⌛ Advantages Of Fee-Pricing Strategy Of Private Universities

Criteria used include Curleys Personality results and 2 values. Governance, Legislation and Policy Issues 3. Waiting in ignorance creates a Nurture In Frankenstein of powerlessness, which frequently results in visible irritation and rudeness on the part of customers as they harass serving personnel in an attempt Advantages Of Fee-Pricing Strategy Of Private Universities reclaim their status as paying clients. As one stands there router advantages and disadvantages to decide whether to move, the anxiety level increases and the wait becomes intolerable. Protecting universities. My Role Of Clothing In The Roman Empire was that:. Typology of options for financing protected areas. Newer Posts Older Posts Home.

Cost-Benefit Analysis- Micro Topic 1.5

The decision suggests that a lawyer may never be able to get an enforceable advance waiver that extends so far as to allow the lawyer to sue his own client. As cases such as this illustrate, an advance conflict waiver may not be worth the paper it is written on. At the very least, advance waivers will continue to be subject to very close scrutiny.

If you represent a corporation, do you represent all entities in the corporate family? Does it matter if a subsidiary is wholly-owned vs. How about if you represent a subsidiary—does that mean you also represent its parent or grandparent entity in the corporate tree? Many corporate entities are parts of families that can include parents, subsidiaries, and other affiliated or related entities. As is common especially when representing large entities, the client had outside counsel guidelines OCGs , which the engagement agreement incorporated by reference. Valeant-CA and Salix moved for summary judgment of no invalidity. The district court granted the motion on May 1, The district court stayed a decision on the motion to disqualify pending before it, and the Federal Circuit stayed briefing on the merits of the appeal pending its decision on the disqualification motion.

The Salix matter wound up in a related appeal filed in the Federal Circuit, which appeal was pending when Mukerjee and Soderstrom joined Katten. Thereafter, Salix moved to disqualify Katten from that appeal. That motion was consolidated for decision with the Valeant-CA disqualification motion. Second, they argued that all Valeant-CA subsidiaries are so interrelated that the representation of one was, in effect, a representation of them all. The Federal Circuit court applied the regional law of the Third and Fourth Circuit on the relevant rules of professional conduct. Pursuant to Rule 1. A lawyer shall not represent a client if the representation involves a concurrent conflict of interest.

A concurrent conflict of interest exists if:. The court noted that under the comments to Rule 1. First, the engagement agreement supported the conclusion that there was an ongoing client relationship between Katten and its organizational clients, Valeant-CA and Salix. The court held:. Gorman Decl. A, at 1. Moreover, the court found that the OC Guidelines, which were incorporated by reference into the engagement agreement, extended the relationship to include any Valeant entity, including subsidiaries and affiliates. The two entities also share the same in-house legal department. The court further found that Salix and Valeant-CA also share the same in-house legal department.

Since Katten did not previously informed written consent from both clients, its conflict violated Rule 1. First, this case illustrates the importance of conducting conflicts checks when bringing in a lateral attorney. Such checks should include a through vetting of all ongoing representations where the prospective new hire or their clients they seek to bring into the firm are adverse to a current firm client. Second, lawyers must be mindful of the terms of engagement, particularly where they incorporate outside counsel guidelines. Third, engagement agreements are an important place for firms to define their clients. The Colorado court also ordered IPS and Steiert to pay restitution to their victim as well as fines and costs.

We previously reported on this matter in our posts here , here and here. Unlike any other firm, we do not use paralegals to draft patents. IPS would receive invention materials directly from its inventor-customers. IPS and Steiert then would pocket the difference. The court concluded that IPS engaged in the unauthorized practice of law through its representations on the IPS website. To the contrary, that conduit role injects great uncertainty into the lawyer-client relationship, including whether the protections of confidentiality and attorney-client privilege apply, and whether advertising can be relied upon not to mislead or overreach.

The court found that in one particular matter, an inventor contracted with IPS to help it with securing a patent for his invention on a portable urinal. After getting paid by the inventor, IPS subcontracted with a patent attorney to draft the application. Thereafter, according to the opinion, Steiert completed the application himself, including by drafting the patent claims. The court found that by drafting the patent claims himself, Steiert engaged in the unauthorized practice of law.

The court, however, found that the evidence was insufficient to support this claim. As for the penalty, the Colorado Supreme Court entered an injunction prohibiting IPS from advertising, offering to provide, or providing legal services, whether provided by lawyers or nonlawyers. See Colorado v. Dak Brandon Steiert, CR Steiert has denied the criminal charges. A jury trial is scheduled to begin later this summer. Malpractice in patent prosecution can be an expensive very expensive and time-consuming proposition. Defense costs alone can run well into the seven figures. No patent prosecutor or law firm wants to face that kind of exposure. On February 21, , I will be presenting a minute CLE webinar hosted by Strafford on best practices for minimizing the risks of being sued for malpractice arising from patent prosecution.

Here is the announcement of our program:. This CLE webinar will guide patent counsel on minimizing the risk of malpractice claims in patent prosecution. The panel will examine common pitfalls and problematic behavior as well as how the courts have dealt with recent malpractice claims in the patent context. Malpractice risks for patent practitioners increase with the rising complexity of patent practice. For many companies, the most valuable assets are its IP. Consequently, protecting and enforcing IP rights becomes more important. With such high stakes, patent counsel are an easy target if something fails during the prosecution process, whether due to missing deadlines or a strategy that does not work.

