HighPoint Associates

Thank you to all who have reached out about my 15-year HPA anniversary. I am thrilled to celebrate this milestone and look forward to many more fulfilling years ahead. It’s been a truly rewarding journey.   Reflecting on my 15 years, it’s almost amusing to think where HPA started. There was a time when the idea of the Managing Partner and me sharing a room on business trips wasn’t out of the question. Now, we’re orchestrating everything from multi-billion-dollar M&A efforts with 10-person teams to helping business unit leaders improve top and bottom-line results.   We have delivered tremendous value to Fortune 500 companies, middle-market companies, and everything in between. This evolution from modest beginnings to working on our clients' most important transformation initiatives underscores the enduring relationships and substantial value we create for our clients. While we have grown, we still have the agility and attitude of a small company. Each project needs to be a homerun, or at least a triple in the eyes of our clients, as we recognize loyalty must be earned.   As I reflect on what I’m most proud of over the past 15 years, three things stand out:   Lasting client relationships – Nothing has been more valuable to me than the enduring partnerships we’ve formed and the substantial value we’ve helped our clients create. We have had the opportunity to continue to support former clients as they step into new roles both at their existing firms and when they move on to new professional challenges.    Expanded service model – Navigating the global financial crisis and COVID-19, HPA didn’t just endure - we excelled, experiencing unprecedented growth. All the while, we've maintained our flexible approach, invested in scalability, and expanded our capacity to meet the rapidly evolving needs of our clients. Unique value proposition – As our clients' needs have evolved, we too have changed and adapted, but we have remained true to our core mission of elite quality strategy and execution acceleration support, with a more product partnership model, for better value. Our teams combine Industry and Functional Practice Leadership depth with Senior Advisors, top tier consulting colleagues complemented by hands-on operating experience, and supported further with analytic depth by our Associate Consultants. We roll up our sleeves and get results in the most pragmatic and effective way.     To my colleagues, thank you for your dedication to building something special at HighPoint and for your steadfast support and collaboration. To our clients, thank you for your trust and partnership. To the consultants who have worked with me to deliver measurable impact, your dedication has been invaluable and many of you I now consider friends. I am proud that we continue to make HPA a sought-after place to work for our lean, but highly talented HQ team. I am looking forward to many more years of success, growth, client impact, and memorable moments – thank you!  

Businesses navigating hypergrowth are often presented with unique challenges. Rapid expansion and quick movement have their benefits, but can also reveal gaps in core processes critical to sustaining hypergrowth as the organization's management and planning infrastructure lag behind. Traditional planning methods are not always the best fit in hypergrowth environments, so how can businesses keep up the pace? In our latest blog, HPA Senior Consultant Raaj Chitaley outlines some practical guidelines to help lay the groundwork for sustained hypergrowth, including: 🔍 Conducting a resource census to understand and optimize resource allocation. 🚦 Using stage gates to tie initiatives to outcomes and maintain agility. 🛑 Proactively reviewing and ending underperforming projects. 💬 Promoting open communication to build trust and avoid delays. Hypergrowth isn't just a sprint; it's a marathon of sprints. To learn more about how your organization can set its pace, read Raaj's blog below. #Hypergrowth #ResourceManagement #StrategicPlanning #SustainableGrowth

The past year saw conflicting economic signals, from early fears of a hard recession to year-end optimism about a soft landing. As we move through 2024, the climate remains unpredictable. What is clear, however, is that staying ahead requires more than just reactive measures. So how should businesses navigate an uncertain future? In this month's blog, HPA Senior Project Lead Stephen Ashford recommends that organizations embrace agility and resilience by using thoughtful scenario planning to develop flexible strategies that can adapt as situations evolve. By considering a variety of scenarios, balancing cost productivity and growth readiness, and laying the groundwork for different recovery types, companies can not only navigate the waters ahead but emerge stronger on the other side. Read Stephen's blog below for more insights. #resilience #strategicplanning #strategy

The disconnect between strategic vision and operational reality is a persistent challenge for businesses. Despite meticulous planning, organizations often struggle to translate strategies into tangible outcomes due to a disconnect stemming from flawed, top-down approaches to strategy development. In our latest blog, HPA Senior Advisor Alex Nesbitt discusses the need for a shift in perspective to view strategy as a service that accounts for the day-to-day operational realities of employees. By developing and launching strategy that empowers employees as participants in its success, organizations can bridge the gap between vision and execution. #strategy #execution #changemanagement #leadership

