EMPLOYEE EXPERIENCE CONSULTING: ALM 2017 BEST-IN-CLASS PROVIDER Cited as the "best-in-class provider" in strategy. "North Highland applies the five core principles of its EX philosophy to a common approach for creating strategies that break down barriers between internal functions and workforce segments. The firm integrates design professionals from Sparks Grove throughout the process, ensuring that the strategic plan and roadmap design are mutually reinforcing." ACHIEVE CLIENT IMPACT "North Highland has a singular capacity to achieve client impact for its clients seeking point solutions, as well as end-to-end services in EX consulting. The "experience" orientation of the firm's overarching value proposition drives this capability with a sophisticated approach to differentiating the employee experience while connecting it to all experiences an organization delivers." DIVERSE CAPABILITIES North Highland believes that a truly differentiated employee experience reinforces the brand promise and is underpinned by an organizational system of purpose and culture where leadership and management are aligned. The firm's offering integrates its diverse capabilites in an engagement model that begins with a diagnostic assessment of the extrinsic and intrinsic drivers of employee mindsets and behavior." BALANCED & CONSISTENT "North Highland's leadership position is based on the balanced and consistent strength of a broad set of consulting competencies across the EX consulting value chain."
EMPLOYEE EXPERIENCE CONSULTING: ALM 2017 EX VANGUARD LEADER As a mid-sized strategy consulting firm, North Highland has a singular capacity to achieve client impact for its clients seeking point solutions, as well as endto-end services in EX consulting. The "experience" orientation of the firm's over-arching value proposition drives this capability with a sophisticated approach to differentiating the employee experience while connecting to all experiences an organization delivers. North Highland's services delivery model stands out as well, for engagement teams comprised of senior consultants who deploy agile problem-solving and design thinking that make behavioral change intrinsic to the process. and communications, as well as training and coaching to foster internal capability development. North Highland believes that a truly differentiated employee experience reinforces the brand promise and is underpinned by an organizational system of purpose and culture where leadership and management are aligned. The firm's offering integrates its diverse capabilities in mindsets and behaviors. The research findings and insights inform the creation of an employer brand and experience strategy, based on an airtight employee value proposition. North Highland's aim is to help clients build a program that activates and unifies the employer and customer brands across the experience chain." ACROSS THE EXPERIENCE CHAIN "North Highland's services are delivered by a dedicated Employee Experience Consulting practice that sits within the firm's Customer Experience capability function. Consultants draw on the full range of solutions offered by specialist practices in data and analytics, HR transformation, talent management, employee communications, change management, and strategy consulting. The Sparks Grove division provides creative agency services in marketing strategy, experience design,
HR TECHNOLOGY CONSULTING: BEST-IN-CLASS PROVIDER Cited as the best-in-class provider in change management: North Highland brings a holistic, multidisciplinary approach to change management that combines ideas from agile, neuroscience, and traditional organizational change management to embed a continuous improvement change process in HR technology transformations. WIDE DEPTH & BREADTH What differentiates NH is a high-touch consulting approach and local distribution of senior consulting talent across all markets it serves. Considering the depth and breadth of the firm s expertise, combined with its client service orientation, North Highland is a compelling alternative to the asset-based, yet still high-priced consulting model of many providers. STRATEGY, HR & TECH BLEND North Highland brings a mix of strategy, HR and technology capabilities to the organizational challenge of creating a clear link between HR service delivery and business strategy. The firm offers the full complement of services across the HR technology consulting value chain, delivering them through the People and Change practice in collaboration with data and analytics professionals. INFUSED EXPERIENCE DESIGN North Highland also integrates the experience design competencies of its Sparks Grove division into HR technology consulting teams to strengthen its approach to agile implementation. Rated in top end of services depth (only 4 competitors are higher on y axis)
FINANCE EXCELLENCE: FOCUSED SERVICE DELIVERY The firm organizes its service delivery around two tracks. One, Financial Stewardship focuses on optimizing transactional processes by using a maturity assessment tool designed to evaluate the costs and relative benefits of improving processes, data, technology, and organization. Two, Enterprise Catalyst concentrates on building value-adding reporting, planning, and decision support capabilities. EVOLVED ENGAGEMENT North Highland is evolving its engagement model to incorporate more advanced analytics, enablement of more flexible reporting through investments in cloud vendor relationships, and better integration with its organization practice. DEDICATED FINANCE EXCELLENCE PRACTICE North Highland delivers finance excellence services through a dedicated finance excellence consulting practice that coordinates closely with the firm s organizational excellence practice. NH believes that finance functions need to evolve into true business partners that can deliver insight rather than simply execute transactions and report on variances the firm orients its consulting approach around fostering four transformational capabilities: managing cost and reallocating savings to value-adding activities, developing more flexible reporting and forecasting, improving the return on investments in finance systems infrastructure, and cultivating finance talent. Only 3 entities are green (Advancing Service Breadth or Depth), Highland including North
BRAND STRATEGY & MARKETING: COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE DRIVEN BY CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE North Highland primarily delivers branding strategy and marketing effectiveness through its Sparks Grove experience design division, but draws on the firm s broader consulting capabilities, notably its people and change offer. North Highland s approach reflects its beliefs that brand is fundamentally an experience and that customer s experience of brand is the only durable source of competitive advantage. But the essential point for this firm is that delivering an effective experience requires an alignment of the brand purpose with the customer s interpretation of it and that, in turn, depends on humanizing the experience by building trust with both the customer and the employees who participate in the experience. AGILE AND ANALYTICS DELIVERY MODEL A crucial aspect of the firm s approach is its emphasis on the importance of a company s employees in activating its brand and strategy, brand development, experience design, audience engagement, and people and change. At the heart of the firm s service delivery model are two elements: agile and analytics. Rather than the traditional waterfall method with handoffs, North Highland advocates cross-functional and iterative project methods that make behavioral change intrinsic to a process designed to continuously refine the alignment of brand intention and customers interpretation of it. Rated in the same results as the highest rated Big 4 firms.