Malpractice claims against patent attorneys are growing, and patent attorneys should take steps to minimize the likelihood that they could face such claims. Listen as our authoritative panel discusses where common pitfalls arise and problematic behavior that may lead to claims. The panel will also address the issue of damages. For information on how to sign up for the webinar click here.

Some clients come to me after they have already answered an RFI on their own and have subsequently received a second or follow-up RFI. The vast majority of my clients—and I have represented over patent attorneys, patent agents and trademark attorneys in OED ethics investigations—prefer to be represented from the start. I have culled from my experience a list of some of the most frequently asked questions for those clients who are new to the OED investigatory process.

I attempt to answer those below. Now What? The RFI itself is drafted in the form of a letter. The letter is always sent by certified mail, return receipt requested. The OED, for example, often weeds out private matters, such as mill run attorney-client fee disputes that do not raise issues of blatant over-billing, incompetency, or fraud. If OED screens out a complaint, it will typically report to the complaining party assuming one can be readily identified to thank them for the information and advise them the matter is not being investigated. Non-investigated complaints do not get reported to the practitioner, so a practitioner may never know that a complaint had been filed against him or her.

The RFI itself sets forth a deadline for responding. Typically, first RFIs have a day written response period, although some RFIs may demand a faster response period depending upon the circumstances. Notably, the response deadline is calculated from the date stamped on the RFI itself—which may be one or two weeks before the practitioner actually receives it. This could create angst in preparing a response. If the practitioner cannot make the deadline, then the onus is on the practitioner to contact the OED in a timely manner usually seven days prior to the response deadline to request an extension of time.

Not all extension requests are granted, and sometimes the OED will ask for the practitioner to provide partial answers by the deadline with the balance due by the agreed-upon extension date. Extensions of time are a matter of privilege, and the OED Director has wide latitude in granting extension requests and imposing conditions for an extension of time. A recipient of an RFI who needs more time would be wise to provide the OED Director with a detailed explanation of the reasons why more time is required. No style guidelines exist for responding to an RFI. It just has to be in writing—but it does not even need to be typed. I have seen responses that are captioned like pleadings, legal briefs, or discovery responses.

Many responses are in the form of a letter. The signature is not under penalty of perjury. The OED is not picky about the formatting of the response and is more interested in its substance, including whether the information being provided is responsive to the requests. A practitioner may wish to volunteer information to the OED that the request does not expressly call for. There are strategic considerations involved in deciding whether or what type of information to volunteer to the OED. Whatever information you decide to provide, the single most important thing to remember is that the response must be truthful.

OED will seek to verify the information provided, and discrepancies may be a cause for concern—including further investigation. The OED does not suffer kindly those whom it believes have misled them in an ethics investigation. That is one of the trickiest questions clients face when determining how much information to provide. There is no bar counsel response exception to the attorney-client privilege. Practitioners therefore must give careful consideration to whether they may produce and rely upon privileged information, or whether they are obliged to maintain the privilege. For example, in a matter where a current or former client is the grieving party, a practitioner has a right of self-defense and is generally free to rely upon what would otherwise be privileged communications in order to defend themselves in the OED investigation.

But many other investigations are not prompted by a client grievance. Codexx was asked to perform a review of the function as part of the transformation programme. The specific remit was to clarify current task responsibilities and interfaces, determine key problem areas and identify required improvements. This was a sizeable organization of more than engineers and technicians, centred in northern Europe, but with teams also based in Eastern Europe and China. A customer-focused approach We took a customer focused, service-led approach to the review, rather than focusing on the existing organisational structure. We did this as we considered the delivery of these services as the fundamental mission of the function. If we had aligned our approach with the existing departmental structure, we would have limited our thinking.

We defined four key services provided by the function and focused our review on how well these services were delivered. This helped us identify any misalignment in the current organisational structure. We then assessed the quality of the service delivered and the efficiency of delivery for each of the four services using workshops with the key internal customers.

We also worked with each department to get their assessment on the effectiveness of the currently defined business processes, including how well they were documented and deployed. In developing improvements we maintained our service-led customer focus. We asked fundamental questions see first diagram about how best the required services should be provided, to meet internal customer needs and to do so in a way that was affordable. Based on this and the findings from our stakeholder and internal assessment, we identified 7 key improvement projects. We then worked with the functional managers to define an implementation programme.

Conclusions Internal service functions should be able to demonstrate effective service delivered in an efficient manner. If this is not the case, they need to be re-engineered or outsourced. A customer-focused service-led approach can be effectively used to assess the performance of an internal support function and to define any improvements required. Due to the high engagement of internal customers in such an approach, it is much easier to get their support for any required changes. Its purpose was to drive business improvement based on identification of superior practices in other organisations.

Xerox was the first major business to popularise it and since then it has become a core tool in the business improvement toolkit. Whilst benchmarking can be a very effective tool in catalysing and focusing improvement, it can also be easy to misuse, with the result that the not insignificant resources required can fail to yield usable improvements. Codexx has gained significant experience in benchmarking programmes since it was established in and our consultants have additional benchmarking experience gained from their work with previous employers such as IBM, Philips and Cranfield School of Management. This experience has given us a good feel for both the strengths and weaknesses of benchmarking as a whole.

