In a turbulent economy, midsized companies can feel left behind. They sometimes struggle with growth and change and don’t have external advisors to help them navigate the challenges and realize the opportunities.
Cohen & Co., a Cleveland-based accounting, tax and consulting firm with offices in six states, understands the concerns of these companies because many of them are Cohen clients — and Cohen is passionate about helping leaders maximize the value of their businesses.
To address these concerns, the firm established Cohen Management Consulting, part of its Management Advisory Services division. During every engagement, Cohen’s seasoned consultants bring strategic thinking to their clients by covering business model strategies, ways to enable technology and considerations for human capital optimization. Cohen’s consulting projects are rarely one-off engagements, but rather one piece of a longer-term business improvement program that delivers tangible financial value.
“Middle-market companies don’t have the resources to invest in a ton of consultants spending several months on a big project. Our model is fundamentally different, so we can help clients tackle the same business challenges with a more flexible engagement style,” says Jim Boland, partner-in-charge, Cohen Consulting.
Sean Detwiler, Cohen Consulting’s senior manager, says Cohen can achieve top-notch results without invading a client company.
“We won’t put a huge team at the client site all day every day when we know it’s not necessary,” Detwiler says. “We put together a balanced team that provides the expertise and level of interaction our clients want without overburdening them with excess time commitments, resources or costs.”
Since it started more than two years ago, Cohen Consulting has worked with about 30 midsized clients, many
of which are privately held businesses.
But the expertise Cohen Consulting brings to the table is top-of-the-line. Boland, Detwiler and John Cavalier, director of Cohen Consulting, all previously worked about six years at Deloitte, the global consulting firm.
“We bring leading consulting concepts to the middle market,” Cavalier says.
“A lot of the same approaches we would use for a $10 billion business are the same we bring to smaller businesses facing similar issues. The difference in scale allows us to truly make an impact — partnering with business owners to transform their business and help them achieve and surpass their goals and objectives.” Cohen Consulting serves middle-market businesses in the $10 million to $1 billion range.
One satisfied Cohen client is Oatey Co., a Cleveland-based provider of plumbing products with offices in Canada and China. For more than 100 years, Oatey has provided reliable, high-quality products to its customers while growing product lines, an operational footprint and a loyal team of associates. Oatey’s people and leadership are excellent, but similar to many companies, its internal lean resources limited what it could do to plan and improve its business. Cohen Consulting continues to work collaboratively with Oatey’s team across HR, process optimization, sales and data/analytics to enrich and accelerate projects that continue to improve this great business.
“Cohen’s Management Consulting team has been an extremely valuable partner as we continue to grow and improve our business. Cohen’s ability to understand our business and work closely with our people to design and implement innovative solutions have helped us to unlock value across multiple areas of our organization,” says Chris Nehez, vice president and CIO at Oatey.
Boland says Cohen’s expansion into management consulting was simply a natural progression of how Cohen & Co. supports its client’s success.
“Just like our audit and tax colleagues, we are lifelong partners with our clients,” Boland says. “Addressing their holistic business needs seemed like the right thing to do.”