Our Work.

A major university’s IT department provides technology services to a world-class university, so there isn’t much room for error. The 360-member team was proud of its outstanding work, but leaders knew IT needed to improve how they manage, plan and forecast when partnering with university clients and health care subsidiaries. They asked Emerson to help improve their value to the organization.

​We conducted a series of highly facilitated working sessions and collaborated with key stakeholders to reshape the IT division and make sure project management and business acumen complemented their team’s top-notch IT skills. The result? Twenty-two job models and associated competencies, a training needs analysis for each role and a training development plan. The results were integrated into curriculum planning, recruiting, career progression planning, succession planning, and performance management. With our help, the university met its goal: an IT department worthy of the Harvard of the South.

In light of economic conditions, a Big 5 professional services firm needed to transform its face-to-face industry conferences to a more cost-effective virtual development experience. The virtual institute aims to equip practitioners to deliver industry insight to clients.

Emerson and the firm created a sustainable, flexible and innovative design that could be used across various industry groups. The design focused on leading-edge learning solutions and tools that will force interactivity and break the mold of “death by PowerPoint” webinars and “click after click” e-learning modules.

The resulting program is a four-week learning experience that accommodates a variety of learning styles by offering synchronous and asynchronous training. It also uses many learning modalities, including virtual classroom sessions, discussion boards, virtual panel discussions, and a client simulation activity. Virtual classroom sessions (one to two hours in length) bring all participants together twice each week in either plenary sessions or in small virtual teams of five to six teammates with the support of a coach.

After nine years of working together and nearly 400 projects, Emerson has become a trusted partner to one of the Big 4 professional services firms. We’ve created a series of in-person learning programs to support their business objectives.

Emerson built a one-day workshop to standardize a common methodology for delivering data security solutions. We developed a week-long program for new hires with a client simulation broken into three tracks: financial statement and internal controls audit, finance operations and controls transformation, and internal audit transformation activities.

We refreshed an identity and access management workshop and a simulation program teaching basic project management skills to new audit managers. Another one of our favorite projects was building a simulation teaching basic project management skills to new audit managers.

The leadership of a Big 4 professional services firm knew there were opportunities to be gained through stronger client relationships. They believed if they strengthened key skills in their executives, they could unlock even more success. The firm conceived the Relationship Mastery Program, a skill-building effort for executives (partners, principals, and managing directors), and they brought Emerson in to help.

Together, we landed on four main courses: the Art of Empathy, the Art of Inquiry, the Art of Story, and the Art of Engagement. The Relationship Mastery courses were taught face-to-face at their own company university. We used a variety of methods to reach our learners: video scenarios, games, and interactive sessions. In the end, the results exceeded our client’s expectations. Since 2011, over 13,000 partners and managers have attended Relationship Mastery courses. And that’s just in the U.S. — courses are run out of every major geography: Asia/Pacific, Europe and North.

So far, 33 global executives have participated. We surveyed 2700 employees to find out whether the program was helping them in their client relationships. 94% said they would recommend the courses, and 97% reported that these courses and skills are “essential to my work.”

A new health care provider came on the scene in 2005 and grew quickly. In 2011, they expanded their kidney care business even further, prepared for regulatory changes and shifted to a new operating model. This was a lot of change for a young company, so they asked Emerson for help.

We worked with them to develop the right organization structure and operating model. We also helped leaders develop a strong and clear message to rally the troops. Executives and managers acted as change agents; they were armed with a “playbook” and workshops to get all employees pulling in the same direction.

The result was a successful transition to a new way of doing business that will serve the company as it grows.

When a technology services company wanted to move its sales team from a traditional, transactional approach to a more consultative sales model, they reached out to Emerson.

Although they knew where they were and where they wanted to go, they had been struggling to gain traction. Emerson helped them solidify their vision, identify barriers, and focus on the critical behaviors to bring their vision to life.

We met with the team and conducted interactive workshops to bring together their best thinking and our behavior change expertise. The result was a solid plan and support materials to unify the team toward their vision.

Emerson developed and facilitated a North America Marketing Leadership summit, an annual meeting of a major oil and gas company’s 200-person leadership team who gather to establish objectives and address obstacles.

We designed and facilitated an interactive session that helped them internalize the overarching business goals, identify immediate constraints, and develop ways to address them.

A major oil and gas company launched an enterprise-wide effort to simplify their downstream operations. Their goal was to better equip the organization to execute strategy, focusing on the value chain and the processes that drive results. They asked Emerson to help mobilize employees and management toward this goal.

We launched a sponsorship strategy, employee engagement program and communication plans. We also built web/portal resources and change management training. The guiding principle was that everyone, from leaders to front-line employees, drive the transition to an even nimbler, more powerful organization.

One of the auto industry’s biggest tech providers was facing a huge change. After it spun off from its parent company, major functions like Finance needed to operate independently. At the same time, they took aim at some impressive profitability targets. And that was just the start.

There were many more waves of change scheduled to hit the same group of employees. To accomplish its vision, leadership realized they needed a consistent approach to change. They asked Emerson for help.

