Project or Retainer

We get a kick out of helping firms upgrade their business intelligence capabilities. On either a retainer basis or one off projects we are happy to help.

A.R.K. is not a “consultancy” however.  This means:

• do not use us to provide a report which excuses indecision – you may not get the answer you want;
• do not expect us to spend most of our time trying to sell you other consulting projects - its not what we do;
• do not expect us to rubber stamp anything – we just don’t do it.

Our consulting services will demonstrate the quality of our benchmarking and business intelligence – that’s all.

Recent projects include:

• Acquisition prospect evaluation, qualification and introduction;
• Divestment of divisions and underperforming teams;
• High Court level negotiation on monopoly contract dispute resolution;
• Independent valuations for employee share scheme implementation;
• Minority shareholder entrance and/or exit;
• Independent expert evidence on arbitration on valuation disputes;
• M&A process management: building an internal team and building/managing a pipeline;
• Independent, reliable MIS data analysis for risk assessment;
• Independent, reliable data for objective competitive positioning or Competition Commission investigation;
• Providing a mechanism to track the enterprise value to optimise business strategies;
• Review of Marketing & Sales departments to review efficiency and relevance to market demand/capacity.

Non-Executive Director Services

We are proud to be non-executive directors with a range of firms, from start-ups to, high growth entrepreneurs and divisions of multi-nationals. This is the majority of our “retainer” based services where we bring independent oversight to busy executive teams.  In particular we insist on:

• No equity preconditions – its your business.
• No investment or loan preconditions.

Just sound experience in related markets and experience of transforming difficult benchmarks and standards. 

A daily rate contract assures independence of advice. We don’t want access to equity – we have our own, thanks. But we are experienced in most of the ruses used by others, from “angels” to VCs.

Especially where valuations for employee share options schemes or similar are involved we prefer to remain independent from shareholders and not to have options or equity participation.

A truly independent perspective on your management issues, the market challenges and benchmarked procedures and data without the worry that diluting your equity is the long game.

Honesty, backed by provocative and experienced insight.

“The Virtual HQ”
Our service has been described as the sort of discipline and insight delivered by a good HQ function in larger firms.  Large HQs use us to help them do their benchmarking, and smaller firms use us to get their processes as professional as the major players.