Industry Experience

Forum understands the unique challenges and needs of specific industries. We address those needs through our wide variety of research, tools and methodologies, as well as our personal insight and experience. We have helped the world's leading companies - more than 480 clients from a broad range of industries, including more than 130 of the Fortune 500 - to design and deliver learning solutions that build leadership talent, increase sales force effectiveness and create loyalty-building customer experiences. Here are just some examples of the work we have done and the impact we have made in some core industries.

Energy and Utilities

A large regional energy company had flat sales and little product differentiation. The senior leadership knew that achieving new profit targets required increased collaboration among business units and greater accountability for results at all levels.  The success of their strategy depended on developing more effective leaders throughout the company. The company worked with Forum to build a business-oriented leadership development program to create a new generation of professional and empowered leaders. 99% of managers reported applying what they learned back on the job. ROI was estimated at 265%. And the company met its 5-year financial objective in 4 years.

Financial Services

In a highly competitive environment, a national financial services firm recognized that future success depends on four key drivers: production, market share, sales force retention, and expense management. Growing pains in all of these areas indicated that investment in sales management was necessary. Turnover of sales managers was 29% and of account executives was 60%. Furthermore, it was taking new sales managers 7 months to be fully productive. Guided by its latest research, How Sales Forces Sustain Competitive Advantage, Forum worked with the firm to create a learning system for new sales managers, which included virtual classroom training, peer coaching, and an instructor-led session over a 4-week period.  Impact measurement during an 8-month period revealed:

• Sales Managers began to consistently exceed sales production targets after 4 months on the job.  And new managers are able to keep pace with experienced managers
• Sales Manager Turnover:  Decreased to 15%
• Account Executive Turnover:  Decreased to 46%

High Tech

The disaster recovery industry had undergone enormous upheaval following 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina. A fairly slow-moving, high-revenue, high-profit industry was suddenly challenged with a host of new companies responding to the great awareness of, and need for, data security. In addition, a sizable number of companies were taking data security in-house. In response to this dramatic change in the competitive landscape, the company decided to move from offering reactive disaster recovery to proactive data protection.

The sales force, however, was used to a transactional, autonomous sales process, with little accountability and little consistency across the parts of the company. The sales leadership knew that a transformation of the entire sales organization was necessary. Forum helped accelerate this strategic transformation by implementing equipping the sales force with a customer-focused - rather than product-focused - set of core sales models and processes, along with a common language and a consistent account-planning process.

The company saw a significant improvement in financial performance (best in 4 years), sales performance (best in 5 years), client retention and growth. The increased employee satisfaction and retention has also started to permeate to other divisions who are asking for the same training.

Hospitality and Retail

For this quality ice-cream retailer, customer research indicated that store customers' experience did not match the status of the brand, and that service was the strongest driver of increasing customer loyalty and spending. The company decided that meeting its goals required changing the way shop personnel dealt with customers, by focusing on recognition-making customers feel as though they were rewarding themselves and indulging in something special.

Using the customer research, Forum built an innovative and highly interactive program to provide employees with the necessary knowledge, skills and behaviors. Employees were fully engaged in the program, reflected in greater engagement with customers.

Pilot-group stores increased revenue by 13% over control-group stores. Customer loyalty also rose significantly.  Loyalty was defined as the percentage of customers who rated four out of four elements of overall satisfaction, as well as maximum ratings for repurchasing and recommendation.  The firm had set a target of 30%; the stores piloting the training achieved 43% (143% of goal).

Pharmaceutical and Healthcare

A pharmaceutical outsourcing company had become a global leader. Future growth required a larger pool of talented, diverse and ready leaders that are skilled technically, strategically and managerially. There was dissatisfaction with management in the areas goal setting, performance feedback and recognition. And there was no formal, global Leadership Development plan.

Forum developed a global, multi-level learning system to prepare leaders with the strategic perspective to steer the company and retain industry leadership.

"By far the best training I have attended in and out of Clinical Research . I am 100% positive the benefits for me will be long lasting."
--Senior level, high-potential leader in Clinical Research

The successful design included:

• Senior management commitment and involvement in sessions
• Creative approach to learning used cases, simulations and work-related practice sessions
• Peer coaching established strong cross-functional bonds

Consumer Products

To maintain its strong position in the market, this sporting goods company knew it urgently needed to instill a high performance culture throughout the world. Surveys showed that 75% of employees were unclear about the organization's goals, and a third felt they did not receive coaching for their performance.

The company defined a performance culture as a place where all employees knew what performance was expected and valued; they received coaching to help them develop their abilities and improve their performance, and their managers fairly assessed and and rewarded high performance.

Forum's "Coaching for Excellence" solution created huge buzz around the company, worldwide. Forum developed innovative approaches to help brand the initiative: using an "orienteering" metaphor, facilitators arrived with backpacks and compasses. Maps were used as game boards to instill playfulness and to increase motivation.

The solution started with senior leaders. These "champions" led by example, communicating to the levels below what specifically was expected using the programs tools. This then cascaded down through 3,000 managers and 23,000 employees to create lasting impact.