FAQ

First of all our initial meeting with you is free; the intention of which is to learn more about your business, establish our credibility with you and see if there is anything that we can help you with. At that point we will agree a commercial rate with you. Typically this is based on a rate appropriate to the service we are providing. Sometimes it may be a fixed fee for a given project. Our experience is that you can quickly recover our costs through the impact we make on the profitability and performance of your business.

Our target audience is managing director/owners of businesses, government and non-profit organisations with 10+ staff and/or a turnover in excess of $2,000,000. Having said that, we do work with start up companies and have successfully raised funds for new ventures.

It’s the old adage of working ‘in’ a business rather than ‘on’ it. If you’re in top management or the managing director, you are probably dealing with (fire fighting maybe) the daily issues that are ending up on your desk – because the buck ultimately stops with you. By working with us, you are accessing a consultant who knows what it takes to run a business, with the benefit of being able to take an unbiased, ‘helicopter view’ of your organisation and work with you ‘on’ the business. It can also be a lonely place to be and having an experienced ear to use as a sounding board will impact your business and help relieve some of the day to day pressure that you may be experiencing.

No. The consultant will work independantly in your company or other places such as an office, meeting with banks, or potential clients. He/she will act as an employee of the company (without of course being employed by you). A consultant will make sure that the workforce, senior management and junior management are aware of what they are doing and may choose to interview the senior and junior management. However this would only be undertaken at convenient times without disrupting the operations of the company.

In the unlikely event that you do not agree with a consultant’s findings he/she will discuss the reasons why and will always leave the final decision to you.

The objective of an Illumina consultant is to improve the company, grow the company, eliminate money losses and make the company much more profitable and secure. When this message is conveyed correctly to the workforce, they usually want to co-operate in any way they can.

Absolutely. The Illumina Business Consulting Code of Ethics strictly forbids any of our consultants to discuss your business with anyone. This also applies to any specialists who are engaged to work in the company. We are very proud that we have never ever had a complaint about any of consultants regarding client confidentiality. If a consultant feels it is necessary to brainstorm with other consultants to gain greater insight to a particular situation or find alternative solutions to a difficult problem, the company name or other identifying information would not be divulged.

Absolutely not. The consultant will tell you what may be wrong with the company and what is the cause. He/she will also tell you up front the costs likely to be incurred in solving the company’s problems. You will then have a decision to make regarding how much the company can be improved vs the cost of the consultant. Usually, the consultant’s fees are returned to you three times over. But rather than ‘sell’ to you a consultant will be looking to form a partnership. If there is a partnership the objectives will be achieved. If it has been a ‘hard sell’ there is no partnership and therefore unlikely to be a successful outcome.

Your accountant is working for himself or his company and the bank manager is working for the bank. Therefore their advice will be geared to ensure they make a profit for their enterprises. Our consultants are working for you, and will be paid only on the success that they bring to your company. Neither your accountant nor your bank manager can give you this type of advice, support and assistance.

All consultants are previous or current business owners with tertiary qualifications. Rarely do other management consultancy/business advisory services have such comprehensive qualifications..

This is the responsibility of your consultant. He will source the appropriate specialist. He/she may appoint someone they have worked with previously or bring a specialist in from another part of the organisation or our comprehensive network of trusted specialists. The choice will be discussed with you before the work is confirmed. In this way you will have some idea of the type of person and their experience before they start work in your company.

Our consultant will expect you to assist him in as many ways as is necessary to implement the solutions to the problems that have been identified. The relationship between you and the advisor is a partnership where you work together to make sure that the solutions to the company’s problems are implemented fully. If you do this, it will ensure that the company gains the most from this exercise. Obviously the consultant will not ask you to do anything unplanned or put pressure on the time you spend running the company

On very rare occasions, yes. This will always be the last thing our consultants will recommend but sometimes redundancies have to be made to protect the company. A few redundancies in the early days may well mean the difference to a company’s survival. However, it is important that redundancies are handled by an expert in HR to protect you from claims to a tribunal that could cost the company many thousands of dollars. A proper selection process must be used so that any tribunal or similar body can see that you were entirely fair in your redundancy decisions. An HR specialist will avoid all of these pitfalls and will protect the company from any claims.

Very quickly, certainly within the first 90 days. It is worth stating though that an Illumina consultant is only effective if you are committed to learning and implementing change, and are open to being helped and taught how to improve your business. If you have been in business for a while you will know that ‘quick fixes’ don’t work and meaningful improvement takes time. It normally takes 12 months to effect significant change. You will however see small improvements in your business each month which add up to significant overall improvement.

We are as good as our last job! We are confident in our ability to provide you with a service that will significantly impact your business, therefore, for most of the support we provide there is no long term contract and you are able to cancel at any time.

Yes. In most instances we can parachute into your business and start providing our services straight away.