In this short article we want to share some of the key lessons we have learned and our recommendations on how to best to use benchmarking methods in your own improvement programmes. We have divided benchmarking into three distinct types and evaluated each on their merits based on our experience in applying them:. In practice, many benchmarking assessments will be a hybrid of two or more types to suit specific requirements. A key success factor in benchmarking is not to lose sight of the goal. In benchmarking the goal is to be able to use the assessment findings in a practical way to catalyse, focus and effectively execute changes in business practices which will yield performance improvement.

Sometimes benchmarking exercises make the mistake of focusing solely on performance metrics, and only part of the story is revealed. By also comparing business practices in an objective way e. For example, if a manufacturing company is shown to have high inventories compared to the average in its sector, weak practice scoring in the use of lean practices and the use of large production batches would explain this poor performance and give management a list of areas for improvement. A good example of this type of benchmarking is the Probe manufacturing benchmarking tool.

This was developed by IBM Consulting and London Business School in as an objective way of assessing a manufacturing operation against world class standards. It was based on a model of World Class Manufacturing that drew heavily on lean thinking. The benchmarking tool provided numerical scoring based on practice maturity and measurable performance achievements, and grew to a database of over manufacturing sites.

Codexx has been a licensed user of the Probe manufacturing benchmarking tool since and we have used Probe for multi-factory benchmarking on a regular basis. An excellent example of a company that has successfully applied best practices benchmarking and improvement is Grundfos, the leading global pump manufacturer with factories in Europe, America and Asia and headquartered in Denmark. Grundfos started using best practice benchmarking using PROBE in to assess the practices and performance in its factories. This identified gaps with best practices including the need to utilise Lean manufacturing approaches. Grundfos commenced implementation of lean manufacturing techniques across their factories from and continued regular PROBE benchmarking supported by Codexx.

The result has been clear improvement in key performance indicators such as on-time delivery, inventory turns and quality. This benchmarking approach uses a defined framework of key practices with levels of maturity, i. It is used when there is an absence of a large database of companies which have been assessed against these practices, so quantitative benchmarking is not feasible. Typically this would be because the nature or scope of the practice area is not wide enough to have merited academic or consulting study and the development of a benchmarking programme.

This approach suits niche assessments of specialist areas, where a structured comparison against best practices is required. The lack of a database of comparative data means that the process must involve a number of like-minded organisations, all seeking to learn how to improve performance in the area involved. Codexx used this approach to help a client perform benchmarking of production maintenance practices as part of a re-engineering programme for maintenance across 8 factories. The objectives of the benchmarking were:. To provide a quantifiable comparison of practices and some key performance metrics with organisations with measurably better maintenance operations to provide a set of improvement targets.

To provide examples of improved practices which could be transferable to their business. We initially looked to use a commercially available benchmarking tool for this work, but we found no tool that was broad enough to meet the client needs most were focused on specific aspects of maintenance such as cost. We therefore developed an assessment framework built around a skeleton provided by the ISO 8 principles of quality management. This approach was used to benchmark five other European companies, using 1 day visits — attended by the majority of the maintenance managers — supported by prior data sharing and preparation.

Each participating firm was provided with an assessment report and overall scoring — it was important to ensure that each participating company gained value from the exercise. The assessment approach provided much insight to the maintenance managers and was used to develop improvement projects as part of the re-engineering programme. The scoring also provided a measurable set of practice and performance targets that were used over a three year period to measure re-engineering progress, with month self-assessments against the framework more information. Another example of this approach is in the development of the Foundations for Innovation F4i assessment tool by Codexx in F4i was developed with the support of Imperial College Business School to bring academic rigour to the development of the assessment tool.

F4i does not have a large database of companies — we focus primarily on how participating organisations score against the defined practices and more importantly in the underlying reasons for weak practices. We took a similar approach in the development of an innovation assessment for the legal sector, building on our experience of working with major UK law firms in innovation since We used this to perform a study of innovation in 35 UK and German law firms, together with the business schools of Exeter and Leipzig universities more information. One could argue that this is what normally happens in ad hoc and unstructured visits to other companies.

We are not advocating this approach. Structured qualitative practice assessment does have objectives and an assessment framework but it is deliberately loose. An assessment visit programme was arranged and the framework used to scope and focus discussions. Key findings from the assessment were documented for each company. Overall, it is key that, whatever benchmarking approach is used, participants do not lose sight of the ultimate aims of the activity: to catalyse and focus improvement activities.

Bringing you news, comment and resources on the latest in business re-engineering and innovation. Get New Directions Newsletter. Lesson 1 — A law firm is not a factory not quite anyway I first applied Lean back in as a manufacturing manager in IBM. Lesson 3 — There is a lot of waste in legal services A core element of the Lean philosophy is a ruthless focus on the identification and elimination of waste. Lesson 5 — More for less is an achievable outcome There is a common believe in professional services firms that cost reduction will inevitably lead to a reduction in service quality.

This is simply not true. How healthy are your legal services? Monday, November 20th, Business challenges are driving services thinking in law firms Today law firms must compete on the basis of their legal services — not just their lawyers. The Brexit cost challenge — an effective services response Wednesday, March 22nd, Brexit challenges both UK and non-UK businesses Over the next decade, with economic challenges and potential tariff barriers post Brexit, both UK-based businesses and also those businesses exporting into the UK, will be facing uncertainty, pricing challenges and competitive pressures.

