UK Enterprise Awards 2021

46 | UK Enterprise Awards 2021 May21231 HR Consultancy of the Year 2021 – Western Europe Known for the exceptional experiences it helps businesses to create, Imtiaz Consultancy is king when it comes to people-focused matters. We speak to Founder, Czarina Sheikh Mathew, about the firm’s unique approach to business transformation. Imtiaz Consultancy is a management practice focused on enhancing the customer and employee experience, something which is achieved via three delivery pillars of corporate consultancy; business skills training; and leadership and team coaching. The firm’s initial engagements are typically with organisations that have pain points which are hurting their operations, finances or reputation. For example, they could be experiencing a rise in escalations, struggling to win new business, losing contracts or high staff churn. Through a discovery phase and deep-dive exercise, Imtiaz Consultancy supports the business to ascertain root cause, identify corrective actions to stop the immediate issues and implement preventative measures to ensure these challenges do not re-occur. Once the foundation has been stabilised, the firm works further with the business on their medium- and long-term strategic initiatives to enhance the customer and employee experience in order to gain the competitive advantage, leading to increased profits. “Through our Partnership Model, we offer a unique suite of services to improve the customer and employee experience,” Founder and Executive Director Czarina Sheikh Mathew explains, speaking of what sets the firm aside from its competitors to distinguish it in the marketplace. “Cost management and profit improvement specialists for over 25 years, we are leveraging these strategic relationships to focus on four key areas in order to support businesses through these challenging times.” The importance of listening to customers has never been greater, so an in-depth process is undertaken to capture customer’s expectations, preferences and dislikes. This enables Imtiaz Consultancy to design and deliver Voice of the Customer programmes, supporting businesses as they mould and navigate the ‘new normal’. This data is leveraged to drive actionable insights, ultimately to strengthen market position and provide a competitive edge. By delivering training and coaching to leaders and their staff on remote workforce management, Imtiaz Consultancy helps to upskill to meet the needs of the remote employee to best serve the customer. In this space, it offers a full-service wrap from recruitment through to onboarding and a new-hire online training programme. Imtiaz Consultancy helps clients to increase cash flow and drive profits by maximising on their relationships with suppliers, identifying and reducing non-core key costs - an approach which is risk-free as the firm engages on a no-savings, no-fee basis. “We work closely with senior financial and procurement teams to achieve best value from the supply chain. With real-world market experience, our proven methodology, long- established supplier relationships and strong buying power have consistently delivered savings of 25-45% and more,” Czarina continues. Finally, Imtiaz Consultancy facilitates Lessons Learned workshops to bring value to future work. “The importance of reflection and the value of this type of review is recognised,” Czarina states. “Every business understands it is not possible to succeed without learning from mistakes. We support businesses to adopt a blame-free open and honest approach, a culture of accountability and engagement right across the organisation to drive expected behaviours in order to achieve the review goals.” Czarina herself has an impressive career history spanning over 25 years, where she has been accountable for customer experience across sales and service with progressive and dynamic organisations. With substantial experience as a Senior Leader, Service Delivery Professional and Customer Champion, she has developed and executed strategy to enhance the customer journey. Czarina brings customer-focused solutions to mitigate operational, financial and reputational risk. A particular sweet spot for Czarina is promoting cross-functional collaboration to drive cultural transformation, delivering change and continuous improvement. She believes an employee- first approach today will create a successful, customer-centric organisation tomorrow. In fact, woven into the very fabric of Imtiaz Consultancy are two of its core values, trust and empowerment, alongside integrity and personalisation - these are threaded through both the internal and customer-facing activities at the firm. “Our varied and diverse backgrounds bring a richness to clients that supports their People and Customer strategies, enhancing employee engagement, leading to increased customer satisfaction that ultimately results in improved business performance.”