We quickly performed triage on their change portfolio of 230+ projects and then organized key stakeholders to develop an approach and a model for their new Change Center of Excellence (CoE). We guided the team to identify high-priority behaviors and build robust messaging. Key leaders, armed with a consistent story, deployed the new CoE. We then built a change toolkit for their new change agents.

The first test of the model: the change team applied its new approach and tools to their Oracle CPQ implementation.

Our country’s premiere global business and financial information and news leader needed a new way of doing business. They reorganized their ad operations structure. and wanted to break through silos as they transformed their single-platform focus to a team-based strategic multi-platform approach.

Once they designed the future-state organization, they asked Emerson to create a learning program that would translate to on-the-job performance.

Employees who once worked in only one advertising channel needed to learn how their colleagues got things done.

We worked with them to create training and on-the-job support to build capabilities and confidence for new roles and behaviors. The program supported 240 employees on three different continents.

A large child care and early childhood education company had 1,500 centers using an array of client management systems. They wanted to roll out a single company-wide solution to bring their centers up-to-date, recoup lost revenue, all without disrupting operations.

From the beginning, the initiative faced challenges: they had been trying to replace IT systems over ten years and lacked internal change capability. The company had a very loyal and caring culture and we needed to use that energy to help them succeed.

Emerson brought methodology and metrics to the plan. We offered an operating model, readiness assessment and metrics, a define phase for learning, and a learning model and deliverables. We helped build capability in their teams and left a transition toolkit to reinforce process and measure progress.

After an online realty company was acquired, their new executive leadership team identified three challenges: shared priorities, strategic alignment and consistent execution. They asked Emerson to help them create behaviors to meet those three challenges.

We led the CEO, CFO and VP of HR and their teams through transformation working sessions. The sessions yielded a consistent message, an understanding of their internal landscape, and actionable plans to create momentum and change. We also helped the company build a new product development process, PMO, and cascading goal-setting processes.

With our help, the executive team identified their own measures of success: 1) Employees can describe their top three priorities, 2) employees can describe the company strategy, 3) time-to-decision is reduced, 4) Products, Engineering and Sales work toward a common strategy, and 5) the company meets its financial and performance targets.

The world’s fourth largest retailer was ready to make its U.S. grocery debut. Emerson designed, developed and implemented training for the launch. Their new store concept required a service model built around “customer assistants.”

To support that, we developed strategically driven training for both new hires and existing employees. They learned about the parent company, the genesis of the retail concept, and their role in living the company mission: a fresh and easy place to shop, a good neighbor, and a great place to work.

The program used innovative techniques to train employees to perform their jobs seamlessly within the new service environment. With the help of Emerson, staff were ready to enter the U.S. market.

One of the largest privately-held clothing companies in the world knew it was time to transform their regionally focused plans into one company-wide strategy. They hired Emerson to help.

We created a four-point change strategy that engaged regional leaders and helped them build transformation capabilities to support the new overall strategy.

We also created the communication plan that helped streamline the transition for this iconic company.

A large state government organization was struggling to support its internal clients because the team had few change management skills and tools. They asked Emerson for a creative solution.

We started with their custom change model (based on John Kotter’s Eight-Step approach) and developed an instructor-led program, incorporating our best practices in change management.

To fit their needs, the course modules were delivered “just in time” – team members learn a concept or tool when they are ready to use it. Knowledge is tested through case studies, where the project team critiques the learner’s outputs so that every step is a learning opportunity.

A major consumer products player — the parent company to 14 well-known household brands — needed help defining “world-class excellence” and plotting a course to get there.

We were thrilled to help.

Emerson created an HR Excellent Blueprint that described the future state on a five-point scale, then created a change assessment for their short, mid, and long-term capability goals.

Our partnership with this client has them well on their way to new levels of excellence.

The legal department of a major municipal utility district was in the process of implementing Documentum, a document management system that would change internal processes and alleviate the need for paper-based files.

They needed to make sure their employees were prepared to use the system on day one.

Emerson conducted a QA audit, which included critical incident technique, cross-organizational interviews and materials review. The findings and recommendations went to the capital project’s Steering Committee, and were instrumental in helping these executives guide the team through successful implementation.

A major container ship facility faced several challenges during a massive ERP deployment that would impact over 1,000 employees. The already complex project was bookended by tight budgets and accelerated timelines.

In response, Emerson created a “vanilla approach” that eased the client through integrating such a large change. Together, we built a bulletproof business case, reenergized their change team and established a foundation for a successful ERP deployment. Work included creating a viable communication plan, user training program and vendor validation process.

While the organization told us they had “never undertaken a change this large,” it was business as usual at Emerson. Regardless of internal obstacles, we made sure their Oracle ERP implementation was made easy and made possible.

A major oil and gas company has a back office system impacting 1,000-plus retail locations in the U.S. and Canada. Emerson facilitated a three-day workshop to plan the dramatic but necessary changes to IT call center support.

The plan included changes to hiring, training, roles, responsibilities, procedures and documentation.

Emerson helped design, develop and implement a communication plan for a major implementation at a large oil and gas company.

We also worked with the program change manager to ensure proper messaging to stakeholders and support communications delivered by project sponsors and management.