Schlumberger

CASE STUDY: BUILDING A FORTUNE 500 GLOBAL CONSULTANCY BUSINESS FROM SCRATCH

“We’ve never had 100% ratings from all our sales people before.”

Increase in business results from 350 consultants trained globally.

“They ask good questions and probe our thinking, so that they understand the context and frankly we wind up better understanding ourselves.”

Al Escher, Director, Schlumbeger Business Consulting

Business and Challenge

We were appointed by the newly formed consulting wing of Schlumberger, the Fortune 500 global leading provider of technology for reservoir characterization, drilling, production, and processing to the oil and gas industry. Working in more than 85 countries Schlumberger employs approximately 113,000 people.

This multi-disciplinary consulting business works with operators to add reserves through new discoveries, to help operators reduce risk and to produce reliable production results.

With deep oil and gas domain expertise, together with a strong technical (science and engineering) bias in the consultant skill set, the business was well positioned to deliver on the technically complex and high-risk field challenges faced by their clients.

However, this same group of consultants lacked a shared consulting methodology and client-facing approach — the tools needed to ensure outstanding client results and drive robust client recommendations, conclusions and findings.

How We Helped

The consulting business CEO and leadership team worked closely with CSI to envisage and create a world-class professional development curriculum to attract the very best minds into the business and develop them.

Our focus was:

  • To equip high potential consulting talent with a robust methodology,
  • To improve their client facing relationship skills at senior level,
  • Deliver commercially rigorous client findings and
  • Align the leadership team around best practice consulting methodologies.

The Programme

  • A 3-day ‘fundamentals of consulting’programme for all consultants to attend, which equipped the business with a best practice and shared language and methodology for tackling complex client problems.
  • A 3-day ‘leading the engagement’programme for high potential graduates of the fundamentals programme.
  • A year long programme of 1:1 coaching with the senior partners of the business, taking an applied coaching approach to embedding the behaviours with their teams and driving up consulting strategies in each line of business and discipline.

Results

  1. 350 consultants have taken the fundamentals of consulting programme, which has become seen as the key programme within the business.
  2. An increase in the business results over the life of the programme
  3. Consultants trained in every region (Middle East, Asia, Europe, South America, Latin America, North America).
  4. Leadership team aligned and committed to embedding the methodology.
  5. Business plans in place to drive the growth of the global teams.
“We have engaged CSI to develop and roll out custom programmes around building commercial and consultative skills. CSI always develop a clear understanding of the business issues before starting. They ask good questions and probe our thinking, so that they understand the context and frankly we wind up better understanding ourselves. The work has been enthusiastically developed by our staff (we’ve never had 100% ratings from all our sales people before) and in demand because of the results they produce.”

Al Escher, Director, Schlumbeger Business Consulting

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