UK supply chain consultancy Hughenden joins Efeso Consulting
Hughenden Consulting, a boutique UK supply chain consulting firm, has joined forces with Efeso Consulting, an international management consultancy with 27 offices globally. Hughenden founder Hugh Williams and a team of around ten consultants will transfer to the UK arm of the Paris headquartered consultancy.
Founded by Hugh Williams, a well-known expert and speaker at numerous supply chain conferences, Hughenden Consulting is a specialist consultancy that provides supply chain-focused consulting and training services to clients. The firm has since its founding in 2001 built a solid reputation for facilitating change programmes related to Sales & Operations Planning (Integrated Business Planning), Sales Forecasting, Inventory Optimisation, Production Planning & Scheduling and Materials Planning.
The company, which is located in High Wycombe, has completed engagement in 25 different countries, for organsiations such as GSK, Cargill, BSH, Castrol, Knauf, and Mattel.
In recent years, Hughenden Consulting have come across and even worked on projects with consultants from Efeso Consulting, with 450 consultants and a network of 27 local offices one of the globe’s larger management consulting firms. Efeso was established in the 1980’s when two European consultancies merged, and following another large merger in the summer of 2007, between French Solving and Italian Efeso, the firm operated as Solving Efeso until it rebranded late 2015 as Efeso Consulting.
Efeso Consulting supports clients with a wide range of management consultancy and digital services, spanning strategy, organisation, operations, lean, procurement, supply chain and change management. The firm also provides a set of M&A services, focused mainly on operational due diligence – in the summer Efeso’s French arm for instance advised Belgian mid-market private equity firm Argos Soditic Partners on its investment in aviation company Revima Group.
Integral supply chain offering
The addition of Hughenden Consulting to Efeso’s network significantly bolsters its supply chain practice, with Clive Geldard, Group Vice President Retail & Supply Chain at Efeso, stating “This is an exciting expansion of our supply chain and human dynamics capabilities, bringing the distinctive Hughenden style to our team.”
He added that the deal will enable Efeso to provide clients with an “end-to-end supply chain management” offering, from strategy through execution. The move comes in a period when an integral approach is becoming increasingly important for clients, as trends such as changing consumer preferences and digitisation are changing the way how companies design their supply chains, and the requirements they pass on to players in the €2.7 trillion transport and logistics market.
The two advisory firms share a number of long- established client relationships with each other – on the back of the synergies in the portfolio, Efeso and Hughenden expect to increase their footprint at major accounts. Among the methodologies Hughenden Consulting will bring in to Efeso is its knowledge in Vested: in February this year Hughenden became the first UK consultancy to become a certified Centre of Excellence for Vested, a business model, methodology, mind-set and movement for creating highly collaborative business relationships.
Efeso Consulting already had a small presence in the UK, based in Birmingham. No details have been released on the integration plans between Hughenden Consulting and Efeso Consulting UK.
In March this year, another UK supply chain consultancy, LCP Consulting (around 30 consultants), also joined forces with a larger international player, BearingPoint, while US strategy consultant BCG expanded its own European supply chain capabilities last year with the acquisition of Germany based Inverto.
