Can you summarise your company's strategy in 35 words or less? Do you know what goes into a Strategy Statement? The truth is that most executives or their employees are unable to do either. FENCI Consulting can help you formulate a simple but powerful Strategy Statement within the framework of the market opportunity, your competitive strengths and your competitors' offering, so as to help you find the business sweet spot.

What are the competitive forces that shape your industry? What are the root causes of profitability? How can you position your company to better cope with current competitive forces? How can you anticipate or exploit shifts in the industry landscape? How can you influence a new industry structure which is more favourable to your company? Are you defining your industry too narrowly (scope of products / services) or too broadly (geographic scope)? At FENCI Consulting we believe that if you don't understand your industry / market you can not compete effectively. We can help you answer these key questions so as to sharpen the focus of your business strategy.

A 2008 IBM Survey of corporate CEOs reported that over 50% of executives believe that business model innovation will become more important for business success than product or service innovation. The problem is that few companies understand their existing business model well enough (the premise behind its development, its natural interdependencies and its strengths / limitations). At FENCI Consulting we can help you understand your existing business model at granular level i.e. appreciate the dynamics and processes of your business model. This understanding and confidence will allow you to innovate or reinvent it, so you can deliver a superior Customer Value Proposition (CVP).

In today's fiercely competitive world, successful companies no longer set profit goals or focus on market share (that is the business approach of the last century), now they make sure that their front line employees and customers are at the very heart of management concern. Business research shows that profits and growth are stimulated primarily by customer loyalty. Loyalty is the direct result of customer satisfaction. Satisfaction is largely influenced by the value of services provided to customers. Value is created by satisfied, loyal, and productive employees. FENCI consulting can help you understand and improve your 'service-profit chain', monitor your service system (with its Customer Service Audits) and achieve a level of excellence that meets and exceeds yours customers' expectations.

The market you compete in is either characterised by 'red oceans' or 'blue oceans'. In 'red oceans', companies focus on matching and beating their rivals; as a result, their strategies tend to take on similar dimensions and the result is head-to-head competition, which tends to be costly and counterproductive. FENCI Consulting can help you adopt a different competitive mindset, in which you look methodically across competition boundaries so as to find pockets of unoccupied territory (blue oceans). The benefit of this new approach is that we can help you create uncontested market space, render your competition irrelevant, create / capture new demand, break the value / cost trade-off and adopt a strategy of differentiation and low cost. Business research shows that blue ocean strategies can deliver anything up to 40% more in total revenue and 60% in total profits.

Most companies employ a CSR policy for the wrong reasons and without any linkage to their strategy. At FENCI Consulting we can help you identify a set of societal problems that your company is best equipped to help resolve and from which you can gain the greatest competitive benefit. In our view, the essential test of any CSR Strategy is not whether a cause is worthy but whether it presents an opportunity to create shared value, that is of meaningful benefit to society but also valuable to the business; a true win-win relationship.

FENCI can help organisations establish, implement and maintain an effective 'complaints handling policy' since this will help them increase customer loyalty and satisfaction. Our aim is to help organisations to continually improve the effectiveness and efficiency of complaints-handling by helping them plan / design the complaints-handling process (including FENCI's 'Six Step Process'), set up the necessary operation to handle customer complaints and advise on how to maintain and improve the complaints-handling process over time.

FENCI can help you create, manage and/or re-think your Brand Strategy. In today's fiercely competitive marketplace we all need to differentiate ourselves from the competition by creating a superior, easily recognisable and distinct brand identity. Each client is different but generally speaking we can help you differentiate your brand, develop a unique positioning concept, enhance your marketing communication and/or increase the augmented value of your brand. We structure our advice according to our three step process focusing on the 'Brand Essence', 'Brand Promise' and 'Brand Customer Experience'.

Business Research shows that on average less than 30% of family owned businesses survive into the third generation of family ownership. According to NSO statistics 95% of local businesses are micro companies (employing between one and nine employees) and a substantial majority of which are family-owned businesses. In fact, Southern Europe in general seems to prefer the family business structure over corporate alternatives which our Anglo-Saxon cousins seem to prefer. This doesn’t necessary mean that corporate structures are better than family-owned businesses, it just means that first-generation or second-generation shareholders should seriously consider engaging the right Business Advisors to build and organise their family business.

At FENCI we can help you introduce and maintain the right sort of corporate governance, elect a strong Board of Directors with the right balance of family, internal and external directors, set up a family council, design appropriate shareholder agreements, advise on strategies which balance short-term financial performance with long-term success, consult on how best to manage the family wealth and advise on effective CSR donations that contribute to the company’s bottom line and strengthen the family’s values and principles. In a sense, we are perfect for family business concerns given the nature of our service which is time-intensive, customer intimate and motivated by value-based fees and long-term mutual success.