The impact on business services The inevitable response of businesses tightening their budgets will impact the professional service firms which supply them with research, legal, accounting, consulting, design and other business services. There are three key steps required in achieving waste elimination in service delivery: Find wastes. Remove wastes. Stop wastes returning! Find wastes Wastes are activities that do not add value — and so professional time spent performing such work can be eliminated without impacting the service to the client — whilst reducing the cost of delivery.

Remove wastes The key steps to be followed in removing waste from a service are: Re-engineer the service using a TO-BE design that provides a more efficient and controlled service — making use of procedures, templates and workflow. This reduces service delivery costs in two ways: 1 Reducing the fee earner time required to perform the service and 2 Performing the work using a lower cost blend of personnel i. Maintain service quality by placing work elements at the skill level at which it can be performed at least to the same level of quality as before through use of codification into procedures and templates and then personnel trained to these methods. In our experience service quality and responsiveness is actually improved post re-engineering.

Use the freed up personnel to perform other work thus yielding cost avoidance or made redundant yielding cost reduction. Generate new revenue using experienced personnel who have been freed up by re-engineering, to work on more complex and higher margin work — if the firm had opportunities which would have needed new hires to meet. Conclusions A waste-focused approach to reducing service costs in professional service firms is powerful in enabling services to be delivered at a lower cost and at least equal quality and service as before. Lean-based cost reduction is a powerful approach that is seldom used effectively in professional service firms. Why professionals should embrace Lean thinking Wednesday, October 26th, Delighted clients.

High utilisation. Business development. Professional services — a story of waste Much work performed by professionals today is simply waste. She is now very much a Stage 5 advocate in the firm… Lean can set the professional free Professionals often consider Lean approaches as a threat. What does Brexit mean for UK business innovation? Uncertain conditions favour agility The current situation takes us back to the situation of late and early after the financial crash.

However the impact of Brexit will be particularly felt by UK-based companies due to the major changes that lie ahead in key areas such as: The UK pound exchange rate UK stock market level The nature and degree of access to the single EU market People movement between the UK and EU Since these are the key drivers to the future form and nature of the UK business model and competitiveness — and their end points will not be known for between years, what can businesses do now? In the short term, trim waste to free up resources and reduce costs to offset increases in costs of imported parts and services due to the fall in the UK pound.

This calls for a refocus on Lean thinking and process innovation. In the medium term, there may be opportunities for switching to UK suppliers. Seize short term market opportunities in the single market that currently prevail with a cheaper pound making exports cheaper. There is a strong relationship between innovativeness and export performance and growth so there are opportunities here in the longer term for businesses that are seeking to sell innovative products and services. Improve the codification of expert knowledge so that services and processes can be effectively delivered with less-skilled personnel.

This is to recognise, in the short to medium term, that some of the skilled personnel available from EU countries outside the UK may not be available after the UK formally exits the EU. In the longer term, with, for example, an Australian based points immigration system, it may call for wider global search and recruitment practices. Even if the skills loss scenario is not realised, such codification will improve business efficiency and better leverage higher skilled personnel for higher value work.

Investigate the potential for new international markets that you have no presence in, looking at how you can reduce your costs and risks of entry by using partnership. This is in preparation for taking opportunities with the UK having the ability to negotiate new international trade deals but also potentially to offset any reduced access to the EU single market.

Prepare for a potential restricted single market where the UK is faced with tariff barriers and thus products and services will be more expensive to EU buyers. This means an increased focus on value — developing new innovative offerings which can command a higher price — and preparing for increased price pressure by reducing non value-adding costs. In certain instances, certain products and materials, such as food products, may become cheaper in the medium term outside the EU. Outside the EEA, would mean trading on WTO general tariff rules and what access could be gained to individual countries or trading blocs, such as the Trans Pacific Partnership.

Review your requirements and sources of research funding. However, this will depend on the UK agreeing to continue to allow free immigration access to EU passport holders. If this is not accepted by the UK government, then much will depend on how the UK shapes its own UK innovation policy and at what funding levels. Alternative sources of research funding may well be needed. A silver lining? Continuous Improvement — the quiet giant of innovation Wednesday, December 2nd, A BBC article here recently gave media prominence to a well-established business approach, namely incremental or Continuous Improvement.

What about services? Notes: 1. To capture the operation of the service as it is today to provide a performance baseline; 2. To educate the core team in new ways of thinking and assessing service efficiency and value; 3. This was written for MBA students who came to me with questions about career choices. It has since been reproduced around the world in a variety of books, magazines and journals. This is the original version. RW: I have been a consultant to professional firms around the world for 6 years. All of my articles on professional businesses have been translated into Dutch.

In a recent book by Tom Brown I was identified as one of the top 40 business thinkers in Australia. Your basic assumption in Practice What You Preach is that certain elements have a direct influence on the profits of companies, because top companies have a better score on certain questions. How do you know that these factors influence their profits? Could other factors be influencing the company's results? When questioning these firms, might you find that they also score differently on other topics on your list?

