UK
Ireland
Advisory consulting
Our advisory and consulting team has the experience and resources to support your business, whether tackling underperformance or looking to optimise and grow.
We put ourselves in your shoes, cutting through financial complexities to target opportunities and drive meaningful change. From preparing your business exit strategy to post-merger integrations and simplifying corporate structures, our advisory consultants can help every step of the way.
Frequently asked questions
How does business advisory consulting work?
Advisory consulting provides independent, third-party support to improve companies’ processes and systems or overcome risks and challenges. It offers valuable insights during periods of flux, change and growth or to bring the business back on track.
Our business advisory consultants help companies and non-profits achieve positive change while easing the burden on financial directors. Through specific projects or streamlining operations, we remove logjams and turn visions into reality.
How can struggling firms benefit from consulting services?
A business advisory consultant can analyse quantitative and qualitative factors to pinpoint the root causes of problems and issues. They give you practical, timely solutions to address issues in the short term and implement long-term plans.
With years of experience successfully solving debt, working capital and profitability issues, S&W can deliver light-touch and more involved support. We help struggling organisations in a range of ways:
- Root-cause analysis of operational and financial underperformance
- Working capital cycle optimisation
- Business turnaround delivery
- Targeted troubleshooting
- Strategic advice
How can advisory and consulting services support business growth?
We tailor our solutions to maximise opportunities and equity returns. If you are already performing well, we can take your business to the next level. A business advisory consultant can recommend optimisations, strategic delivery plans and operational efficiency improvements to achieve your more ambitious goals.
For growing businesses, S&W brings cutting-edge ideas, target operating models and data analytics solutions. Combining extensive experience in growth and transformation with sector knowledge, we tailor our solutions to maximise opportunities and equity returns.
Advisory and consulting services for growth and transformation include:
- Transformation delivery
- Identification of value-enhancers
- Project planning, management and control
- Strategic option value analysis
- Quantitative value assessment of returns on investment
- Funding model optimisation
- 360º business advice
How can advisory consulting help make your business sale successful?
We can support the final stage of your business lifecycle to ensure your exit strategy is successful. We’ll work with you early in the business exit process (as much as two years before you are planning to sell) to help you make the right decisions and maximise the value of your business.
Our ”exit readiness” process ensures you have everything in place to make the company attractive to prospective buyers. We also help fill in possible gaps and address potential points of contention to avoid price chipping. Our consultants work to make the whole process as quick and seamless as possible:
- Helping you articulate your strategy and value levers
- Enhancing your strategic growth story with quantitative value analysis
- Putting in place improvements to cash and profit to boost the value of your business
- Streamlining your group structure to make it simpler for a purchaser
- Improving your management information and data quality ahead of due diligence
- Market mapping and benchmarking against competitors to identify areas to improve pre-due diligence
- Reviewing current technology and risks
- Undertaking historical financial analysis and preparing integrated financial forecast models
- Identifying and fixing devaluing factors
- Strengthening the future growth story and equity returns to a buyer with quantitative value analysis
What advisory consulting services and approaches does S&W offer?
From business turnaround to transformation and optimisation, our consulting and advisory services cover a broad spectrum.
Business turnaround and working capital
Turn your business around with operational improvements, working capital cycle reviews, integrated cashflow forecasting, troubleshooting support and more.
Transformation and optimisation
Identify and maximise value-enhancers, benefit from strategic assessments and advice, get help with change management and reduce costs.
Simplifying corporate structures
Get project management and implementation support. We can also help with tax-structuring assistance and specialist technical support.
Renewable energy and natural resources
Our team helps energy suppliers and renewables firms with funding, margins, financial forecasting, strategic options and more.
Professional practices
Maximise margin and operational efficiencies, streamline and cut costs and optimise lock-up and working capital.
Succession planning
Succession planning is a strategic and essential approach for business owners to secure their company's long-term success and legacy. Here’s why…
Here’s how our approach fits together:
What can our advisory consultants do for your business?
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Solutions-led support
Success means ensuring you get effective solutions in place as quickly as possible. We don’t apply off-the-shelf solutions or generic best practices. Instead, we find a tailored approach that is effective and enduring. Our service lines are combined with commercial acumen to ensure we recommend practical, lasting solutions.
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Time-sensitive assistance
It’s hectic being a business leader. With a daunting list of responsibilities, you’re often flying blind due to a lack of live information. Critical tasks can get deprioritised against seemingly urgent but low-risk activity. Cultural improvements and strategy are all but forgotten. When an issue takes hold, stakeholder management can use up all your time, worsening the impact.
Our service brings clarity, support and bandwidth to deliver critical objectives.
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Access to industry specialists
When addressing issues’ root causes, our advisory consulting services may identify problems that need a specialist. S&W has a range of experts on hand across fraud resolution, mergers and acquisitions (M&A), insolvency, tax planning, contractual disputes and more.
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Data-driven analytics
We use technology to remove complexity and navigate risk when dealing with big data. It unleashes a world of added value and information for leaders. Our data visualisation and dashboards pinpoint problems, identify opportunities and can be used easily as live tools to enhance decision-making.
What makes S&W unique?
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Industry experience
With years of experience working in board roles focussed on turnaround and transformation, our business advisory consultants know what it’s like to be responsible for delivering objectives and correcting underperformance. Crucially, that includes dealing with cash pressures.
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Partner-led service
We provide real value to clients with partner-led delivery and a real understanding of the practical implications of our recommendations.
Bringing together years of industry and advisory consulting experience, we deliver effective and enduring results, not glossy reports left on the shelf. We work as trusted advisers, delivering your individual requirements.
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A varied team
Our team combines varied knowledge with advisory consulting expertise, working with a wide network of lenders and keeping track of market responses and trends. We’re well placed to steer your business through tough times or uncharted waters.
