We believe that our competitive advantage is the ability to successfully apply our know-how in particular business cases. We treat every client individually and always aim at designing crafted solutions. Our expertise in functional areas can be grouped into two main categories:

• strategy and operations which includes in particular: sales effectiveness, operational excellence and strategy
• corporate finance which includes in particular: mergers & acquisitions, valuation & scenario analysis, company legal transformations, debt funds raising and initial public offerings.

During years of consulting practice at Business Advisors and other, mostly world-renowned consulting companies we have gained broad experience in insurance, banking, consumer goods, retail, industrial goods and technology sectors.

Functional practices

Business Advisors has served clients within many critical issues of their businesses in various industries. Our functional practices have their origin in years of consulting experience gained by our consultants while working at Business Advisors and before. Basing on our wide know-how we have developed and applied for our clients a number of solutions in the most fundamental areas of operating.

Strategy & Operations

In 1990's relatively few companies gave an appropriate attention to profitability and focused their business efforts on growth. Nowadays, profitable growth poses the biggest challenge as more and more CEOs perceive fundamental strength and operational excellence as their highest priority. Business Advisors helps them to be successful in these efforts.

Sales Effectiveness

In modern times, shareholders put simultaneously high pressure on long-term sales growth and earnings increase as only such approach can create sustainable value for them. During last several years, companies struggled to improve their operational sales effectiveness, however there is still considerable space for improvements.

Sales effectiveness is dependent on three critical factors:

• Sales channel management - which includes: designing effective incentive schemes, customized training schemes, implementing effectiveness improvement programs, providing adequate and actual performance indicators,
• Pricing - which includes: developing effective pricing strategies, current monitoring of costs and budgets,
• Product management and consumer focus - which includes: product development, marketing strategy and consumer insight.

Business Advisors helps companies from various industries to design customized and effective solutions in the sales practice to secure long-term profitable growth of our clients and create sustainable advantage. The solutions are based on our broad experience gained worldwide, as well as on individual - client approach. We also support the companies in the implementation processes and IT issues which determine - to a large extent, the success of sales effectiveness projects.

The founders of Business Advisors are authors of unique Sales Unit Effectiveness Program that aims at improving overall performance of sales network and is directed to large sales organizations. The Program has been implemented successfully in many Polish and international financial groups.

Operational excellence

Despite strong pressure on operational excellence in the recent years and improvement in this area, the relative enhancement varies widely among different industries and companies. Even within those which occupy similar competitive positions and focus on the same markets. Therefore, level of process industrialization and effective value-chain management still can be the source of superior competitive advantage.

Operational excellence can be developed among five critical areas:

• Procurement organization - effectively organized procurement organization can bring substantial savings in company's expenditure (project reductions of up to 20-25%),
• Supply chain management - consumer-oriented supply chain can be a great source of competitive advantage by decreasing the cycle time and enhancing company credibility,
• Manufacturing - production process organization should support the company in fulfilling its strategy in terms of sales growth, portfolio of products flexibility and cost effectiveness,
• Working capital management - effective usage of balance sheet assets can create additional value through releasing cash that should be invested in more profitable way,
• Organization - well-designed organization and process industrialization in company's operations create additional savings and, if performed properly, improves satisfaction of employees and consumers from cooperation with the company.

Business Advisors supports companies from different sectors in making operational impact to improve their profitability and enhance satisfaction from companies' services and products. The solutions which we recommend are based on complex analysis of our client's situation and broad experience in creating operational competitive advantage gained before. We also support the companies in the implementation processes and IT issues which to a large extent determine the success of operational excellence projects.

Strategy

We know from our own experience that many companies which are often market leaders, lack clear and specified business strategy. Their CEOs claim that we live in such turbulent times that strategy is something created and modified every day so there is no need to have it precisely defined. What is even worse, those CEOs rarely communicate their companies' business goals to other employees.

In dynamic business situation we face today, companies must realize that strategic outcomes can be determined and that setting clear targets and communicating them is a fundamental aspect for creating sustainable advantage of the companies. The change in thinking should start in companies' management bodies which should prioritize and design changes in their organizations to drive shareholder value.

