| As a new marketplace, GDI
Solutions will grow and evolve in response to the needs of the various
participants in the services which it provides. The vision, however,
is to become the most trusted source to which senior executives at
large or fast-growing companies will turn for help planning major investment projects
anywhere in the world. This will be achieved by
growing a team of relationship leaders and a knowledge base and "Network"
which is
demonstrably well-prepared to
quickly introduce leading service providers, information sources, and
investment alternatives as an independent "shared" service.
This website demonstrates some initial aspects of that capability,
which will continue to improve as the firm grows, especially with executive feedback to guide
research priorities and share "lessons learned".
Note that we do not compete with professional
service providers such as location consultants, corporate real estate
specialists, tax advisors, lawyers, design and construction specialists, or
others.
Instead, we work independently with leaders in all
such specialties, and learn about their capabilities in different markets
and for different types of projects, so that we can introduce them as
appropriate. We don't "push" any service provider or business
location. We "pull" relevant contacts in for executives. Good
solutions already exist for most project needs. Our role is to find
and introduce them when needed.
They can deliver high value by their very specialized
knowledge. We deliver value by knowing who to call, and what they can
do for a client, so major direct investment projects can develop faster and
better, with lower costs and risks. We can't possibly know it all, but
we "connect the dots" as best we can through our global networks and
research, and confront each project as a challenge to improve our support.
How often are project decisions made by an executive?
Since few executives plan significant
direct investment projects repeatedly during their careers, or in more than one
or two familiar locations, a lot of valuable management time and resources can
be spent finding relevant contacts and reliable information sources (and
recognizing unreliable ones), performing
research work, and sorting out the plans and implementation process for major projects which will affect
the future performance of their companies.
The project planning process can be very complex and
time-consuming, and sometimes follows an ad hoc rather than well-proven process.
Many potentially advantageous business locations and support services may not be
identified at all, or may be summarily eliminated on the basis of incorrect
assumptions or stereotypes without careful evaluation. Haste makes waste,
as they say. A lot of potential value can be destroyed without a trace
when companies make suboptimal choices for major investments. Nobody
measures and reports the value of the lost opportunities to do much better.
In simple terms, what is at stake is not simply the
capital that is to be invested, or the fact that it will be invested for so many
years in the expectation of an acceptable return. What is really at stake
is that the return will vary between locations, even if the investment is
similar. Anything which goes into the success or failure of the business
can be a variable, and it can be hard to evaluate the many tradeoffs, since
there is rarely one alternative which is indisputably the best choice.
False economy : The "do it yourself" approach
The cost of getting top professional support in this niche
is often much less than might be assumed, and far more valuable, but it can be
hard to find or qualify the most relevant and capable services for a specific
need because the market is highly fragmented, with many competitors and
different approaches or levels of service.
Executives frequently realize the need for professional
support after they have already invested a lot of valuable time and resources,
or are facing difficult deadlines for their projects to satisfy new market
opportunities. Unfortunately, if you wait to call the fireman until the
fire is out of control, the result probably isn't as good as if you had made a
small investment in fire prevention in the first place. If you call in a
consultant after the project is way behind schedule, and therefore limit the
scope of work dramatically to meet the deadline, then the outcome probably isn't
as good as if you had worked together from the start.
Pick your location consultant very carefully
Nobody likes consultants who charge more than their work
is worth, but in this niche, the value of a good consultant can be extremely
high because so much is at stake, and so much can go wrong. No matter how
much you hate using consultants in general, this is one niche in which it makes
a lot of sense to use them. The benefits from their work can be
exceptionally high relative to the costs involved.
The trick is to know their capabilities and limitations.
Many companies hire consultants who do not really have expertise in this niche
of direct investment project planning and implementation. If you are going to hire
a professional, make sure they know what they are doing.
Some consultants have specialized in this niche for decades, and
one doesn't survive
that long in any service business without delivering high value to satisfied
clients. It pays to pick very carefully in this niche. The size of
the firm doesn't assure the best capabilities for every job.
Almost anybody can claim the ability to do location
consulting work. It is a highly fragmented niche, and the quality of work
and scope of capabilities varies widely. That is one reason why GDI
Solutions was set up to work independently, on a non-exclusive basis, with
multiple leaders in this niche. It is not a commodity market. There
are very important differences in capabilities among the firms in this niche.
|
A common
problem is to uncritically follow what peers in the same industry have been
doing recently for their projects. This can lead to overheated
"clusters" and higher costs or more problems than expected, and suboptimal
solutions, even though such a location may seem to be a very logical choice
which is above criticism at the time. Past performance is no assurance
of future success. Think about it.
Did those other companies actually make the "best"
choice? Did their projects actually have all the same criteria?
How will following their actions lead to any significant competitive
advantage? Could better value be achieved by taking a closer look at
the alternatives?
A good analogy might be the scenario in which popular
investment analysts and investors keep pushing up a stock until they
suddenly discover that the real value is far less than everyone had
predicted. When the bubble bursts, the last ones to invest may suffer
the most.
The difference is that, while it may be easy to sell
stocks quickly once a mistake becomes obvious, it's far more complex and
costly to relocate or shut down major capital investment projects after an
unfavorable choice was made and is finally recognized as such. The
more typical scenario is to stick with a bad choice until it becomes
intolerable, which is a major reason why it is so important to choose
carefully.
Getting into the business of reinventing the wheel
As projects are planned, and despite valuable business
expertise among all the team members within the company, the team involved
may effectively "reinvent the wheel" as they try to figure out or reach
consensus on which issues are most important for their project, and how to
address those issues.
There usually isn't an internal process with all the
necessary market knowledge and support services in place, simply because
each project tends to be unique within the company and there may be limited
internal knowledge about how other companies have faced similar challenges.
The team members may not even know where to turn for information or help, or
what type of help exists to address their needs.
This is a very suboptimal situation for investors,
particularly when one considers the value of the senior executive time which is
often involved in capital investment project planning, and how much may be at
stake for the company.
The expected ROI assumes the choice is a good one, not
just as a first impression today, but for many, many years of operations
Beyond the immediate capital investment commitments and
risks, there is the potential long-term impact of any major project on the
performance and value of the company. A good or bad investment decision
has a compound effect, because it will affect performance for as long as that
operation exists. It is therefore very important to "get it right", and
worthwhile to obtain professional support and good information to support
executives from their earliest planning stages.
GDI Solutions is essentially creating a marketplace to
help many leading companies to develop faster and better capital investment
projects with the support of highly qualified professional services,
information, and research to fill in any important gaps in their internal
capabilities for the planning and implementation of such projects.
Our work requires a highly individualized and rapid
response to the needs of specific companies and the entire team of senior
executives who would be responsible for current or future projects. Our
goal is to help "get it right" by introducing people with the relevant
knowledge.
Multi-functional project teams, and using consultants
It should be self-evident that most projects will involve
a wide range of functions within a company - from strategic leadership through
the operational details, HR considerations, finance, logistics, IT, and other
issues. In short, anything that goes into making a company work is likely
to be an issue when setting up a new operations somewhere.
Although that may seem self-evident, it is often forgotten
when picking professional advisors to help with a project. Don't assume
that a tax advisor or a real estate advisor can address all the business issues.
They may be extremely talented within their specialty, but it is caveat
emptor when they stretch into business location consulting, which is
obviously a multi-disciplinary profession rather than just one technical
specialty. Good location consultants will have a broad range of skills and
experience, but will still pull in specialists as they are needed, rather than
pretend they can do it all alone. You probably would not expect one person
in your company to be able to address all the issues alone. Don't expect
to find that in a consultant, either.
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