SAMPLE CASES

For nine years, SWA advised senior executives at Peru’s largest financial services company, an organization with approximately 20,000 employees. We helped BCP:

• Develop a companywide leadership development system (Lider BCP) that prepares BCP’s 2,000 leaders to be a network of effective people-managers
• Define roles based on teachable activities and restructure performance management to support role clarity
• Transform Learning and Development priorities to accelerate the speed at which new hires reach full productivity
• Establish a compelling CEO-led employment brand with strategic initiatives connected to the slogan Somos BCP (We are BCP)
• Introduce an Ambassador Program to improve BCP’s hiring from the world’s top universities and MBA programs

When we began our work, external research described BCP as a bureaucratic and a below-average employer. After several years of consistent improvement, BCP earned the distinction of “top employer” in Peru, a position it maintains. Since then, BCP has enjoyed its most profitable period in the company’s long history.for the employment brand and conducting regular adult-to-adult communications dramatically improves the workplace. 

For nearly ten years, SWA has been advising senior executives at Huawei, a Chinese technology firm employing over 200,000 people worldwide. We have addressed Huawei’s operations in places like Shenzhen, Tokyo, Duesseldorf, London, Rome, Ottawa, and Silicon Valley. We helped Huawei:

• Develop “models of team execution” (MOTEs) to describe thoroughly how key account teams in Western Europe are to serve the region’s 24 largest accounts
• Reengineer the role of 2,500 Human Resource Business Partners (HRBPs) worldwide
• Develop role-based training for HRBPs
• Develop an HR operating model for nine research and development organizations around the world

Western Europe has been Huawei’s most successful region over the past several years – mainly due to its key accounts. Our work with HRBP’s earned Huawei’s “President’s Award” as a top companywide project. The HR model we established in Huawei’s research and development centers serves as the prototype for locations worldwide.ners, and those remaining perform truly strategic roles. 

Over several years, SWA guided senior executives at Wardrop Engineering, a division of Tetra Tech, to:

• Develop a strategy for expanding from 1,000 to 4,000 professionals in four years
• Build a model of execution to improve Wardrop’s service and interactions with three at-risk clients responsible for over one third of the division’s revenue
• Update Wardrop’s model for allocating work among its engineers, balancing client needs with employees’ professional goals
• Define key project roles
• Develop people-management systems to support the model of execution and key project roles

Wardrop first stabilized and then increased sales to its three largest clients. Its model for providing services improved customer loyalty and employee satisfaction.

SWA worked with the AT&T’s Vice President of Global Services and his team to provide innovative sales management training and to establish customer-friendly career paths in Sales. We worked with Global Services to:

• Define the role of Sales Manager as a set of six major activities
• Design and develop practical training around each major activity
• Deliver training first to 110 Sales Managers in the Eastern Division
• Based on the success in the Eastern Division, deliver training to the remaining 180 Sales Managers in the Western and Southern Divisions
• Reconstruct career paths within Sales by establishing “levels” within roles for Sales Executives and Account Managers

The sales management training, considered highly innovative by senior executives, was also “best rated” by the sales organization. And by establishing career paths so Sales Executives could remain with a set of customers through several promotions, Global Services retained top salespeople and enjoyed increased loyalty and satisfaction among its largest clients.e sum of parts, so to speak, by increasing sales, building customer loyalty, and improving employee morale. 

SWA advised the senior executive team of Speed Queen, a manufacturer of commercial washing machines in Ripon, Wisconsin, during a challenging labor negotiation. We worked with company managers and officials of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers to:

• Transition the 900-employee plant from a piece-rate to a team-oriented production process
• Pilot – and then roll out – team-oriented manufacturing
• Reduce the number of job classifications from over 100 to fewer than 20
• Reach contractual agreement on a “base pay plus team bonus” compensation system, replacing a “piece-rate” program
• Maintain substantial gains in quality and productivity

Speed Queen advanced from “worst to first” in productivity, quality, and safety among Raytheon’s manufacturing facilities within one year. Raytheon’s board of directors visited the Ripon plant to recognize their success and produced an inspiring video describing Speed Queen’s transformation. (Copy of video available)cruitment and compensation. Since the Alliant assignment, we guide our clients’ recruiters to gather market intelligence and share it with departments such as Compensation, Sales, and Marketing. 