RW: I did not assume anything. I studied businesses in 15 countries, then used traditional statistical approaches to test exactly this question. The odds that the relationships I found are coincidental i. If I only had 13 businesses, chance and coincidence might be factors, but with data points it is very unlikely. I'm interested in how you measure managers. Which criteria are most appropriate to use when measuring the effectiveness of a manager not particularly top management but just individual managers?

RW: The job of a manager is to make other people in his or her group successful -- sometimes in spite of themselves! The manger's job is to be a creator of energy, excitement and enthusiasm so that people in the group accomplish more than they would without the manager. There are two ways to judge a manager's effectiveness. First, you can look at the group's performance: profits, growth, client satisfaction and people development.

Second, you can and should ask the people within the group to evaluate whether the manager is adding any value. Here is a questionnaire from my latest article that can be used to evaluate the manager:. RW: Unfortunately, most managers are judged too narrowly. They are judged on group results, but only financial group results; there is a need for a more balanced scorecard. In addition, it is rare that the views of those being managed are used formally to assess the manger.

They are sometimes collected in so-called degree feedback systems, but that data is used for information only and is not a formal part of the manager's performance appraisal. He told me how managers and in fact all employees are constantly being judged by the company. At the beginning of the year the criteria by which an employee will be assessed is outlined. Each employee is assessed on various occasions throughout the year and also at the end of the year.

Criteria used include 1 results and 2 values. The main value of the company is integrity. Everyone is being judged at these two levels and gets to hear if he or she is top A , middle B or low C level. Employees scoring low in both areas must work on improvement. In that way, all employees are required to constantly improve and develop themselves. This is of course a very brief outline of how they work, but no doubt you know a lot more about GE.

Could you give a reaction on this method of judging management? Do you think it is effective? Is it an example to other companies, or does it not leave enough space for people to be different? RW: The GE system is a major step in the right direction and should be copied by many businesses. The data in my article confirms that the most effective managers i. The employees I interviewed repeatedly told me that they worked at their best because their managers were people of high integrity, had clear and uncompromising standards, and were completely trustworthy. This was a surprise to me, because they don't teach you anything about these things in your business education. The conclusion is the same as that reached by Jim Collins in his data-driven books Built to Last and Good to Great -- that the best managers have a clear ideology and combine a pursuit of profits with a purpose beyond profits.

He reports the same thing I found: The most successful managers are not ego-driven, but are ambitious for their group. Their people trust them to do the right thing for the group as a whole. The reason this is so important is that you can improve your group in the short term by being none of these things, but instead just by being a hard task-master: very demanding, worrying only about the short term. But the evidence is now accumulating that this will bring only a short-term benefit. To succeed in the long term, you must be seen to be both demanding and supportive.

Judging from your article, managers have a big influence on a company's results. Could you explain that briefly to our readers? RW: My article demonstrates with data that there is a clear path to profits that must be followed. To make the most money, you must deliver superior value to the market-place, and to deliver superior value, you must have an excited, energised, enthused, driven, committed, ambitious, passionate workforce. To achieve this, you must have individual managers with emotional intelligence and interpersonal and social skills who know when and how to exhort, critique, inspire, challenge, compliment, nag and, above all, manage emotions.

Exciting people is not a logical, intellectual or rational skill, but rather an emotional skill in which few of us were ever trained. That's why my next article is a how-to-do-it manual for managers. What role do you see for HR managers in improving the assessment and development of managers? RW: HR can help a lot in the selection process for managers. Unfortunately, it's still true that we choose managers based on all the wrong criteria. We choose them because they are technically smart, or financially astute, or can sell, or any of a number of irrelevant things. The only REAL question is whether people respond to you by raising their performance.

Are you a net creator of excitement or a net destroyer of it? Do people trust you and hence accept your guidance? Do people believe you are a man or woman of principle or a "do anything to make a euro" type? At the moment we have poor promotion screening systems to choose good managers. HR could help develop them. HR could also help develop some training for managers, who are mostly untrained. We train people in business, but that's not the same as training them in how to manage.

We need better programs in the basic skills of winning influence and dealing with human beings. Many professional firms are living in a world of ever-increasing fee pressure from clients. What is the appropriate response to deal with this? Among the many things that can be done, big and small, the first and most obvious is to achieve a reputation for being worth more than your competition. This is done through the excellence of your work and service for current clients.

It's worthless for you to try and claim that you are worth more, but if you can get some existing clients to say it publicly, then prospective new clients can be influenced. Hence, you should strive to get strong endorsements as part of your marketing effort. Second, you can improve the quality of your attempts to get hired. Most fee resistance is based on scepticism about the value that will be received, but there are many opportunities to be persuasive on value if you can find ways to demonstrate , not just assert, your capabilities.

For example, if during the courting process you look for ways to be substantively useful to the person you are trying to attract sharing ideas; performing some free initial analysis; or providing education, insights, and facts into what your prospect's competitors are doing , then you will be more convincing on value. The challenge is to find ways to prove , before the project even starts, that you are worth what you charge. Third, be sure you understand what your client is trying to buy. A great deal of fee resistance comes from the fact that the consulting firm is trying to sell, for example, the "thorough" or "permanent fix" version of the project, while the client is trying to buy the "quick impact" or "lowest up-front cost" version.

