As Clarkston Consulting continues to celebrate its success over the last 25 years, we look ahead to the challenges that our clients are facing at an existential level. Clarkston’s CEO, Tom Finegan, reflects, “As a world-class consulting firm focused on the needs of our clients, it is critical that we stay one step ahead of the challenges they are facing and our ability to meet those challenges. Through the dawn of the internet technology era, major industry shifts, and economic uncertainties, we evolved with the needs of our clients.” Supply chain is one such discipline that we have watched transform since our firm began. Once a “necessary evil”, now a competitive advantage; once solely tactical, now strategic and tactical. We have invested our best energy in keeping up in a discipline that has become table stakes for our clients.

In the February 2017 Market Guide for Supply Chain Strategy and Operations Consulting, Gartner listed Clarkston Consulting as a Specialist Service Provider offering multiple services. These service providers “may offer IT, BPO or other consulting services in addition to supply chain strategy and operations consulting. They differ from the large, global multiservice providers because they do not serve all industries, geographies and business functions.” Clarkston Consulting believes its inclusion as an example of a specialist service provider, is due to the fact that we operate in multiple geographic regions, and multiple functions, but specifically in consumer products and life sciences.

Of the 15 consultancies listed within the matrix of Supply Chain Strategy Consulting from Specialist Service Providers, Clarkston was one of two to have delivered the particular project/initiative within the past three years and is a primary/key focus in 7 of the 8 areas. Those services named as a primary focus are:

• Supply Chain Strategy Development;
• SKU Rationalization and Complexity Reduction;
• Product Portfolio Optimization;
• Supply Chain Segmentation;
• Supply Chain Cost to Serve;
• Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP); and
• New Product Introduction & Launch.

Supply chain network design and modeling was noted as an available service, but not a primary focus. On the Supply Chain Operations Consulting Matrix, Clarkston was shown to have available services and capabilities, but not primary focus in:

• Lean Six Sigma / Continuous Improvement;
• Sourcing & Procurement for Direct Materials;
• Plant and Floor Manufacturing Operations;
• Warehouse and DC Operations; and
• Transportation Operations.

Clarkston serves in North America and Western Europe, and works with industries such as Consumer Goods, Retail, Life Sciences, and Distributors and Wholesalers of Consumer Products and Life Sciences companies.

While we consider it an honor to be mentioned in this report, we see it as external validation that we are continuing to grow and change with our clients. Chris Striffler, Supply Chain Service Lead, explains, “While we have been in the Supply Chain field for over 25 years, we have strived to stay on the leading edge of supply chain challenges. The listing from Gartner, we believe, is further proof of our ability to help our clients keep up and be leaders in a field that has experienced enormous disruption.” We are grateful to our clients who have trusted us to partner with them in solving their most pressing business issues and look forward to the challenges that lay ahead.

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