Business Advisors helps companies to develop successful business strategy. We believe that it is one of the most crucial success factors of organizations in long-term. Our approach assumes close cooperation with our client's representatives which should be involved in strategic decision-making. The process should be supervised by senior management which holds major responsibility for the strategy implementation. We can also support the senior management in this implementation and prepare organization for the change.

Corporate finance

With relatively low market valuations caused by worldwide financial crisis, CEOs demonstrate growing interest in M&A transactions and other corporate finance issues. Business Advisors has strong expertise in supporting such business transactions, representing both sides of the table. We also help the companies to transform their legal forms to maximize shareholders' value and prepare their organization for funds raising and initial public offering.

Mergers & Acquisitions

Mergers and acquisitions are tools that enable managers to accelerate the development of their companies. An acquisition of a company that offers a complementary product, operates on a market beyond reach or that has assets one could benefit from, is a wise step that will accelerate the development of investor's company. Partial take-over of a smaller company by a large partner often guarantees further development, allows an access to large distribution networks or improves company's competitive position.

Business Advisors supports clients in M&A decision-making, prepares clients for transaction, helps them find and select partners, proposes solutions tailored to individual needs of the client. The essence of our work is to properly understand our clients expectations.

Valuations and scenario analysis

Effective value-steering of a company is the main determinant of top management assessment. Shareholders perceive it as the key performance indicator of their companies. Proper valuation is required in many other business cases - from M&A transactions to loan and tax obligations. Management boards should also have a tool to analyze business decisions and their possible outputs in order to successfully drive the value-steering.

Business Advisors performs in-depth valuation of different business enterprises. Our expertise enables us to build complex analytical tools to verify this value and analyze effects of undertaking particular activities on total enterprise value. We design individually crafted models that consider the most crucial aspects of client operations. This approach allows our clients for reasonable decision-making that creates value to their businesses.

Company legal transformations

Sole proprietorship or a general partnership allow discretion in terms of allocating cash by the owner or partners, however their private assets are at risk. Revenues reaching thousands or millions of zloty might be a good reason to change the legal structure of the company into a more safe option - one that is separated from private assets of the owners and partners. What will happen in case of death of the owner or one of the partners? Without certain contractual arrangements, such case could mean an immediate end of the business. Limited liability corporation does not bear that risk. If shareholders and management act according to the law, they only risk losing their share of equity and future profits. The costs of running a limited liability corporation are not higher than those of a partnership or a well developed sole proprietorship, however the effective taxation is twice as high. A joint stock corporation compared to a limited liability corporation allows to exert greater control upon the company and adds business prestige. Indisputably, joint stock corporation is also required to be listed on stock exchange. Solution to this problem is a limited partnership legal structure - not as popular and rarely used, yet efficient and practical.

Business Advisors helps our clients to transform legal structures of their companies into the most optimal ones. Our advisory includes strategic analysis of current legal structure, recommendations on possible modifications and complex process management in cooperation with our trusted legal advisor.

Debt funds raising

After market turbulences raising corporate debt is even harder than before. Despite that, many companies still struggle to benefit from financial leverage and maximize returns from their investments due to the fact that company's optimal capital structure is one of the main drivers of value-creation. However, these activities in modern times require more proper management and complex coordination of the process of debt fund raising.

Business Advisors supports our clients in successful debt funds raising. Our advisory in this area includes proper presentation of a company, optimal transaction structuring, increasing company's perceived credibility, submitting loan application to banks (according to banks' evaluation requirements) and negotiating detailed loan conditions with bank representatives. Our good relations with banks also enhance positive financing decisions.

Initial Public Offering

Preparing a company for initial public offering takes usually a lot of time - from six months to two years. This is a strategic managerial decision that should be made independent of current market situation as it often changes. The length of preliminary stage of IPO is determined by the company's current organizational and legal structure, complexity of analysis on company performance, quality of its financial reports and many others.

Business Advisors helps clients in the complex IPO project management. We cooperate with adequate legal and financial institutions and are able to support the client in every aspect of decision-making. Thanks to our superior business knowledge gained in Strategy & Operations projects our capabilities enable us to verify business fundamentals for value-creation and steer it in the preliminary stage of the company IPO. This approach helps us get the best price for our clients stocks and therefore deliver highest consulting value for the current shareholders.