In the selling process, you should strip your "core work plan" down to its bare bones, and then present the client with options for "add-ons" that are available -- with a clear cost expounded for each. The client can then pick and choose. If the client wants extra analysis, he or she is the one to add to the budget. If the client wants more frequent communication and consultation, it's their decision. Going through this process with the client long before the final presentation ensures that the client understands how the total fee was arrived at and that you are not including work activities that the client does not value. Fourth, you can use your budgeting and reporting procedures to overcome fee resistance.

The person inside the corporation who hires you will be responsible for the budget, and if you can give that person solid proof that they will retain control over your activities, they will be less nervous about the total cost. Showing the client your methods of "phase-by-phase" budgeting, cost tracking and reporting will move the client's attention away from the aggregate number and give them the comfort of knowing that there will be no waste in the project. An even better idea is to guarantee that no activity will be performed by you without prior discussion with and approval by the client, thereby giving the client the needed control.

A related topic is to examine your productivity. Clients I have interviewed around the world tell me that one of the major reasons they are exerting fee pressure is that they are not convinced that the firms they hire are very efficient, and that they see little or no evidence that the firm is concerned about saving the client money. And they are right. Professional firms traditionally do not spend much time and effort looking for ways to improve the productivity of their own efforts. As I have long argued, most firms have many senior professionals who are spending time doing things that could be done via less costly resources, through some training, organisation and perhaps technology.

When there was little fee pressure, this relative inefficiency did not matter very much. In a world of increasing fee pressure, any consulting firm that can out-perform its competitors in reducing the cost of doing a project will have a clear competitive advantage, whether or not it passes all the savings onto the client. Accordingly, a top priority is to study carefully how you do your projects and look for ways including staffing, training, methodologies, tools, etc. Because of concerns over productivity and the need for budgetary control many clients are interested in "fixed-fee" pricing. I expect that more and more work will be done on a fixed-fee basis. However, it is clear that in a fixed-fee world the firm must be vigorous in ensuring that the terms and conditions of the contract state very precisely what is and what is not included in the job.

Another response that is gaining popularity in this fee-sensitive world is performance-based pricing. This comes in two forms: either the professional's fee is tied to the accomplishment of a specific result how much cost is saved for the client, how much revenues will increase, etc. In the latter case, the deal looks like this: The firm bills during the project at, say, 75 percent of its normal billing rate. At the end of the project the client determines its satisfaction with what was accomplished, and the client decides what "balloon payment" to make.

If the client is disappointed, the end payment is zero; if the client is delighted, the end payment brings the consultant up to percent of its normal fees or possibly more. Note that it is the sole discretion of the client to determine the performance and the "bonus. This form of pricing is less radical than it looks. In effect, it is nothing more than saying, "If you're not satisfied, don't pay," which is good business practice in any case for a professional firm.

When there is a traditional fee impasse, either the consulting firm must cut the fee to get the job or the client must accept the consultant's desired fee based on an act of faith that the firm is worth it. Performance-based pricing allows the firm to say, "We'll bet on ourselves that we can deliver what we promise. We don't ask you to believe this uncritically up front, but can we agree that if we do deliver value, you'll reward us?

Finally, are there circumstances when you should cut your fees? Yes, but it's the opposite of when most firms do. Most of the fee pressure occurs on low-end, familiar, "asset-milking" work, and this is where most consulting firms are "caving in" and giving discounts. This is strange. If this is asset-milking work not building-your-balance-sheet work why would you want to exacerbate the problem by also hurting your income statement through lower fees? You should be willing to cut your fees that is, make an investment if this particular piece of business will move you forward strategically for example, if the work is at the frontier and you'll learn new things that you can sell to other clients later on, or if the work will help you to break into a new industry that you have been targeting.

In other words, you should be most willing to trim fees if necessary for high-end, asset-building work. Anything else, in my view, is foolish. Educated in Toowoomba, Richard Wood commenced his career establishing his own practice in March With an entrepreneurial spirit and vision as Managing Partner, he has developed and guided Vistage Corporate Advisory to where it is today. Unlike traditional accountants, Richard pictured above does not position himself as external to his clients' businesses. Where possible, he becomes a part of the client -- knowing as much about their operations and corporate and marketing challenges as possible.

This provides a sound foundation from which to develop financial and accountancy strategies which are tailored to meet their individual requirements. Importantly, it also allows Richard to identify business opportunities for his clients on a progressive basis, and combat any commercial threats before they take effect. Richard has extensive financing and joint venture experience. As a majority shareholder and director of a number of private companies, he is keenly aware of the need to monitor unit-based profitability and to implement sophisticated financial management systems. A deep thinker, passionate about the potential that lies within individuals and their businesses, Richard has been instrumental in creating opportunities that have inspired success for his clients, colleagues and peers.

A proven entrepreneur now focused on working with other entrepreneurs, Richard's commercial experience and business nous has led him to develop a distinctive suite of financial management solutions and products; including Optimist. He is driven to generate positive growth and wealth for his clients by focusing on activity based financial information, shareholder value and the true story behind the finance information that is generated. He has been influential in achieving significant results for his clients and their businesses, using strategic vision, big picture analysis, consistent monitoring and mentoring systems. Richard believes that when business owners start to fear growth it is due to uncertainty. Unlocking these uncertainties and providing a clear platform for change recreates hope and the confidence to grow.

