own growth, results have improved.
As a consequence, the coach takes a facilitator’s role, creating an environment that allows the team to succeed, shape its own future and defines its ambition. The coach helps it go further, faster and more consistently. Effectively, using tools 4 - 7 much more.
So just as the team’s mantra of “strong, stable, dynamic base” works in junior cricket, so it will in business. Do you agree? Let us know!
Our unique approach at CAP
CAP knows its strengths and unashamedly plays to them, and them alone. We deliver three types of assignment:
- Strategy and target operating model
- Governance, risk and compliance
- Operational effectiveness and supply chain optimisation
These are our “disciplines” and our partners are each renowned experts in these fields.
Where CAP is truly unique and where it defines #ConsultancyRepurposed© is its application of four inextricably linked “perspectives”:
- User and customer experience
- Digital and data
- Organisational development and behaviours
- Commercial
But, unlike others, we:
- Are industry agnostic, focusing on outcomes and how they are best achieved, regardless of sector
- Secure insights through combining “big data”, social/business media (inc. discussion forums), relevant networks and bespoke research
- Utilise opensource tools and techniques, but creatively, in ways others have yet to imagine
- Continuously look at where disparate worlds collide and where opportunities to re-define the accepted norm exist
For CAP, simply looking to “catch up” through benchmarking-led approaches is never enough. Our approach goes beyond this and ensures we set our clients apart from their competitors, delivering growth and scale, stability and progress, and transformation and market leadership.
Our disciplines
Strategy and target operating models
Why change unless you want to be the best? We see target operating model work as an opportunity for transformation. Whether you want to grow or evolve, we will define a strategy and ways of working to take you to industry leadership, allowing both differentiation and longer-term cost leadership to re-define your industry’s benchmark standard of excellence.
Operational effectiveness and supply chains
#KillingComplexity© is one of our mantras. With experience of working with owners on scaling for growth, successful businesses ready for listing, or established businesses re-inventing to take advantage of technology and market advances, we have the credentials you need. We have an intense focus on playing to strengths, finding the #UniqueContribution© and eliminating “time theft”. Our clients spend more time doing the things that differentiate them. Going faster because they partner with others who are specialists in their own domain. And having access to greater opportunities because they see the value in collaboration.
Governance, risk and compliance
There is nothing our team doesn’t know about this area. Whether you’re after compliance review or addressing governance with game changing thinking around flat structure leadership, we have the experience to make a positive impact. And we always ensure that more relevant insight is created at less cost with significantly less disruption.
Perspectives
Our value goes well beyond our finely tuned, expert-led discipline expertise. How we deliver this using our unique perspectives is transformational. We invest heavily in creating these perspectives, following the latest thinking, engaging in and leading the most relevant debates and creating forums for collaboration across sector and functional boundaries to tease out the very best ways for our clients to deliver their required outcomes; but we don’t merely replicate what others have done, we translate, re-imagine and repurpose to create sources of sustainable competitive advantage.
Customer and user experience
This perspective looks to help our clients optimise how they serve their customers and clients, understanding what customers are looking for, what they value and are prepared to pay for, how they prefer to interact, and the true nature and respective needs of the customer provider relationship. Fail to deliver what the customer needs and there will be no market. Over deliver where there is no perceived value and you’re incurring unnecessary cost and affording competitors cost advantage.
Digital and data
The world we live in is increasingly digitising and often in ways that we couldn’t have imagined even a few years ago. This pace of change is set to increase with AI, distributed privacy and big data gathering momentum. This perspective analyses how our clients can take advantage, not just of these developments, but also from the inherent value in its intrinsic data sets and how it can drive advantage (including “built in” compliance) from a well organised data architecture. Such is the importance of this area that not only does CAP have its own research capability, but it also has active partnerships with researchers in the university and beyond.
Organisational development
Whilst the impact of AI cannot be underestimated, people remain one of the greatest assets a company has. Aligned and motivated, it will feel like there is nothing that can’t be achieved. Without this, it’s always going to be a tougher ride. Our partners are passionate about people and people development, both at an individual and system level, and have worked with some of the largest talent management companies around. We have a network of specialists from numerous fields including, for example, psychologists, NLP master practitioners and motivation scientist. We have access to a suite of tools ranging from motivational maps through to resilience and mental toughness, which we routinely deploy to add a degree of richness that other strategy consultancies find hard to match.
Commercial
#KillingComplexity© and the #BusinessGrowthParadox© are at the heart of what we think about. Creating the environment where people and organisations play to their strengths, killing the “theft” of valuable time is essential, collaborating vs competing, and taking the right “Make vs Buy” decisions without ego because it is the right thing to do. Helping clients understand which assets are core and how they can be monetised in ways that they had never thought of is of very significant value, and an area of strength for CAP. Within our team we have accountants, lawyers, entrepreneurs, scientists and operations directors who are each passionate about discovering increasingly effective commercial models and are each committed to continuous learning.
Come and talk to us to understand how our disciplines and perspectives can help make your business unique!
Being clear on our values
Our foundation at CAP is based on values, principles and ways of working that we will not compromise on. Only those who are wholeheartedly committed to these can be part of the CAP family.
Our values
- We act ethically and with humanity, operating with honesty, transparency and integrity
- We contribute to our people, clients and communities, using our talents and resources to add value and build sustainable futures
Our principles
- We lead by example and actively support each other
- We act in the best interests of our people, clients and communities, being transparent in our actions and decisions
- We conduct our personal and professional lives in line with our ethics and professional standing
- We are inquisitive, behaviourally curious and committed to lifelong learning
- Client work will always be partner-led
- We encapsulate the Cambridge identity in our work and philosophy, seeking innovation, collaboration, inclusion, curiosity, balance and diversity
Our clients will experience us as
- Interested, investigative, passionate and innovative – we will bring all our curiosity and available talents to each client
- Reliable, results-driven, adding value and behaving ethically – we will do the right thing even if that is difficult, including telling you if we are not the right fit
- Acting with integrity, humanity and empathy – we are not here to judge, we are here to help
Is this what you would like from your business partner? If so please contact us today.