Of course, you know the typical tale of the doctor that never gets his own health checked, the dentist that doesn’t floss, and the car mechanic that never changed the oil in his great Ford Escort 1985. We, at Bax & Company, probably run a risk of not considering that we’d ever need to get external experts analyse our readiness for growth. Aware of this danger of consulting manager myopia, we decided we could benefit from an external check-up by true professionals, familiar with our high tech & societal challenge directed business area.

Any company, no matter how well they think they’re doing, can benefit from a check-up from time to time.

Fortunately, the Institute for Manufacturing of Cambridge University is a partner in Science2Society, a project that we’re also a part of. They were keen to try out their strategy diagnostics toolbox which has been used and validated on hundreds of manufacturing SME’s such as Ecotile and Photofabrication, to determine its applicability and usefulness when strategising for professional service companies such as Bax & Company. So, as a part of the University Knowledge Transfer Pilot  in Science2Society, Bax & Company took place on the doctor’s couch and answered hundreds of questions from Dr. Nicoletta Athanassopoulou at IfM.

At Bax & Company, we also provide similar diagnostics and general strategy development services to SME’s in our focus sectors. But as the saying goes, it takes strange eyes to see your own areas of improvement.

We saw this as a great opportunity to exchange notes on business management and growth & competitivity strategies. One of the things that we particularly liked was the dialogue format; ‘Nicky did not just tick boxes or accept any first answer I came up with, but really probed and elaborated as and when required for full understanding.’

From these dialogues, IfM were able to identify our strengths and determine some areas for improvement, “Bax and Company is a dynamic technology consultancy firm that is looking to expand its geographical reach and services. It was very interesting to apply IfM ECS’s business diagnostic tool on a service company to understand its current performance and future constraints for growth. The Bax & Company team had the opportunity to discuss and analyse the business priorities and performance in eleven different areas, define their priorities, strengths and weaknesses and draw up an action plan to address them.” said Dr. Athanassopoulou.

What we learned from this experience is that any company, no matter how well they think they’re doing, can benefit from a check-up from time to time.