In case you’ve not heard of us, we’re Herd. Hello 👋🏻. We’re a specialist business analysis consultancy and delivery partner. Put simply we help organisations across all sectors, and all sizes get business analysis done. Whether they be digital products or services, technology migrations, or major transformation programmes.
Last week we hit the one-year mark of being established as a limited company. Hopefully you’ll join us in celebrating with a tipple of your choice, whether that be a builder’s strength cuppa, nice glass of Malbec, or pint of craft beer.
🎢 Setting up a new business is one the scariest, but also one of the most exciting things you can do. Fact. Not just for me as the founder, but for the whole team. Ups and downs, that even Alton Tower’s newest rollercoasters would struggle to compete with. Before you even decide to start your own, the figures about succeeding are grim reading. 80% of all businesses fail within the first 18 months (6 months left guys!). Just 1 in 20 turn into long sustainable businesses. Pretty much every stat out there, suggests you shouldn’t start a business. Good job we love challenge. So why did we do it?
Cos, we had a clear mission, and still do 🎯 We want to redefine people’s expectations of what business analysis can do, and what it means to be a consultancy. Everyone we recruit into Herd, genuinely loves what they do and they’re bloody good at it too. They know the positive impact that effective business analysis has on organisations, services, staff, and customers. We all want to reduce the pain of having to interact with services, products, and processes, where it’s obvious no business analyst has been involved.
We know that consultancies often get a bad rep, sometimes deservedly so. For every great one, there is a much bigger number who aren’t so great. One of the biggest compliments we’ve had to date is from a Central Govt C-Suite customer of ours, where she liked the fact that we were “less consultancy, more down to earth, and more engaging”. Maybe you figured that already, we have a blue elephant as our logo after all. For us, consultancies aren’t that complicated, it’s about being truly specialist in one thing that you know and love, and finding awesome, authentic people who share that vision. Cookie cutters and folk who try implement the same box of tricks to everything they touch can stay away 🚫.
So, one year in – what have we learnt? 📙 In short, tons. Easily a few blog posts worth. But our mission remains the same and I’m chuffed to say we’re making good progress. A recent engagement sees us apply our BA superpowers, way outside the usual constraints of projects and programmes – working directly with the C-Suite to identify enterprise-wide improvements and help to build an in-house continuous improvement capability. Another of our engagements, has been working with the University of Cambridge, leading on a complex discovery of a new Electronic Document Management System (EDMS) as well as helping them to introduce & embed business capabilities and their relationship with products, services, and processes. We’ve helped a FTSE100 company develop their BA Service Definition, helping them to set their stall out of what business analysis can offer their organisation, as well as providing advice on the best in breed technology solutions for their BA practice. And last by no means least, we’ve had fun running our ‘Rockstar BA energisers’ and Community of Practice Health Checks with a number of different organisations including Aviva and the University of Sheffield. Oh, that’s not forgetting the other projects and transformation initiatives we’ve acted as a delivery partner on. Data migrations, HR transformation programmes, process re-engineering, and SAP S/4HANA implementations to name but a few.
We’re proudly picky on who we work with. We’ve a simple rule, work with good folk, and don’t work with those who aren’t. We’re a people business, and we recruit based on values. We want our team (or our Herd as we prefer to call it), to enjoy coming to work every day, to be able to make a positive impact, whilst knowing that they’re working with a brilliant team around them, as well as with lovely clients.
Additionally, we’ve been busy in building the inner workings of our business 🧱, from accounting & expenses systems, through to achieving Cyber Essentials certification and establishing our social media presence. From hosting events and writing bids, to looking to setup an EV salary sacrifice scheme for our team, and growing our network of partners. Again, easily a few blog posts worth of content.
Huge thank you to our wonderful team of rockstars 🤘🏻 Our Herd . Permies and Associates. I continue to be in awe of your dedication to our mission, and for your continued courage to push boundaries. Never settling for the norm. Never ordinary. Day in, day out, you’re delivering impactful and engaging business analysis to our clients. Making change happen.
What next? Well, put simply we’re cracking on with our mission. Redefining people’s expectations of what business analysis can do, and what it means to be a consultancy. We’ve got lots of exciting plans that we can’t wait to share over the coming months. In the meantime, we continue to be truly humbled that so many organisations want to talk to us about how we can help them and continue to choose us as their BA delivery partner.
☕ If anyone fancies a brew and a natter, drop us a message. We’ve got posh coffee (Darkwoods) and the King of the Biscuits. Obvs, that being Chocolate Hobnobs. Proper ones. McVities. So as we say in Yorkshire, hopefully si’ thi’ soon.
🖊️ Authored by: Jamie Toyne, Founder & CEO at Herd Consulting
🎧 Most listened to song of the week: Lost in the Supermarket — The Clash
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