Some Examples of Our Strategic Pathways

Enterprise-Level Trans-National Corporation Clients.

World scale engineering company (claiming to be the worlds largest engineering manufacturing engineering company) needed to conduct a 'Customer Satisfaction Audit'.  McNicol Williams carried out the work, valued at about $20,000 over three states and about forty large scale customers.

While the outcomes of the project are, of course, confidential, this work identified a customer with annual purchases of $20M, who was about to defect.  The defection was prevented.  At issue was a core feature of the selling offer, which ran contrary to the needs of this particular customer.

SME Specific Assignments

A highly successful retail trader engaged McNicol Williams to develop a business plan as part of a program to become a member of a major retail electrical chain. The bank commented that the business plan set out a question on every page, and every time the answer was provided on the following page.

The retail co-op group commented that this was the best prepared business plan they had ever seen!

Local Government Projects

A major success in this class of work involved State Government funding in support of Local Government funding, to retain an essential service in a rural community. The local service station had closed.  Our task was to develop a business model that would be sustainable in ensuring continuing fuel supplies to one rural community normally seen as too small for a service station business to survive.

This was reportedly the thirty-seventh such study, with all the previous studies having failed.  This project saw a fuel station brought into being, operating so successfully that the model was replicated in other localities.

Retail development assignments (for two municipalities won by competitive tender), each to the value of about $30,000, involved developing strategic development models for the strip shopping centre retailers, faced with increasing competition from mass merchants and shopping chains.

While the work remains the property of the client organisations, a general observation can be made that while customer service was generally claimed by the retailers to be excellent, customers had a different, and more critical view.

State Government

Work for Heritage Victoria and Parks Victoria - two separate projects - is typical of this class of assignment.  Both involved carrying out wide ranging consultation, along with considerable historical and commercial investigation, with a view to developing business plans.

In one case, it was long term business plan for the conservation of Victoria's iconic 'Stick Shed' at Murtoa, and in the other case, the object for conservation was Anderson's Mill at Smeaton, near Ballarat.

Federal Government

One particularly interesting and challenging assignment carried out with federal funding, was 'Bridging the Digital Divide for Small and Medium Enterprises' - a project valued at $26,000.

This project was targeted at identifying the barriers to generating more rapid engagement of internet services and trading by small and medium businesses. The key strategic focus was on two facets:

• the planning, provision, and availability of infrastructure, and 
• need for, and accessibility of, relevant training.

This work has been used by many university and organisations in the years since - including organisations in New Zealand and the USA.