Clear vision helps clear thinking. By relating activity to financial outcomes, he has the ability to provide a whole new way of thinking about strategy to drive financial performance. Richard is a connected and valued strategic advisor to his clients and is driven to ensure he can empower them with peace of mind, confidence to grow and banker confidence. Passion, People and Principles. Sunday, December 1, The Auditing Debate. Posted by RJW at No comments:. Labels: Articles , General. Introduction In one of a series of memorable advertisements for which it has become justly famous, Federal Express the overnight package delivery service noted that: "Waiting is frustrating, demoralising, agonising, aggravating, annoying, time consuming and incredibly expensive.

Once we are being served, our transaction with the service organisation may be efficient, courteous and complete: but the bitter taste of how long it took to get attention pollutes the overall judgments that we make about the quality of service The mathematical theory of waiting lines or queues has received a great deal of attention from academic researchers and their results and insights have been successfully applied in a variety of settings. People Want to Get Started. Anxiety Makes Waits Seem Longer. This situation is covered by what is known as Erma Bombeck's Law: "The other line always moves faster" Is there anyone who has not had the experience of choosing a line at the supermarket or airport, and stood there worrying that we had, indeed, chosen the wrong line?

Unexplained Waits Are Longer than Explained Waits On a cold and snowy morning, when I telephone for a taxi, I begin with the expectation that my wait will be longer than on a clear, summer day. Unfair Waits Are Longer than Equitable Waits As Sasser, Olsen, and Wycoff note, one of the most frequent irritants mentioned by customers at restaurants is the prior seating of those who have arrived later. Great care to be equitable is vital" , 89 In many waiting situations, there is no visible order to the waiting line. The More Valuable the Service, the Longer the Customer Will Wait The example of the supermarket express-checkout counter reminds us that our tolerance for waiting depends upon the perceived value of that for which we wait.

Solo Waits Feel Longer than Group Waits One of the remarkable syndromes to observe in waiting lines is to see individuals sitting or standing next to each other without talking or otherwise interacting until an announcement of a delay is made. Whatever service organisations can do to promote the sense of group waiting rather than isolating each individual, will tend to increase the tolerance for waiting time Conclusion The propositions presented here are by no means meant to be an exhaustive list of all the psychological considerations involved in managing customers' acceptance of waiting time.

Notes Fortune, 28 July , p. A good summary of the work of psychologists in this area is provided by Doob References Buffa, E. Products are consumed: services are experienced. It ain't what you do, it's the way that you do it: that's what gets results. If it's done in the back room, it's a product: If it's done in the front room it's a service. People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. Every customer interaction is a mini-play, with roles and a script: Some improvisation and ad-libs are allowed, but only the best actors can pull them off.

When there's a problem, separate the complainer from the complaint: They both need handling. Pick one or two dimensions of service and do those better than anyone else and you'll have a natural market of those who agree that the dimensions you chose are the most important ones. Your best efforts to raise service level should be at the beginning of the service encounter: Create a halo effect. Anything can be standardised, and there's usually a big market for it. McDonald's makes more money than the finest restaurant.

In the backroom you measure: In the front room you judge and you have to be there to do it. There is a triangle formed between the firm, the service provider on the front line, and the customer. The bond between the customer and the service provider is the strongest: the other two links need constant management attention. Quality and "good service" is in the eye of the beholder: Not everybody defines it the same way.

The most difficult part of management is getting the relevant information: Processing it to arrive at a good decision is relatively trivial. Talk in the customer's language, not yours. Both the engineer and the gentleman want to know what the garage did, but they speak different languages. Never underestimate the symbolic significance of anything. When the customers can see the hamburgers being cooked, it says more about quality than anything you can say. In a service, the front-line personnel are simultaneously salespeople, production workers, management decision makers and part of the product.

Familiarity breeds boredom. What do customers want? Don't guess: Ask them. The act of asking is part of the service "we care". There are two ways to satisfy customers: Give them what they want or make them want what you give. Fill in the idle time Keep the customer occupied. Make the intangible tangible the strip across the toilet bowl.

The server can be "paid" in part in psychic rewards by the customer. Memories of poor service last longer than memories of good service: Only the exceptions are remembered. Service ethics: Do you market the objective benefits or the psychological? Most services, one way or another, are "hassle-absorbers". Absorb hassle for the customers and they'll pay through the nose. Front-room workers tend to be higher status than backroom workers. This has got to be managed against. Everyone's important: Or at least they must believe it. The best way to monitor service performance is to be a customer. In the best services, the providers are indistinguishable from the customers: The same beliefs, tastes, attitudes.

Empathy is all. What you see is what you get. Individual service providers are integral parts of the total service experience. Careful personnel selection can be used to help differentiate the service, reassure the customer, or demonstrate the results of the process. In the mood. The reason for the purchase of a given service must be considered in designing an optimal operating system because the emotional aspects of the service delivery system must fit with the emotional orientation of the customer. For example, travel agents must respond to the enthusiasm and trepidation of the vacation traveller, while bank tellers must project efficiency.

Accidents will happen. Since it is often either impossible or prohibitively expensive to eliminate errors, the service firm must be able to deftly handle the impact of the infrequent mistake. A smile is cheap to provide. Impact on service perceptions is great: Manage for service personnel morale. In a service, there's nothing more important than time. In any service, there are four groups: the sick who really need you but can be hard to help , the early sick who you can usually help , the worried well, who don't really need you but want to hire you and the well who don't need you.

