Subject: Abt Board of Directors and Management Advisory Group Strategy Retreat 2013
From: KFlanagan <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2013 12:00:19 +0000

Dear Colleagues,

We've just concluded our annual strategy retreat with the Board and Management Advisory Group (MAG). The retreat enabled us to accomplish two important objectives:  (1) Visit several of our USAID-funded projects in the Dominican Republic that are improving peoples lives, including hospitals that have significantly reduced maternal deaths and a cocoa cooperative and chocolate factory that are providing economic opportunities to farmers and factory workers—both of which truly brought to life our mission!— and (2) Assess our progress against our strategic goals and refine our execution to make sure that we remain on target.

The Board was very impressed with the progress we’ve all made in implementing our strategy over the past year.  They noted that having a clear strategy with short-, medium- and long-term goals is contributing to our impressive growth and mission impact.

Here are a few key points:

Ø  Following our strategy and staying focused on the marketplace has enabled Abt Associates to achieve our mission through impactful project work and to strengthen our financial health.  Many of our competitors saw flat or declining revenue over the past year.  Executing our work on time, on budget, and with highest quality remains a top priority.  We will look for ways to share best practices in project management so that we solidify our already strong reputation as outstanding managers of complex projects.  This will help us sustain high levels of client satisfaction as we face market turbulence.

Ø  Growing our Reputational Capital remains a critical part of Abt’s strategy.  Investing in IR&D, innovation and continued thought leadership and visibility activities is adding value to our work and drawing the attention of top talent in an increasingly tough marketplace. Building a culture of reputational capital around the world will be a priority as we go forward.

Ø  Building and proactively managing a diversified portfolio is an imperative. The meetings put heavy emphasis on the importance of reducing our reliance on a single client and managing the risk inherent in tight U.S. budgets by growing our client diversity, going deeper and wider with current clients, engaging with new clients and leveraging Abt SRBI. There was broad consensus that building a base of non U.S. government clients (e.g. DfID, AUSAID, ADB, IDB,) and better leveraging Abt SRBI and their diverse client base (states and local government, private sector, academic institutions) was critical to our continued success.

Ø  Price has taken on greater importance in federal awards. The budget squeeze and the growing leadership role of procurement officers (as opposed to technical staff) have placed an even more important priority on competitive pricing.  In some markets we are finding that adequate technical proposals at lower price are likely to win over exceptional technical proposals at higher prices. We have clear evidence that our competitors are fully aware of this trend and are working aggressively to price to win.  We will begin to focus more on improved strategies and processes for competitive pricing including looking across the organization and asking ourselves, “What can we do more efficiently and efficiently?”

Ø  We need to be prepared for federal budget cuts. While our market analysis shows that some areas will remain as high priority investments, including climate change, health, workforce development, immigration, veterans, and education, we will likely see reductions in client budgets.  We need to assess where we stand in each of these areas and how well we're tracking and conducting capture on important opportunities.

Ø  We need to continue to build an operating platform that supports our work.  This year, we are focused on “The Big 5”— Abt Global Intranet, HR Platform, IRM, Professional Development, and Project Management Financial Tool.  Each of these initiatives will assist us in doing our jobs more efficiently and will require some change in behavior to maximize greater collaboration and effectiveness.

Ø  Attracting, developing and retaining the best colleagues is essential.  We are a people business—and for us to continue to win the kind of work that will have the most impact in fulfilling our mission, we have to have the best people.

In sum, we have great momentum, and to maintain it in a tough and changing marketplace, we need to drive efficiency and manage our resources well. We will again establish teams to work on specific strategy refinement.  Very soon you will be hearing more about action items and how they affect our FY14 goals.

Please don’t hesitate to speak with any MAG member if you have questions about the retreat or our next steps.

Best,

Kathleen

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