Our Approach.
Our approach to working with clients involves a synthesis of our values and experience.
Over many years, we have found that effective client service and engagement management requires:
Dedication to understanding context and need.
Our way of working involves personal engagement on the background to, and details of, the problem to be solved before we design our methodology. This helps us to refine the question, and ensure that the depth of analysis and engagement we undertake is appropriate.
Once we have scoped the engagement, we co-design our method and approach with our clients using existing strategic, regulatory or commercial frameworks – for example, issues trees or regulatory impact toolkits. We do this to ensure that both our client’s and our own understanding of the question, and the depth of the work required to answer it, are clear and aligned.
Co-design of method and depth of analysis.
Transparency of methodology and cost.
Our proposal is a commercial expression of the way in which we intend to solve a particular challenge, and for this reason, we seek to make clear three important matters. Firstly, our plain English understanding of the context for the engagement. Secondly, our intended methodology, including the way in which we will work with our clients to ensure that we have all the information we need for the task. Thirdly, a clear expression of the costs of undertaking the work and what our clients can expect in terms of deliverables.
We are highly collaborative. We seek to understand the role that relevant stakeholders play within our clients and give the appropriate respect to their input and contribution. At the same time, we aim to provide a targeted and focused approach to stakeholder engagement to ensure our deliverable is as valuable as possible for our client.
Collaboration with accountability.
Alignment as the engagement progresses.
We meet with our clients regularly at set times to provide updates on where our work is heading and ensure we are aligned. This provides our clients with up to date awareness of our thinking, progress, time spent and expected time to complete. It also provides us with the ability to understand if our client’s priorities or thinking has changed, and to course-correct our analysis or work in real-time, if needed, to better address the issues or add value to our final deliverable.
We capture our findings, recommendations or outcomes in a draft deliverable that is capable of acceptance and finalisation. We meet with our clients to discuss our draft deliverables and to present our thinking and findings.
We take the time to understand and incorporate client feedback, or new information that may be provided, which allows us to fine-tune our thinking or add value to our work.