Consulting for Business Startups

Starting a business from the ground up, buying a business from someone else, or buying into a franchise, requires a lot of work and dozens of specialized skill sets beyond just having a passion for the products or services the business sells.

We list some of the ways we can help you on a separate page about business startup consultation.

Stagnation Breakthrough Consulting

When businesses hit a wall and can't seem to grow anymore, it's called business stagnation. Eventually, over time, this wall will begin to push back and the business will start to shrink, and eventually fail.

Our team rocks when it comes to helping business breakthrough that stagnation wall! We have to be realistic though because sometimes the management team waits until the last nail is getting hammered into the coffin before they reach out and it's really hard to raise a business from imminent death.

Our approach varies with the desired result and, if allowed, we'll take your leadership through an analysis procedure that helps peel back layers in order to get to the real issues. Then we can help you formulate a game plan to revitalize your business and break through that stagnation! 

Some of the tools we might use include our SWOT Analysis on steroids, online effectiveness analysis, a 1-Page Strategic Plan, Target Avatar Marketing, website improvement, SEO tuning, social media strategies, confidential business coaching, and more.

Contact us to discuss how to help your business break through stagnation!

Strategic Planning and Our Special 1-Page Strategic Plan

A Strategic Plan is a systematic process of determining and envisioning a desired future, and translating this vision into broadly defined goals or objectives, and then developing specific sequenced steps to achieve them.

This is usually an abstract, cumbersome process that produces a planning document that is rarely looked at again and collects dust on a shelf as the business slowly spirals into disarray.

We offer a very cool "1-Page Strategic Plan" that is a result of in-depth analysis, but helps cut through all the lengthy written crud that produces volumes of garbage. Instead we help you really focus on the important outcomes and define the most essential elements of success. 

When we complete your "1-Page Strategic Plan" you will have the exact game plan for achieving the success you seek. It will be easy to follow and easy to tweak down the road when you decide to change direction. 

Helping Businesses Thrive!

Contact us to get more information.

Temporary Management and Temporary Leadership

Do you need an expert to temporarily lead or join a company, department, team, or project? This can be a HUGE BENEFIT for many reasons. 

Here are a few situations in which we can help step in and significantly help your company:

• Temporary leadership while your company is in between managers, administrators, executives. This gives your company a finite period of time to fill the position permanently.
• Virtual Team Leadership (Matrix Teams). Often, these are temporary teams put together for a specific project. Because of existing workloads, it is often difficult to pull existing managers and it's often better to bring in experienced project managers who can lead virtual teams.
• There is a political situation that makes the quick selection of a permanent leader difficult and the company needs a temporary leader to fill the void until the politics can be worked out. For example, there are two bright and very competitive individuals wanting to fill a vacancy but the company can't decide or doesn't want to frustrate/insult the person who is not selected for the temporary assignment. Often it's easier to bring in a temporary leader to fill the position until someone can be selected to fill it permanently.
• A company, division, or team is being dissolved, disbanded, or broken up.
  Sometimes a "bad guy" is needed to come in and do the dirty work, take the heat, or help cool down the troops during this process. During large layoffs, it is a good idea to bring in an outsider to help limit the damage of the reputation of a permanent employee or to keep the "about to be displaced" staff calmer during the process because there is no emotional tie or past friendship with the temporary leader.
• When a leader quickly exits (or gets promoted) before the a promotion or new hire can back-fill the position.
• Companies often deal with many tricky personality situations that border on legal action towards the company. In certain situations, it can be helpful to bring in a "new" manager to help facilitate the "rehabilitation" of a problem employee or to help evaluate and highlight the need for them to be "given the opportunity to be successful elsewhere."

Contact us to help fill this need.

Business Policies and Procedures

Businesses need policies and procedures to both run efficiently and protect themselves legally. ADC can develop or assist with the development of a wide variety of policies and procedures such as:

• Security Policies
• Employee Handbooks
• Procedures to help catch/stop/limit embezzlement
• Hiring & Interviewing Processes
• Termination Processes
• Payroll Processes
• Cash Management Procedures
• Electronic Signature
• Data Backup & Storage Procedures
• Computer Equipment Standardization
• Computer Usage Policies
• Ergonomic Standards
• Software Development Standards
• Quality Assurance (QA) and Testing Procedures
• Corporate Emergency Response Procedures

Contact us for help with your policies or procedures.

Web Development and Website Design

We've been designing and developing websites since the Internet's earlier days and we've watched the progress of website development tools over the years. We also provide a host of domain name (unique website address) services.

Check out our website development page for more details of what we can do for your company.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

The best websites in the world are fairly useless if potential customers can't find them when searching for relevant terms in top search engines. Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of maximizing the number of visitors to a particular website by ensuring that the site appears high on the list of results returned by a search engine.

We have a long history of helping websites rank high in search results for specific terms. Click here for more information about our SEO services.

Efficiency Improvement (Performance Improvement)

One of the most rewarding services with some of the highest ROI (Return On Investment) is our Efficiency Improvement services. We are brought in as an "unbiased outsider" to analyze a process in detail, understand the management constraints and results requirements, and then to recommend efficiency improvements that allow a team/business to save money, cut or redirect staff, increase quality, etc.

This may sound strange but it is extremely true: It is often easier for an outside consultant to come in and recommend something much easier than it is for management to recommend the exact same thing. For some psychological reason, staff often accept this better and often the implementation is more successful. Read between the lines.

Quality Improvement

It has several names: Continuous Quality Improvement, Continuing Quality Improvement, CQI, Quality Assurance, etc. But the purpose is the same: To not only improve some business/team process but to setup a system of procedures and measurements to help ensure that the improvement is continuous.

All too often companies spend a lot of money to improve something or to "talk about" improvement only to never follow up and make sure that that investment produces actual results that last.

It's very difficult for some companies to do this themselves and often they need an outside consultant to come in and help facilitate this process.

Contact us to help your business thrive!