Ignition works with agencies and other professional service firms to help them define their strategic plan and align their organization with not just best practices, but what we call “next practices” – the things progressive firms are doing to reinvent themselves successfully for the future.

To lay the foundation for this work, Ignition often engages in the following steps.

Conduct in-depth interviews

Ignition conducts in-depth interviews with key executives to gain insights into current issues and challenges at the firm. This may include an exploration of such areas as:

• Current focus and positioning
• Capabilities and core competencies
• Areas of specialized expertise
• Competitive points of difference
• Philosophies, approaches and other intellectual capital
• Current drivers of success
• Strategic assets
• Organization and team structure
• Roles and responsibilities
• Operational issues and challenges
• Talent and talent management
• Pricing and compensation systems
• Working environment and resources
• Strengths and opportunities on which to capitalize
• Primary challenges in reaching next level of success
• Conduct online survey

It’s often helpful to also field an online survey among all associates of the firm. Ignition employs a comprehensive proprietary tool, the Agency Brand Assessment, which is organized around six major areas:

• Positioning. To what extent has the firm identified and fully leveraged its points of relevant differentiation?
• Product. To what extent is the firm delivering creative and strategic excellence and offering the functions and services needed to compete effectively in the new multi-channel world?
• People. To what extent does the firm have the ability to find and develop the talent and intellectual capital needed to deliver consistently high levels of performance? Are all associates aligned behind a shared vision?
• Promotion. To what extent does the firm apply the same creativity and discipline to defining and promoting its own brand?
• Process. To what extent does the firm manage its capacity, price its services, and develop its own intellectual property in order to achieve above-average profit margins?
• Place. To what extent has the firm designed a work environment that facilitates collaboration and leverages technology to improve both its efficiency and effectiveness?

Strategic planning work sessions

Ignition conducts both in-person and online strategic planning sessions with senior management teams.  These sessions include a discussion and review of observations and recommendations, including:

• An objective viewpoint on the critical issues and opportunities facing
  the agency.
• Insights into the attitudes, opinions, and motivations of your management team and staff.
• Recommendations for focusing and strengthening the agency’s
  strategic direction.
• Ideas about how the agency can innovate in the areas of business model, organization, work process, compensation, etc. based on Ignition’s consulting work with other progressive marketing organizations.

Identification of key initiatives

Based on these insights and conclusions, Ignition will engage the management team in identifying key strategic imperatives and initiatives designed to address current issues and opportunities and to help take the firm successfully into the future. Among other things, we’ll identify the following:

• What are the core competencies we should be focused on in order to become even more relevant and valuable to our clients?
• How are the boundaries of our business model shifting?
• What are the points of relevant differentiation that will help us win
  against competitors?
• Which agency capabilities create the most value for clients and how can we invest more in them?
• Similarly, which of our services create the least value for clients and how can we invest less in them?
• Do we have the right structure, roles, and people to execute
  our strategy?
• Who should be leading and managing the various agency functions?
• What are some of the other hard decisions we should be making?

Ignition is also available to engage with its clients in the deployment phase, helping to execute key initiatives and serve as an advisor and resource to internal deployment teams.

To learn more about how Ignition can help your firm in the area of strategic planning, please contact Tim Williams at twilliams@ignitiongroup.com or 801.582.7297.

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