How We Became Integrated Strategies

8 years ago our company began as a Project Management firm that helped companies manage their construction, renovation and relocation projects. Since then project management work has still been the one constant in the company. Project Management firms are a great case study in the current economy and the life cycle of service industry companies.

The trick when you are striking out and starting your own business is to find an un- or under-served area of the market where you excel and can provide value. Our niche happened to be that we were great at running projects and could provide the resources to manage these one off jobs for clients that didn't have the time or skills in-house to handle it. We were very successful at this and project management was enough for awhile. As outsourcing these functions became more wide-spread and accepted within the business world more and more companies entered the project management field bringing down margins across the board and creating a very competitive environment. When something like this happens it's time to change the way the game is played.

Now in order to win business we were forced to provide differentiation between us and every other project management firm in the market. Our successful history, client recommendations and broad spectrum of experience wasn't enough to compete with the low cost providers. As a way to differentiate we began bringing other outsourced functions onboard that relate to project management. Workplace Strategies, Design and Construction Management were added as additional services. Suddenly we had a new set of competitors. No longer were we just competing with Project Management companies but we were offering similar services of Architectural firms and Consulting firms. This worked fine for awhile because we were new to that world and our focus was still different from them.

As our growth continued though we were bidding against traditional consulting firms more and more instead of simply the regular project management companies. They had a set of differentiators that we weren't able to compete with. We had entered the gray area in the service world between the smaller PM firms and the larger Consulting houses. It was an awkward position to be in to say the least. Too small to win big projects and too big to win small projects. In the same situation many other companies have struggled and finally failed. We decided that it was time to fight the stream and go toe to toe with our new competition.

To do this we brought in Financial consulting, Supply Chain and Logistics consulting, Real Estate consulting, many top professionals from partners we had worked with in the past for this type of work. If it wasn't going to work we would at least go down swinging and knowing that we gave it our best. We developed so many services that the name Integrated Strategies just came naturally. That was two years ago now and we are still growing successfully. We are working on several currently non-existent differentiators that will help us continue to grow our market and capabilities. It is a very exciting time now that we are playing with the big boys and playing very successfully at that. We have the tools to walk into any executive interview and offer superior services over the FTIs, Deloittes, and others of the world.

We would love to work with your company and we believe we can provide value to any company that we work with in at least one of the service lines we offer. If you are interested in us please feel free to subscribe to our email updates or send us an email. We know that not everyone needs something now and that not everyone wants to outsource. Please bookmarks us and keep us as a reference even. This blog is free for everyone to read, comment and enjoy. We hope this is useful and think that every company can benefit in some way from us.

If you see a topic and want to ask us a specific question feel free to contact us and we'll give you the answers you need.

Thanks for reading and I hope you continue to do so!


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