Orange County’s management consultants are being tapped to help clients spend their dollars—albeit prudently—to spur growth.
It’s a marked change from a year ago, when local consulting firms were helping their clients pare down and cut costs.
“Most of the business leaders we are working with appear to be focusing on growth opportunities, rather than dealing with the myriad issues that were related to the financial meltdown,” said Brian Goodman, senior practice leader for the legal and regulatory practice at Resources Connection Inc. in Costa Mesa. “While they are much more optimistic today than they were a year ago, they continue to be cautious and take more time to move forward with projects and initiatives.”
At this stage in the recovery, these same clients slowly are loosening their purse strings.
Technology spending is seeing a bit of resurgence after a dismal 2009, when companies put the brakes on buying computers, servers, software and telecommunications gear.
“A year ago, people were trying to cut back and not spend money,” said Michelle Meisels, senior vice president of the Southern California region of Dallas-based Hitachi Consulting Corp., a unit of Japan’s Hitachi Ltd. “As the market’s picking up, people are starting to put together their five-year plans and their road maps for information technology.”
Hitachi, which is a tech-focused consulting firm with some 120 people in its Irvine office, is seeing “more IT strategy work,” Meisels said.
A big part of its recent business is making long-term plans to help companies upgrade or replace their technology.
“Companies held back from spending money in terms of updating their technology, and are now catching up,” she said. “They are either replacing what they’ve got or they are upgrading.”
Hitachi is charting unexplored territory this year with a practice area dubbed environmental sustainability solutions. The idea is to consult with companies who are looking to go green with more eco-friendly business models.
It’s also set to help companies cut costs and get into compliance with Environmental Protection Agency rules and other standards.
“We’ve helped companies of varied backgrounds save money, reduce their overall environmental impact and create more corporate value for their mission and brand,” said Todd Price, who heads the new green practice.
Hitachi’s consultants are being asked more often to demonstrate upfront the return on investment for any kind of spending—more so than before the downturn.
“Our clients still are conservative in terms of spending the dollars and we find ourselves doing more ROI studies,” Meisels said. “We have to really go back and justify it to the board to spend the money.”
Hitachi also is seeing demand for outsourcing technology services.
“This isn’t a new trend, but clients are starting to outsource from a tech perspective for things like the help desk,” she said.
Business intelligence—in the form of specialized software that crunches data—is a biggie for management consultants’ clients.
“Companies are looking to get better visibility into their data to make better business decisions,” Meisels said. “It’s critical for them.”
Resources Connection, which goes by the brand name Resources Global Pro- fessionals, offers up the services of ac- countants, lawyers and others on a contract basis.
Its customers include locals Western Digital Corp. in Lake Forest, Taco Bell Corp., Toshiba America Information Systems Inc. and Broadcom Corp. of Irvine.
“We are always getting companies looking at how to be more efficient and effective,” Goodman said.
Management consultants also are seeing more business from online retailers looking to revamp their sites.
While retail sales have yet to return to pre-recession levels, online spending has held up a bit better.
It’s prompted companies to maximize their online shopping sites, according to Andy Peebler, senior vice president for Chicago’s Acquity Group LLC, which has some 45 workers in Irvine.
“Given the challenging economic environment in 2009, retailers were in a holding pattern,” he said. “But e-commerce proceeded ahead.”
It’s brought more business to the Acquity Group from retailers.
In April, Acquity Group launched a website for the many clothing and shoes brands owned by Massachusetts-based Casual Male Retail Group Inc., the country’s biggest retailer of big and tall men’s apparel.
“We are finding that the market overall for us is rebounding significantly,” he said. “Since the beginning of 2010, we have seen that investing online is a more predictable way to spend in terms of gen-erating results. That’s after companies didn’t invest in their Web presences much in 2009.”
Another of Acquity’s recent jobs was to redesign the website and online store of Seattle’s Tommy Bahama Group Inc., which makes everything from clothes to rum under its brand name.
A non-retail Acquity client is San Jose software maker Adobe Systems Inc., which increasingly is selling software licenses directly to consumers via its website.
“They are a large global company in every market that matters,” Peebler said. “They are looking to better meet the needs of their customers online.”
Acquity also has customers in manufacturing, healthcare and financial services, among others.
