Making an Exhibition of Ourselves!

First venture into taking an exhibition stand for our newly formed consultancy.

Between us my colleagues and I at JEM Retail Consultants have over 100 years of experience gained with 20 retail organisations but as individuals have normally gained new contracts via fairly conventional routes – usually our personal networks or through agencies.

Although we have now worked together on 4 separate occasions this is our first experience of trying to find a contract as a Consultancy and we felt that we needed to market our services at an exhibition in order to make some new contacts and promote the services we can offer.

So where to go?
The first opportunity we chose was the Retail Week Technology Summit being held in London on the 25th / 26th September 2013. This was partly influenced by helping to win the Supply Chain Excellence Award hosted by Retail Week but we chose it mostly because it will be attended by part of our target audience: CIO’s and IT Directors from top retailers.

Retail Week Technology Summit: www.retailtechsummit.com

Next was the Retail Business Technology Expo being held at Earl’s Court on the 11th / 12th March 2014. This is expected to attract over 9,000 visitors taking advantage of the 300 exhibition stands and the networking opportunities that will be provided.

Great! Decision made but what else do we need? The most obvious thing was a display stand and fortunately Sara from Creative Remedy who developed our website for us was on hand to do the design drawing from the branding she created for the web. Next were pens, packets of mints and printed brochures.

I think it is fair to say that this has taken rather more organising than I had anticipated when we started but we are looking forward to the experience and the opportunity to make new contacts.

We would certainly be interested to hear from anyone who has experience of exhibiting at this type of event, particularly if there are any other venues they would suggest.


Written by Mike Gamble: www.jemconsultants.co.uk

In Search of a Third Way

In these times of austerity is there an alternative to completing your change programme using either internal resources or blue chip consultants?

 

As an expanding retailer you have a 3-5 year strategy for growth. You recognise that the company’s infrastructure, processes and even organisational structure will not support further expansion. To deliver the company’s strategy you need an approach that will both reduce risk and maintain business continuity throughout.  So where do you go for help?

Blue chip consultancies have many advantages, amongst them being a high level of expertise and unlimited resource to support the difficult decisions to be taken. The consultants you work with are very credible and have the ability to engage with your team.

This reassurance may come at a high price if your identity gets lost in the corporate machine with the risk that the people you rely on feel disenfranchised by the experience reducing skills transfer and motivation.

Using internal resource is an attractive financial proposition however are they not already fully employed? Over stretching the team could jeopardise business continuity and may increase the programme length and delay benefits realisation. There is also a risk that they may lack some of the required project and programme management skills.

So can a smaller, made to measure consultancy firm provide the best of all worlds? They can supply the expertise, knowledge and skills you would expect of consultants but will integrate with your team and culture. Having an established relationship with each other means that they can get to work quickly on the key tasks and using their experience to flexibly combine consultancy with interim line management keeps costs down and adds maximum value while delivering the agreed strategy and transferring skills to your team.

Any one, or in fact any combination, of the above approaches may be right for you but working with a made to measure consultancy may be the most successful way of combining the best of each, or at least avoiding the worst of the pitfalls.

Written by Mike Gamble: www.jemconsultants.co.uk