The hardest part of any journey is taking the first step. In 2014, a change in employment at major Oil & Gas company, forced Kevin Cornelius to evaluate his career. For 20 years, Kevin had been helping companies of all sizes boost their revenues, reduce their expenses, and run dynamic organizations. Vast technology changes had occurred, and it was time to develop a concept that could be leveraged to more than one company at a time.
A key concept that had been leveraged was Vendor Management in Kevin’s past. But what exactly was Vendor Management? Encapsulating the concepts and activities around vendor management is not an easy task. The first real challenge in moving a known good idea into a business case with a predictable return on investment. It was the process of figuring out how to market the idea that the ‘a-ha’ moment came. Articulate the clear problem with a repeatable solution that FITS with each company by beginning with Client first.

For the first few years of Make IT Work, we were a resource company. ‘Just find me a good body to help me do Project ‘X’’ seemed to be the most common request. While this allowed the company to grow, it did not allow us to deliver the true value model to clients.

  In 2018, after serious reflection, we decided to adjust our model. We focused on two key concepts. First, if customers weren’t ready, for one reason or the other to make the internal investment required to properly set up the Operating Model, we would offer a mature, fully developed ‘as a Service’ model. In this regard, we didn’t have to worry about developing people and maturity, we simply had to develop the process to leverage our already built Service center. Instant maturity.

  Second, we would assist companies that were looking for a wholesale change or establishing best in class services out of the gate. We would do this differently than other management consultancies by providing and delivering a robust model, working side by side with working teams. We would demonstrate the better way to do things while still embracing individual company culture. We would help organizations grow their people by teaching different ways to do things and showing them how it would work within their culture. This is more than a set of templates, it’s a recipe for a winning team.

Being positive in a negative situation is not naïve. It’s Leadership.

— Ralph Marston