The minute you think you know how it works, you're dead. Remember: The lowest person in the firm is the often the one talking to the customer. In multi-site businesses, you must ask not only how headquarters controls branches, but also how headquarters adds value to branches. What's the benefit of belonging to the network? A critical service firm risk factor: Burnout of front-line people: monitor it, and allow for it. How our people deal with customers will be influenced greatly by how we deal with them. Don't underestimate the value in the minds of employees or customers of a nicely turned phase: Make it memorable!

What counts with regard to customisation is not what customer sees, but what we have to go through. There are lots of ways to produce a customised service with routine activities. The way to make money is to get the customer to pay a customised price for standardised activities. The essence of the good service manager: Find romance and excitement in the ordinary. Service manager as producer, director of the "Mini-Play": You can design the set, rehearse the actors, rewrite the script: But your employees will give the performance.

Senior management fosters a commitment to service by exemplary personal behaviour, and engaging in dramatic service gestures. The need for skill building and team building is continuous. An eternal task: internal marketing of the firm to its employees. Measure frequently -- judge infrequently. In customised, front room work, manage the objectives, not the procedures. Managing the culture is the main operating lever in services management. When you're the boss, it's hard to get employees to give you the truth. The best philosophy to communicate: "No-one will be punished for making a mistake.

No-one will be forgiven for failing to learn from their mistakes". The urgent drives out the important if you let it. A person builds an organisation which builds a business. The customer is not always right, but you have to act that way. Sunday, September 1, Professionalism for Everyone. When stepping onto the first rung of your professional ladder, take a look up. Appreciate the top step and what it takes to be that high, but then concentrate on the second step and make sure that each step you take is secure. Know your company and its business, who the officers are and who the competition is. Play your role with dignity, looking for ways to learn from it.

If you work one on one, your goal is to be able to mirror your boss. Labels: Articles , Careers. Leading and Inspiring Teams. What's the significance of the article's title? And just go with an implied set of rules? And of course the other rule is this: don't fake it; they will see that in a minute. What are you reading these days? Do you have an article in progress? Labels: Interviews with Richard. Thursday, August 1, How's your Asset? Moving Toward a Solution: The Personal Strategic Plan To grow your asset successfully requires a plan, one designed to make your asset increasingly valuable in the marketplace. I'd love to give appropriate credit because it sums up very well what personal asset-building is all about: What we are is determined by what we experience, which is determined by what we do, which is determined by what we learn, which is determined by how we interpret events.

There are four avenues of "debriefing" that I have found valuable in promoting learning: By oneself With the team assuming that others, including juniors, worked on the assignment With the client With one's peers First is debriefing on your own. Conclusion Whether you are age 25 or 55, you will always need to worry about how your career is moving forward from today. As you think about your career, here are some questions to ponder: In what way are you personally more valuable to the marketplace than last year?

What, precisely, is it that you want to be famous for? You can't decide what you want from a job until you're clear on what you want from life. Some people have been too busy "succeeding" to figure out what success means to them. Don't look for a job until you've thought it through. First figure out what you want in life. Then go look for it. It's easy to fool yourself as to what you really want from life. There are a lot of people around you who will tell you what you should want from life: parents, teachers, friends. You don't have to accept their answers. Don't get stampeded. Ban the word "should" from your job search.

We all want to impress people. The tough part is figuring out precisely who we want to impress and why. You can't impress everyone simultaneously. Different people are impressed by different things: money, status, intellect, character, contribution to society and so on, forever. What do you want to be admired for? By whom? We all want respect and prestige. But in whose eyes? It ain't necessarily those of other students because six months from now you won't see most of them ever again.

The key to what you really want lies in something that you don't like to admit. Play to your "evil secrets"; don't suppress them. You are a lot less flexible than you think. Some people are big-city types: others are happier in small towns. Which are you? It's more important than you think. Changing jobs is easier than changing family, and a lot less painful. Your happiness will be determined much more by what job you've got than by what company you're working for or what industry you're in. Most people choose an industry, then choose a company, then choose a job. It's the wrong order. You can't figure out what you want in life by going to interviews.

The more interviews you attend, the more confusion you'll feel. The more confusion you feel, the worse the decision you'll make. The goal is to get the right job offer, not the most job offers. There is nothing as pathetic as someone getting depressed about being turned down by a company they didn't want to go work for anyway. Don't sell: buy! You can either buy yourself a job or be bought by one. If your new job doesn't work out, the divorce will be a lot more painful for you than for your employer. So you should be a lot pickier than they are in deciding whether to "get married.

Nothing impresses an interviewer more than someone who knows what they want and why. What do you really need to know about the job you'll be doing to be sure you'll be happy? Don't be afraid to ask. Check it out to be sure.

The third important point reflection models nursing that Ontario law schools have been able to charge increased tuition because there is significant demand for admission to Ontario law schools. Such costs may include dedicated equipment or other components Drink The Mercury Kabuki Analysis fixed costs. Advantages Of Fee-Pricing Strategy Of Private Universities significant growth of brand advertising is cogent evidence of this. They are, after all, a way of giving Advantages Of Fee-Pricing Strategy Of Private Universities customer a finite expectation. These observations are far from original.