Small, compact and fit

Ahen the economists Dr. Fritz Forrer, Dr. Roman Lombriser and the business economist Marcel Schöni decided to found their own company in 2008, they were able to build on strong roots. As the first spin-off of the Department of Economics of the University of Applied Sciences St.Gallen, they transferred the service part of the Institute for Quality Management and Applied Business Administration into their new company, Forrer Lombriser & Partner AG (FLP). This was the intention of the institute's policy and strategy. So they did not have to start from scratch. In addition to the transfer of projects and their network, they took with them their well-founded knowledge from the then already ten years of quality work at the institute.

So much know-how obliges. Excellence is anything but a foreign word. 22 months after the

First spin-off of the FHS

Foundation, FLP received C2E validation, followed by Recognized for Excellence (R4E) with five stars in 2011, and as an ESPRIX finalist, the firm is now being recognized for its work on its own excellence.

Lean structures

The leap from a secure existence as an employee of the university to self-employment was by no means as easy as I had assumed. The new company has little to do with the old institute's work, although the topics and projects are similar. The partners had to adjust mentally and organizationally. For example, processes had to be optimized and stabilized. The business areas are defined according to the core competencies of strategy and project management. Accompanying and supporting customers in projects remains the main field of work. With currently six employees, the new SME has a very lean organizational structure.

FLP gets by with little internal structure because of its small size.

Organised on a project basis

Work is carried out on a project-related basis in changing personnel compositions. The respective project reference determines the structures and processes. Depending on the project, the various people assume the different roles of project management, project collaboration and project quality assurance. Nevertheless, measured against the size of the company, process management is well advanced and is validated on a regular basis. In general it must always be kept in mind that all instruments and methods according to the EFQM model should be adapted to the actual size of the company and FLP has a precise feeling for this. This means that formalisation only takes place where it actually brings benefits.

Attractive offer

FLP offers tailor-made and customer-specific consulting and support in the areas of strategy and project management for SMEs, NPOs and public institutions. In the area of project management, the focus of the offer is on general project management as well as organizational development, quality management and market research. In the area of strategy management, a procedure is offered that was developed by Dr. Roman Lombriser as part of a CTI research project specifically for SMEs, but which is also attracting a great deal of attention in public institutions: With the SME*STAR Navigator, a pragmatic and effective strategy process can be designed step by step - from development to implementation control (cf. www.kmu-star.ch).

Very specific service

The FLP team does not like to be called a "management consultancy". They want nothing to do with classic consulting. As long-time members of a university of applied sciences, they are fundamentally critical of it. The difference lies in the specific strengths of the services they provide. Their guiding principles are:

"We exclusively accompany projects on topics in which we are expert."

The professional competence is made transparent by the many years of work at the University of Applied Sciences and currently by specialist books and teaching assignments on the topics of strategy management and project management.

"We handle client projects as if they were our own."

Customer projects are not simply handled. The high level of identification with the customer projects and the commitment

The other advice

is regularly confirmed by customers.

"We meet the deadlines agreed upon when the order was placed."

Professional competence is central, but can often only be assessed by the client in the course of the project. Adherence to deadlines, however, is already a priority in the acquisition phase. 

"We provide clearly defined services in advance with a cost ceiling."

FLP spends a lot of time formulating the goals of its customers' projects. The cost ceiling is correspondingly clearly defined. This sets FLP apart from many of its competitors.

"We work with our clients to develop solutions based on accepted and current scientific knowledge."

This aspect has been cultivated since the company was founded, with practical solutions at its core.

In principle, FLP does not come to the customer with ready-made solutions off the peg, as it were. The customer's needs are at the centre. They are systematically recorded, which requires a great deal of intuition. Based on this, individual goals are agreed upon and procedural concepts aligned to the customer's organization are developed and justified.

High approval among customers

FLP is primarily active in German-speaking Switzerland with a geographical focus on the Zurich metropolitan region and the St. Gallen region. The majority of FLP's clients are various public sector departments and offices, universities, SMEs and NPOs in the eastern part of Switzerland.

Systematic surveys of customer satisfaction confirm this: Customers appreciate the services. Over 90 percent recommend FLP to others. The rate of follow-up orders is also very high at over 70%. In addition to the technical competence, the good structuring of the projects is highlighted as particularly positive.

A good project structure determines not only the achievement of

SMEs - the partners of choice

of the set goals, the adherence to deadlines and costs, but also an important goal of FLP: to feel at home after the completion of the

project superfluous. The clients should be able to use the tools developed in the projects independently. And they should be empowered to drive the project forward or apply the results of the project in a meaningful way even without further external support. This presupposes that the tools developed are accepted by the clients and that the results are effectively anchored internally in terms of sustainability.

Innovations are required

With the help of internal project reviews, work is constantly being done to improve the existing offerings and project execution. In internal meetings ("StehSi") and the annual retreat, the team regularly reviews which new offers it can provide to its customers. Market observations, customer feedback and workshops are an indispensable source for this, as are direct contacts with partners in universities of applied sciences (at the continuing education level).

Developing competencies

Examples include a new offer for municipalities (DLQ+) to provide a broader range of support, or the further development of the SME*STAR strategy tool into CITY*STAR and NPO*STAR - involving municipalities and NPOs.

Challenge

New developments of this kind are aimed at further increasing the share of sales accounted for by the "Strategic Management" offering. Accordingly, acquisition is being intensified via the company's own specialist conferences and company presentations. However, the FLP team sees the biggest challenge in becoming less dependent on its founders. Even after five years, the network of older founders is still crucial for the acquisition of new projects.

FLP wants to further strengthen the turnover share of SMEs. As is well known, a university tends to be an inhibition threshold for SMEs to make use of services. Now they can negotiate projects with the SME in the St.Gallen office of FLP at eye level, so to speak. The effect is evident: in 2012, turnover with SMEs rose to 40 percent - "a trend in the right direction", as Fritz Forrer notes in the following interview.

The culture is right

For the FLP management it is clear: success, quality and consulting culture depend centrally on the professional, social and process competence as well as on empathy and commitment of the employees. That is why we all work together to build up and maintain these competencies, which are regarded as equally important. Further training has a particularly high priority.

As a spin-off from a university of applied sciences, we believe that good graduates of universities of applied sciences have the potential to provide companies with expert support through targeted development work. In 2012, a new young talent was recruited to the team.

Everyone in the team knows where the company stands and is informed about current developments. And: A lot is done to ensure that the interpersonal "chemistry" is right. Joint "StehSi", weekly external coffee breaks, occasional joint lunches, but above all the annual three-day retreat in the mountains ensure that FLP remains a team full of life.