Consultancy Services |
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Du Cane Associates offer a range of consultancy services which complement our offerings in Business Coaching, Language Tuition and Interim Management.
International Trade Support for those looking to trade internationally or those who are already doing so but want to do more is now our largest single area of activity. Led by our Founder, Peter Lloyd, a Director of the East Midlands International Trade Association, our approach is to offer candid but constructive advice and help our clients to move forward whether on their own or with further support from us. There is "official" support available but, whilst useful, this tends not to include a healthy critique of the tentative ideas that a company has meaning that they may proceed but do so in a flawed way and have limited chances of success. We try to help companies trade internationally without making such mistakes. Our support ranges from ad hoc consultancy to ongoing, detailed work in areas such as market development, contracts, marketing, product development and supply chain development.
We don't build websites and we don't generate CAD drawings. We also don't aim to bamboozle people with jargon or push them towards off the shelf solutions. What we do is help organisations to review their Marketing and Product (and Service) Development strategies and then help them to implement workable solutions to achieve their objectives. What we also do is look at appropriate solutions for the taking an organisations from where they are to where they want to be by taking account of factors such as company culture and budget constraints not just promotional or development ideas. We can look at Marketing or Product Development in isolation or review them concurrently using our proprietary Next Steps Business Consultancy programme.
Business Process Optimsation Change management is a popular area for consultancy. Approaches range from methodology-driven (Six Sigma, Lean, Kaizen etc) to people driven (using psychology based approaches). Although these approaches have their merits, all too often clients are faced with the choice of using a "sledgehammer to crack a nut" where the resources and focus required to install an improvement methodolgy company wide can tend to take over their business or using only light touch ideas which sound good at first but come without an instruction manual. Our approach is cognisant of established theories but takes as its starting point the frustations that companies face when trying to use well known techniques to effect meaningful change in their organisations - we are systematic in our analysis but practical and organic in our implementation. Our philosophy, Business Process Optimisation, can tackle short term issues but is aimed squarely at making worthwhile changes stick for the long term.
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