For over two decades, SWA has guided North Arlington Pediatrics in:

• Maintaining a model of execution that directs employees to welcome new patients and provide consistent and continually improving patient care
• Distributing leadership responsibilities among doctors – balancing commitments to patient care and practice administration 
• Defining and maintaining clear roles for doctors, nurses, and staff members
• Hiring and assimilating employees – maintaining consistent quality of patient care while keeping the cost of employee turnover low
• Training and developing people in a team-oriented environment
• Providing a reward system that unites employees toward patient-centered objectives

North Arlington Pediatrics remains one of the premier privately operated pediatric practices in Illinois. 

SWA advised sales executives from ESAB Welding & Cutting Products, a $1 billion welding and cutting products company, on improving sales effectiveness. With the Senior Vice President of Sales and his team, we helped ESAB:

• Construct a clear model of team execution (MOTE) describing how ESAB would sell indirectly through distributors and directly to large end-users
• Define and maintain clear roles for all customer-facing positions
• Imagine, design, and construct an Inside Sales team to complement outside sales and customer service
• Develop recruitment, selection, training, performance management, compensation, and succession planning systems for Sales

ESAB achieved consistent growth from 1998 through 2016 when ESAB merged with Miller Electric. Adding Inside Sales to ESAB’s selling process has been particularly successful in increasing company sales and building customer loyalty.eer advancement within roles to support a flat organization, serve customers better, and guide continual skill development. 

SWA worked with the Daybreak team to develop and implement a model of execution. The model thoroughly specifies the segments of people served, and how to:

• Provide daytime services including breakfast, laundry, showers, medical care, mail, case management, and programming
• Allocate work among staff members and volunteers
• Evaluate the “level of independence” of each client and provide appropriate programming for each stage.
• Engage each client in contributing to Daybreak according to his/her abilities
• Redirect clients to other agencies for services not provided by Daybreak
• Create excitement about Daybreak through events and outreach for support

Daybreak has become a model for other St. Vincent De Paul agencies that care for homeless people.am execution (MOTEs). Since the Green Bay Packers assignment, we place MOTEs at the center of our strategy work. 

SWA worked with BYU-Hawaii to transform the university’s process for placing graduates in careers and graduate schools. The new model:

• Confirms the challenging objective of placing students in Asia and the Pacific
• Clarifies and coordinates the key university roles that support student placement: faculty, academic advisors, admissions, alumni relations, internship coordinators, Career Services, and the office of the President
• Prepares students, from the application process through graduation, to discern and attain desirable careers and graduate school admissions.
• Makes tools available, through Career Services, for selecting a career, choosing classes to support career objectives, personal branding, networking, etc.

Since SWA’s involvement, BYU-Hawaii has made substantial improvements in career and graduate school placement results.

SWA helped ABS Graphics transform the way it reached out to cold prospects during the COVID 19 lockdown. We helped them:

• Developed a “10-touch” prospecting system blending emails, videos, and voice messages
  • Produced videos highlighting ABS Graphics’ printing, direct mail, distribution, and packaging capabilities
  • Produced videos at prospects’ retail sites, introducing suggestions for making customers’ on-site displays more effective
  • Wrote a sequence of emails leading to scheduled calls to prospects
  • Scripted voicemail messages to prospects that generated interest – and return calls 
  • Provided a cadence, over 30 days, for all contacts to cold prospects
• Coached sales representatives on prospecting, making sales presentations, and allocating their time

The prospecting system generated near 50% response rate – leading to numerous video sales calls to cold prospects and invitations to

SWA helped Alliant Foodservice develop a compensation structure for the five top warehouse leadership positions. Because the foodservice industry is intensely competitive, industry leaders were unwilling to participate in a standard compensation survey. Instead, we gathered market compensation data while conducting a recruiting assignment. Our consultants:

• Contacted nearly 200 people working in the target positions at other large foodservice companies – presenting career opportunities at Alliant
• While gathering information for recruiting, collected personal and company compensation information
• In a compensation report to Alliant Foodservice, presented base salary and total compensation data for each position, delineated by size of warehouse and location
• Provided Alliant thirty-four candidates for selection

Though we took an unorthodox approach to gathering data, our market compensation study was precise. We developed a compensation structure that was competitive with the market and that varied by size of warehouse and location. As a byproduct of the compensation assignment, Alliant hired four of the candidates we presented.