Q: What does your firm do?
A: EHS Partners singularly focuses on leading broad, structured initiatives to improve a company's operating performance, earnings, and growth. We work side-by-side with client leadership and management teams to identify and deliver tangible operating improvements, each of which generate new earnings. We bring to each engagement a proven process, efficient and effective tools, and an all-senior team that virtually assures a successful outcome.
Q: What differentiates EHS Partners from other consulting firms?
A: EHS Partners is a firm entirely conceived and constructed around pursuing a single, specialty practice. Our singular focus and cumulative experience in our specialty enable us to deliver a result unrivaled by other firms, small or large. Through repeated application and refinement, we have developed a uniquely impactful approach and a highly effective tool kit. Our all-senior team of experienced practitioners, led by active engagement of our partners, brings unparalleled capabilities and commitment to each project. Another significant difference and advantage is that we align our interests to our clients by directly tying our compensation to the results they achieve. Lastly, our ultimate goal is to build the capability within our clients for long-term continual improvement without the ongoing need for outside consultants.
Q: What is your value proposition — what specifically does EHS Partners do that the company itself can not?
A: EHS Partners acts as a catalyst to help companies accelerate and magnify performance improvement. We orchestrate a highly structured effort that mobilizes and coordinates the resources of the company to achieve tremendous operating traction in a way that cannot be replicated independently. Our value proposition is to help companies achieve bigger results, faster and with greater certainty. In return, we share in the value realized — a one-time fee, based on the ongoing value that our clients attribute to our project.
Q: Is this a cost-cutting program?
A: No. Most companies don't need help in cutting costs alone. Virtually all of our clients have been through some type of cost-cutting effort before. Our work centers on a broad, methodical effort to find smarter, more efficient ways to do business. While greater efficiency (i.e., lower costs) is a primary result of this work, this goes hand in hand with improving the operating effectiveness of the business — we are careful to focus solely on change actions that improve, or at a minimum in no way compromise the effectiveness of the business. In addition, our program incorporates a targeted approach to identify tangible improvements to revenues as well.
Rather than cut costs, our clients use our unique approach to identify and capture funds from wasted spending, work, and revenues (leakage) that can then be redeployed into growing the business.
Q: Who are your typical clients?
A: EHS Partners has worked with public and private clients across a broad range of industries, from large-cap, publicly traded Fortune 100–sized corporations to smaller companies with revenues of approximately $250 million. We have found that our approach is equally effective across a broad variety of industries. Notable past projects include PNC Financial, Heinz, DTE Energy, Manpower, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee, and Willis, among others.
Q: Do you specialize in any industries?
A: Our approach is industry neutral and will work with any company whose leadership team is committed to achieving meaningful results. We have worked across a variety of industries and have significant experience partnering with companies in financial services (banking, insurance), consumer packaged goods (food), and electric and gas utilities.
Q: What are the benefits of this program?
A: The most obvious benefit is the generation of significant new cash earnings. Typical value ranges from 20 to 40% of normalized pre-tax cash earnings. As importantly, clients cite improvements to their operating platform and what they learn about their organizations as being as valuable as the tangible financial outcome.
Q: How do you help ensure your client's success?
A: We are proud that every one of our clients has met or exceeded their goals from their EHS-led initiative and has ultimately realized 100%+ of the planned impact. Success begins with the client's commitment to achieve significant or step-change improvement. We combine this with our time-tested process, efficient and effective tools, and a senior-level EHS team that on a cumulative basis has successfully performed scores of similar projects. Being completely dedicated to this single practice over the past decade, we understand the tangible and intangible elements that lead to a successful engagement and work closely with leadership teams to ensure success.
Q: Why have your clients chosen to go forward with an EHS-led initiative?
A: Most of our clients are healthy growing companies that use our program as a catalyst to accelerate business improvement. Clients view it as helping to go from "good to great." Some could be dealing with a specific challenge or opportunity, such as post-merger integration or a significant increase in their cost base. Others could be trying to improve their overall efficiency in order to improve competitiveness or preparing for a transaction. Regardless, all of our clients decided that utilizing a catalyst such as EHS was a proven, low-risk way to ensure their success.