As experienced advisers, we’ve been where you are. We can help with real-world solutions, insights, and practical implementations.
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An extension of your team
Our specialists include former financial directors, who know the ins and outs of your situation. You can also take this further by having them act as interim directors for your business as part of our unique financial advisory consulting service.
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Innovative toolkit
Our innovative toolkit covers all your needs, from target operating models, project planning tools and process mapping to technology and data analytics solutions. We use these tools selectively, with insight and commercial awareness, to add genuine value to your business.
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Frequently asked questions
How can advisory consulting build enterprise value in my organisation?
Focusing on the right things frees up valuable time across a business and creates sustainable cash generation. Identifying the value levers in an organisation brings clarity and a focus on aligning activities with building value.
Many businesses don’t articulate their value levers. Instead, they focus only on improving outcomes, such as profit. But without a clear understanding of value levers, a misalignment may occur. At best, a lack of focus on value levers can lead to activities centred on the wrong things, wasting time and money. At worst, this can lead to a loss of competitive advantage and failure, as the organisation is left behind in the market.
Our advisory and consultancy services work with businesses to identify value levers, areas for improved focus and aligned activities. We then support them to implement these. We can also focus on a specific goal, such as working to maximise value ahead of an anticipated investment or business sale.
Find out more about our transformation and optimisation services
How do I improve cash and working capital?
Releasing tied-up cash gives valuable breathing space, freeing up the finance team’s time and reducing pressure.
Cash is tied up in more than just debtor balances or stock; you need to consider the whole picture from a pragmatic and data-analytics standpoint. That’s where a business advisory consultant can come in.
Once we’ve reviewed the whole working capital cycle and highlighted a gap, we can help identify tailored solutions. These may include supporting arrangements such as asset-based lending facilities or enhanced insurance coverage to mitigate risks. Operational changes can also often deliver significant working capital improvements. These include changes to customer debtor collection processes, supplier contracts, shipping and sourcing arrangements.
As well as identifying practical improvements, our advisory consulting team can build live dashboards to help manage KPIs on an ongoing basis, with filters and drilldowns to target activity.
Learn more about our business turnaround and cash management services
What cost reduction and streamlining methods are available to my business?
Reducing costs is a controllable way to generate valuable cash and improve profits.
Businesses should regularly review their cost base to ensure spending remains effective and lean. But when costs have spiralled out of control or are impacting profitability and cash generation, you need a more in-depth review to strategically assess spending. Our advisory and consulting services can help.
The available methods range from a simple review of cost categories to an in-depth, zero-based budgeting, benchmarking and strategic cost review of how spending enhances enterprise value.
We scale the opportunities based on ease of implementation and impact while considering any upfront cost to generate a plan.
Rather than simply looking at cost cutting, we can also complete streamlining reviews, identifying operational process improvements. These range from removing low-value or redundant activities to replacing time-intensive, repetitive work with robotic process automation (RPA).
Explore our transformation and optimisation services
How do I implement a transformation project using advisory consulting services?
A successful transformation project reduces costs and frees up management time.
Implementation will be more successful if your objectives are clearly defined, along with related timeframes, roles and responsibilities. A risks, assumptions, issues and decisions (RAID) log and regular progress reporting are important throughout delivery. These manage expectations and effectively deal with dependencies, blockers or risks so the project is not delayed or derailed.
Change management is critical and will deal with qualitative factors, such as culture and communication, that can cause transformation projects to fall at the final hurdle.
S&W’s business advisory consulting services strategically review and identify transformation opportunities and support their delivery. Our level of involvement is tailored to your requirements, from light-touch, strategic support to full project management, to ensure effective delivery and properly embedded solutions.
Read about our transformation and optimisation services
How do I turn around an underperforming business?
Turning around a business reduces stakeholder pressure, management stress and the risk of ultimate failure.
A business turnaround programme requires careful consideration and implementation. We recommend the support of a qualified, experienced advisory consultant.
Our partners leading this work are Institute for Turnaround accredited. We also draw on extensive experience from our licensed insolvency practitioner colleagues in more distressed situations.
We can complete a 360 degree business review to identify the best route forward, giving your board and stakeholders confidence in the solutions and their deliverability. Ultimately, we pride ourselves on supporting successful implementation.
Take a look at our business turnaround and cash management services
How do I integrate a new business to achieve acquisition synergies?
Proper integration streamlines management time, reduces costs and generates cash and profit faster.
Investment in post-merger integration (PMI) support can be the difference between success and failure when it comes to achieving the deal rationale and key cultural changes in the critical post-acquisition weeks. It can also materially accelerate synergies and capture strategic benefits before competitors can react.
It’s important that integration plans are customised to deliver the objectives and value-enhancers that drove the acquisition. Our consulting and advisory services focus on the value behind the deal rationale and on enduring and properly embedded integration.
We advise on performance and activities against a 100-day plan. When issues arise, we provide additional bandwidth, identify solutions and work to bring performance back on track.
Discover our post-merger integration (PMI) services
My organisational structure is too complicated – how do I simplify it and reduce costs?
A simple structure reduces costs and frees management time. A complex group structure can increase risks and add to costs. Barriers to simplification include a lack of bandwidth to plan and implement the revised structure, the risk of triggering tax liabilities, and inadequate in-house expertise (such as a lack of licensed insolvency practitioners to complete solvent liquidations).
Our experts help businesses to overcome these barriers with a flexible, integrated corporate simplification service. We deliver cost-effective, lower-risk structures and return capital in a tax-efficient way to realise value.
We have extensive experience in corporate simplification and post-merger integration, including for complex and regulated UK and multinational groups.
See how we simplify corporate structures