We can help our clients prepare, report and/or interpret their company’s management accounts. We can also help organise and chair monthly management review meetings in which financial, managerial and operational performance is considered so as to enhance the quality of business decisions made.

Every business has to make an investment appraisal and/or a valuation decision. More often than not, such decisions involve substantial capital outlays which have a huge bearing on the bottom line. It is therefore crucial that businesses employ an effective screening of investment proposals. At FENCI we can help you evaluate investment opportunities mainly through using either of four evaluation methods such as ‘Net Present Value’ (NPV) and Payback Period (PP). Whilst undertaking an investment appraisal we also consider ‘opportunity costs’, ‘risk’ and ‘time frames’. With regards to valuation decisions, be it for the purchase of an asset or even the acquisition of another business, we also provide expert advice / guidance by using any of the following methods: Asset Based, Earnings Multiple, Dividend Yield or Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) valuations.

Every business needs to be financed, be it from internal or external sources, in the short-term or over the long term. A business needs to grow (organically or via acquisition) and to do so it requires financing. We can help you identify the most efficient / effective sources within the context of your business and market. This may involve dealing with private investors, the banks or better financial management of your trade receivables / payables, working capital and cash flow.

Very often a business opportunity emerges for one company to either buy or merge with another so as to achieve growth, economies of scale and market share. A merger is a combination of two companies to form a new company, while an acquisition is the purchase of one company by another. We can help advise on any such M&A activity both from the buyers or the sellers perspective.

Offers to purchase an asset are usually dependent on the results of due diligence analysis. This includes reviewing all financial records plus anything else deemed material to the sale. Sellers could also perform a due diligence analysis on the buyer. Items that may be considered are the buyer's ability to purchase, as well as other items that would affect the purchased entity or the seller after the sale has been completed. At FENCI we can help advise the buyer or the seller to investigate-or-audit –or-verify (whichever is applicable) a potential investment.

For some businesses outsourcing their payroll can mean less costs and not having to worry about complicated tax legislation. This service is particularly relevant to Malta-based international businesses who might not have the resources or local expertise to handle a fully-fledged payroll system and are better off outsourcing it. At FENCI we offer this service to a select few of our clients.

In business there always seems to be a tension between near-term operational concerns and long-term strategic priorities. In our opinion, however, it is breakdowns in a company's management system rather than managements' lack of ability or effort, which more often than not causes businesses to under-perform. FENCI Consulting uses a powerful auditing technique that helps management set clear strategic goals, allocate resources consistent with those goals, set priorities for operational action, assesses the impact of those decisions, and, if necessary, update strategic goals. As independent and professional business auditors our goal is to enable you to have a management system which links strategy and operations so as to deliver superior business performance.

It is a fact that highly satisfied customers drive growth and profitability in service businesses. FENCI Consulting performs independent and periodic audits of companies' customer service systems precisely so as to help them increase customer retention, repeat business and customer referral. We do this by assessing and monitoring the customer's 'Point of Entry', 'Point of Impact' and 'Point of Exit' in a company's service system so as to help them deliver first class customer service consistently and constantly!

Credibility in a company's CSR is only real and popular when it is independently audited by outside professionals. FENCI Consulting offers this auditing service in accordance to internationally accepted reporting frameworks. Why don't you get in the habit of having a CSR Audit performed once a year and eliminate the risk of internally produced expensive and non-strategic CSR policies. Our CSR Audits are there to provide guidance and strategic alignment as much as they are to add credibility to your CSR in the eyes of stakeholders.

At FENCI we can help organisations design, implement and improve a quality management system according to ISO standard 9001:2008. We also have the capability to provide organisations with pre-assessment audits, supplier audits, internal audits and surveillance audits.

This service is primarily targeted at our own clients with the emphasis being on Executive Recruitment. Our value proposition is that we offer businesses a customer intimate, first-class, recruitment service which involves the placing of advertisements, short-listing, interviewing and selection of suitable candidates, on behalf of the employer. The benefits for your company are that you enjoy anonymity with the wider world especially direct competitors, only revealing your company’s identity to the selected short-listed candidates, that we filter out non-suitable candidates, we remove the pressure on the time and resources of your staff so they can remain focused on their day-to-day work, provide peace of mind that the outsource process is in the hands of a senior consultant-director and that you have access to expert advice in your company’s talent search. We also have the capability to offer job-hunting services to Malta’s leading senior managers and Chief Executives.