Charlotte Jordan moved to specialist consultancy TMX Transform from KPMG so she could once again see a project all the way from start to finish.
It is a return to the sense of ownership she felt over her work during her decade at Australia Post, while also allowing her to use the consulting skills she built up during her three years at KPMG.
Ms Jordan now typically advises clients on how to set up new warehouses or improve existing elements of their supply chain – a term covering the gamut of how a company gets its products and services to its customers.
“So quite often, a big consulting firm will just focus on the strategic component, or designing the overall supply chain,” Ms Jordan said.
Whereas the TMX difference is we become an extension of the client’s team and take them from strategy through to design and implementation.
“In layman’s terms, that means helping clients with projects end-to-end. That includes helping to design how their supply chain strategy works, assisting with finding the site and then helping to project-manage building the new infrastructure.
“And because we have project-managed the new site from the start, the strategy is very robust and practical.”
Clients demand specialists
Ms Jordan was an associate director at KPMG before moving into a director role at TMX in August. This is one rank below the partner-equivalent title of executive director at the boutique consulting firm.
She joined another big four alumnus, former KPMG partner Tristan Butt, who moved to TMX as Asia-Pacific chief operating officer in the middle of the year.
Ms Jordan’s move to a niche firm is part of an ongoing shake-out in the sector in which clients have shifted their work to specialist advisers, away from generalist consultants.
She said her time at Australia Post, where she worked across the organisation’s infrastructure, automation and optimisation teams, gave her an appreciation for clients who had to worry about both ongoing operations and new projects.
Being from industry gives you a really high empathy for the client, in terms of having being through changes and understanding the pain that it takes to get the work done.
“If I think about my Australia Post journey, I’ve had to really lean into a serious step-change in going from, for example, a manual to a really highly automated site that’s a facility of the future with robotics and driverless vehicles. That completely changes the culture and historical ways of working, which is very different to the perfect assumptions that you might make in a business case.”
Simplicity is best
Ms Jordan has also learnt to appreciate the value of simple and practical solutions.
“The other thing that kind of goes hand in glove with that is the use, for example, of new technology,” she said.
“There’s the tendency of external advisers to focus on the shiny new toys that you might put in, but it’s everything around, which is probably less exciting, that is just as critical and has to be planned for.
“That includes ways of working, the organisation’s culture and existing workforce processes. It’s all the less glamorous side, but that’s where the work is just as important.”
The article was originally written by Edmund Tadros and published by the Australian Financial Review on 1 October 2024.