Joel Krauss

Joel Krauss has been an advisor to executives for over 30 years, helping organizations improve operational performance and identify the best paths to growth.

Mr. Krauss believes consultants work best when they collaborate and facilitate, working with a business team as it strives for outcomes. This means offering advice, insights and external facts that enable the client’s leaders and their people so they can succeed.

Mr. Krauss has served executives in business and financial services, manufacturing, communications and high technology. He has assisted over 25 global companies including Accenture, AT&T, Bell Canada, Devon Energy, Fidelity Investments, Microsoft, Savvis, Sterling Capital Partners, Telular Corporation, Underwriters Laboratories, Unisys, and Zebra Technologies. Recent assignments include:

• Growth Strategy Acceleration: For multiple firms seeking significant growth beyond what is forecast organically, identification of directions and strategies to accelerate growth. Depending on the client’s unique situation, a different blend of focus on: Defending, Growing and Rejuvenating their core business was considered. Assistance involved:
• Setting the Growth Acceleration Target (GAT) for the business or product line, expressed in financial and market terms.
• An “outside in” assessment of customers, opportunities and competitors providing insights and moving beyond divergent internal opinions.
• Collaboration with key management to identify a wide range of growth hypotheses – possibilities – that were then vetted for opportunity and feasibility.

In addition to direction setting, these initiatives usually involve an execution program build out; giving the management team has an agreed-to action plan.

• Working Capital Operational Improvement: For a $1 Billion firm seeking to lower DSOs by 3 days and reduce working capital by $9 Million, a performance improvement assessment was completed. In addition to enabling these outcomes a roadmap for organizational growth was advanced, focusing on the expected needs of the company 3–5 years into the future. This roadmap which is being implemented considered policy, processes, organization and key skills, metrics and incentives, and needed technology platforms.
• Profit improvement: For a $1 billion manufacturer anticipating the Great Recession, assistance to the management team as it made the very difficult cuts in operating and G&A expense to right size in anticipation of a demand downturn. The focus was on several broad areas including sales and marketing and indirect expenditures. The decisions and recommendations were targeted: Prioritizing what must continue during the downturn and identifying consolidation or other cost reduction methods for continuing these essential activities and initiatives.

Mr. Krauss has an MBA from the University of Chicago, Booth School of Business. He holds a Bachelors of Science in Mathematics from the Illinois Institute of Technology.

He is a Trustee at the Illinois Institute of Technology and serves on the Board of Directors of the Hyde Park Angels, a rapidly growing Midwest angel investment network.

Mr. Krauss can be reached via phone: 312-925-5871 or email: joel.krauss@mkt-strat.com.