As we’ve previously mentioned, our clients have firmly shifted focus to the bottom line and efficiency in response to the current economic climate. With many businesses trying to get a handle on their costs, one of the hottest topics over the past year has been cloud spend. As the chart below shows, as enterprises spend more and more on cloud, they are grappling with how to make the growth efficient and sustainable.   Cloud spend has quickly become a dominant factor in enterprise IT budgets, often consuming over half of them as organizations eagerly transition workloads to public clouds, adopt SaaS solutions, and integrate Generative AI tools. In many cases, this migration has inadvertently escalated overall IT spending, challenging the initial promise of lower costs in the cloud. Unfortunately, it’s a common narrative: the expectation of reduced costs and enhanced services from cloud migration has led to significant budget overruns and decreased cost efficiency.   For many companies, the rapid migration to cloud occurred without a sustainable scaling and operational strategy, leaving them on an unsustainable path. Costs are mounting, with investments in cloud resources frequently outpacing their perceived value.    As a result, many companies are starting to look towards FinOps to help rein in cloud spend and implement better governance. FinOps is the emerging operating model that provides ongoing discipline and coordination necessary to optimize cloud spend. This is not a one-off measure, but a durable practice aimed at maximizing value while minimizing costs through continuous optimization.   Transitioning to FinOps, however, is not without complexity. It requires new processes and ways of working that take time, effort, and resources to put into practice.   Our recent client engagements have focused on achieving near-term cost savings while establishing fundamental FinOps practices for sustained management.   This topic is rapidly gaining attention in the C-suite and boardroom. How is your organization addressing cloud costs? #FinOps #CostOptimization #ITBudget #CloudStrategy #Consulting

Organizational change is often associated with cost-cutting and headcount reduction, but it can also be a key tool to unlock growth. We've noticed a shift as business leaders turn to thoughtful, strategic organizational transformation initiatives to adapt to present-day challenges and become more effective and efficient. In our latest blog, HPA Project Leader Karyn E. Folland outlines scenarios where organizational change can help businesses continue on their growth trajectory, how to overcome challenges to organizational transformation efforts, and why "Reorganization" doesn't have to be a bad word. #organizationalchange #transformation #growth #strategy #consulting

As the conversation around AI's impact on the workplace continues, the potential of generative AI tools to significantly boost productivity stands out. The question for business leaders now is: how can they position their organizations to fully realize these productivity gains? In our most recent blog post, HPA AI and Data Senior Advisor Ed Wiley, Phd explores the considerations organizations need to weigh when adopting generative AI to enhance productivity. Ed also examines the strategic decisions leaders will encounter as GenAI reshapes workflows and highlights the critical role of change management in the effective implementation of AI. To learn more about how GenAI will unlock business productivity and how you can set your organization up for successful adoption, check out Ed's blog below. #generativeai #strategy #technology #aiadoption #productivity #consulting

In today's business environment, fostering a strong and trusting relationship between the IT function and other business units is crucial. However, in HPA Senior Advisor Bob Kaplan's experience, dysfunctional relationships between IT and senior business unit leaders can be common and detrimental to the organization as a whole. In our latest blog, Bob discusses why these groups need to overcome this divide and outlines some strategies to build collaborative working relationships and thriving organizations. #IT #technology #strategy #relationships #communication #consulting

Why do clients choose HighPoint Associates to execute their business transformation efforts? It comes down to the quality of our talent and the flexibility of our model. In our latest blog, HPA Partner Richard Berger spotlights some client success stories and reflects on how HPA provides unique value to clients looking to transform their organization, navigate change successfully, and drive better results for sustained growth and success. #transformation #strategy #changemanagement #consulting

Theo Song, our VP of Talent, recently took his daughters to one of the LA dates for Taylor Swift's Eras Tour. Theo was blown away by the scale of the tour - not just by the concert itself but also it's economic impact and the amount of work going on behind the scenes. Successfully delivering a massive production like the Eras Tour takes some serious management skills. In our latest blog Theo wrote about what lessons business leaders can learn from Taylor Swift, a great CEO. #taylorswift #leadership #teamwork #operations #consulting