Nnanna Anyanwu is a partner and managing director of The Alpharosso Consulting (TAC) which was set up in 2016 to provide customer-centric solutions to the myriad of challenges being faced by businesses. In this interview with TELIAT SULE and CHIJIOKE ONYEOGUBALU, he spoke about trends in the industry and how the firm has fared so far. Excerpts:
How did this business get established, and, how has the journey been?
The Alpharosso Consulting (TAC) was founded in 2016 and is in its 6th year of operation. The journey has been amazing; we have had the opportunity to serve clients across the EMEA and APAC regions. As a firm, we have been through different phases of our growth journey. Initially, we focused only on strategy, operations and implementation focused projects. However, due to emerging issues within the regions we served, TAC morphed into four subsidiaries in 2019.
These are the TAC that focuses on delivering management consulting services; TES which focuses on talent management issues for developing economies; CEP that focused on capacity enhancement and human capital development, and TDA that focuses on big data analytics and helping developing countries attain economic development through data analytics.
Each of these business units has become more targeted in how we serve and support clients in our regions of interest. For instance, TAC has delivered on average double digits returns on investment for clients that we served. Some clients have achieved as much as 200percent revenue growth post-implementation, and our biggest client achieved US$1bn in new market revenues.
TES on the other hand has helped clients embed a proprietary performance management system called TL-2, which is the most holistic approach to talent management. As a result, clients have been able to better recruit and retain employees.
CEP recently delivered close to 50 customized training for organizations, addressing multidisciplinary and technical training gaps. CEP engages clients by matching their inside-out views on capability needs against our outside-in views, as a result, our training programs are better linked to core issues, and more relevant to delivering overall performance improvement.
Long before COVID and bird flu hit Africa, TDA using big data analytics, simulated scenarios of the impact of various forms of pandemics and crisis on FDI flows, economic development, businesses, employees etc., in developing countries. Our models are constantly being refined to help clients make sense of the data, better anticipate risks and deploy mitigations that are constantly updated in response to risks.
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Long before COVID and bird flu hit Africa, TDA using big data analytics, simulated scenarios of the impact of various forms of pandemics and crisis on FDI flows, economic development, businesses, employees etc
Despite the challenges faced due to COVID, we have remained connected with our clients, and we have worked together with these clients in other to continue to win. TAC supported clients are better positioned to win and thrive in this new normal. In response to shared loyalty, we have continued to unlock new ways to serve and support our clients. Hence, in 2022, TAC will be undergoing further expansion, which will be announced shortly.
2020 was a particularly challenging year for most businesses due to the Covid-19 pandemic. How were you able to surmount the challenges?
The success of TAC has been first and foremost by the mercies of God, and by the unflinching support and commitment shared by TAC and its clients. We worked with clients to unlock the best ways to continue to serve and support them, we stayed with clients in “their darkest moments”, holding their hands and reassuring them, we made sacrifices to enable clients get back on their feet, and on one occasion the firm voted to re-inject capital to help a client come out of a difficult situation.
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In response to “sticking it” with our clients, they rewarded TAC with their loyalty, and this loyalty helped TAC thrive. In a self-driven world, true acts of selfless service, never go unrewarded. I guess the best way to say it, is that TAC surmounted its challenges not simply based on the robustness of our strategy, but on the reciprocity of our clients, and the sense of shared destiny we share.
As we unfold our plans for 2022 and launch our new subsidiaries, I think all of what will be launched will be TAC’s way of thanking regions, countries and clients for their faith in us, and their continued support of our growth. And as I mentioned before, despite the challenges faced due to COVID, we strived to stay relevant to our clients and will be undergoing further expansion, which will be announced shortly.
What has been the success level of TAC as against targets that have been previously set?
The Alpharosso Consulting (TAC) and its subsidiaries have been quite successful. Our size and style of engagements mean we can only take on a number of clients annually. Since each of our engagements lasts a minimum of 6-9 months. I guess our first success is getting to know our clients in a personal way, and sharing their concerns and passions for the organizations. Now some people may not consider this a real success, but at TAC it is one of our core metrics for measuring whether or not a project was a success. We build and retain relationships.
One of our promises to private sector clients has been we can deliver double-digit improvements in profitability, and to date, TAC has at the minimum, delivered 13 percent after revenue and cost optimization efforts. We have worked on Asia to Africa FDI flows focused on unlocking increased FDI influx for the African continent. TAC has helped increase access to finance for women and youth-owned businesses in the ECOWAS region. Through our sales and marketing engagements we have delivered around US$1bn in sales revenue growth for our larger clients, and working with MSMEs, we have delivered around N4bn since 2016.
Internally, as a business, we are confident in our growth prospects and part of our expansion plans will be focused on Eastern and Southern Africa by 2022. This will be reinforced with the launch of our new subsidiaries, and service lines. Further details will be announced in 2022.
Who is your target clientele?
The Alpharosso Consulting (TAC) was set up to serve and support clients in developing regions, with real and complex challenges, who needed management consulting firms that could develop strategies at a BCG or McKinsey level, but go beyond and deliver real results at a micro-level.
TAC serves across private, public and not-for-profit sectors in EMEA and APAC regions. The clients we target are passionate about holistic results, capacity enhancement and collaborating to solving their problems, rather than an independent approach which sometimes imposed solutions to their challenges, which they are responsible for and have to drive even if they have no buy-in. Clients who turn to TAC typically have had poor experiences working with consulting firms that over promise and under deliver.
They appreciate that our fees are linked to results, and we stick around to deliver on our promises. Our service experience includes these sectors: FMCGs, energy, banking, private equity, public sector, not-for-profits, hospitality, industrial goods, manufacturing, logistics, communications and media, insurance, other finance, industrial and consumer goods, retail and hospitality, SMEs and family businesses, transport, and agribusiness.
We serve clients at different stages of their businesses. For example, we serve start-ups, distressed businesses, MSMEs, multinationals etc., on topics such as spin-offs, carve-outs, M&As, gaining business advantage; strategy; large scale project management; logistics; operations; sales & marketing; leadership & organization; business growth; and transformations etc.
What are the macros challenges facing the consulting industry?
Whilst there are many challenges in Nigeria, I will focus on two key macro challenges facing the Nigerian consulting industry. The first is the evolving client behaviour and rising levels of new competition. Clients are becoming more demanding. They expect more value, higher quality of outputs, and a quicker turnaround time.
In recent times, clients tend to spread the scope of their work across different firms, depending on their core specialties. Furthermore, driven by innovative new technologies, the number of new players entering the consulting market is increasing. These boutique and specialist firms along with independent or freelance consultants are reshaping the industry.
Also, the rise of automation and increasing access to online data and models, is helping most clients handle more of their challenges internally, and reduces the need to outsource services. And with the rise of artificial intelligence, more forms of consulting services will become automated.
The second point is the shrinking profitability and increasing project complexity. Clients have more power today than in the past, and are leveraging this power to demand greater value and flexibility at lower prices, and as a result, most consulting firms are increasingly competing on costs to win new businesses, which are squeezing the margins. In addition to lower margins, consulting firms are faced with Nigeria’s increasingly complex macro-environment.
The nature of the Nigerian consulting industry adds to the problem, as firms are faced with the challenge of delivering projects faster, more efficiently and on tighter budgets, without compromising customer satisfaction. In a dynamic data environment, clients are gaining better insight into projects and demanding more control, and leveraging technology, they are able to gain instant access to information on the go. Meaning you can no longer hide behind “fancy suits and slides”, you have to deliver the goods.
