SYNTHESIS FOR INTEGRATED INSIGHTS
“Solution Partners has demonstrated an exceptional ability for integrating information across studies so that there are clear insights to help us focus strategically, practically, and effectively. This work has included Asia as well as the US. Solution Partners has approached this work with both strong intellectual discipline and a strong partnership with our teams.”
Erik Hess
Senior Vice President, Global Consumer and Brand Strategy
McDonald’s
DRIVING COMPANY VALUE
“In 10 short years, Sweet Life grew from producing a single cookie to a billion cookies a year as well as innovating several new products. It was then sold to Fresh Start Bakeries where several of the Sweet Life team advanced to leadership roles. The amazing success of the brand was a direct result of our leadership team “buying into” the importance of taking time to “work on the business” as well as work in the business. Larry Chandler and Solution Partners were instrumental in facilitating, coaching and inspiring our entire Executive Team and for developing the tools needed for a smooth transition after the sale of the company.”
Mike Gray
Former CEO & Owner
The Sweet Life Baking Company
“Buchanan Street Partners was experiencing dramatic growth within the real estate investment management business and needed strategic advice to guide us through our expansion phase. Solutions Partners was retained to orchestrate a systematic process and protocol to enable Buchanan to incorporate new strategies and expansion of our personnel while maintaining our excellent performance. Ultimately, I attribute significant value to Solution Partners' counsel as we sold a majority interest in our company.”
Robert Brunswick
Chairman
Buchanan Street Partners
QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH
“Thoughtful, professional, customer-focused, results-oriented … I had the pleasure to partner with SP and our CI group at Walmart on a comprehensive research project. The team provided key insights that created the foundation for the set of high impact recommendations we presented to the company's senior leadership.”
Eduardo Galindo Sr.
Director Structural Transformation
Walmart
“It's been my pleasure to work with Judy over these past 3 years. Her vast research skills and business knowledge combined with her exceptional attention to detail have helped to position Solution Partners as Electrolux's top quantitative supplier. Rarely have I developed this kind of confidence in a supplier, but Judy is always one step ahead and has a way of figuring out what we need even before we do. Judy is a true business "partner" who always has the "solution" we need. I strongly recommend her as a research supplier.”
Jennifer Stuart
Former Senior Manager, Consumer Insights
Electrolux
TURNING AROUND COMPANIES
“At McDonald's, we had to achieve a turnaround in the late 1990s and early 2000s. That turnaround started with a dramatic turnaround in our San Diego market which had been in severe performance distress. The distress converted to exceptional success because the owner/operators and the company created a combined solutions strategy underpinned by a renewed culture encompassing the company, the owner/operators and the suppliers. Larry Chandler of Solution Partners was instrumental in helping us with the extraordinary progress ... and he is now helping Southern California ignite another turnaround of its results.”
Scott Frisbie
Owner/Operator of Numerous McDonald’s Restaurants
Leader of the San Diego Region Turnaround Process
“During the late 1990s and early 2000s, McDonalds faced very significant business performance issues. During the successful turnaround in the early 2000s for McDonalds, Larry Chandler played an important role with actionable insights, by helping Senior Leadership develop a coherent plan that all could execute at the highest level and by helping orchestrate change across the US and then Asia. His partnership, systemic help, and organizational understanding were an invaluable part of how we turned around McDonald’s.”
Mike Roberts
Former COO
McDonald’s Global
RESEARCH CONSULTING
“Blair Peters and his Solution Partners colleagues performed audits of Zurich's Marketing Research Capabilities, both in North America and globally. Given his strong intellect, work ethic, strategic perspectives, and marketing research experience, Blair is expert at evaluating, assessing, and improving the viability of people, data, processes, and contributions of a marketing research organization, and its ability to support an organization's profitable growth and other strategic objectives.”
Steve Magnino
Former Senior Vice President, Marketing Research
Zurich North America
“One of our legacy processes at ADP has been our client satisfaction surveys. Over time these studies have grown, both in complexity and in breadth of coverage. Solution Partners helped us to review our existing questionnaires and processes and provided us with a strong implementation plan that has given us a much deeper understanding of how to drive client loyalty and retention.”
Deborah Barron
Vice President, Market Intelligence
Automatic Data Processing, Inc.
IDENTIFYING AND APPLYING BEST PRACTICES
“Del Taco has had significant operational improvements while also having significant and sustained sales growth. The foundation for those operational improvements was the systematic identification of our best practice restaurants and what they were doing to cause high performance. Taking that learning, Del Taco with Solution Partners help crafted a focused and disciplined operational system that has underpinned Del Taco’s growing success.”
David Pear
Vice President, Operations
Del Taco
“Midas has driven significant improvement in no small part because of systematic learning from our best practice dealers and shops. Whether identifying those dealer and shop best practices or facilitating performance growth best practice development, Larry Chandler of Solution Partners has been a valuable partner for our achievements.”
Mike Gould
COO
Midas
INNOVATION & SEGMENTATION RESEARCH
“Innovation is an appealing but often illusive concept in today’s business world. Solution Partners provided us expertise and direction to generate powerful innovative concepts. Perhaps more importantly, Solution Partners created an innovation approach and discipline that provides us a sustainable and significant competitive advantage. Specifically, Solution Partners helped us create an internal environment and innovation system that promotes cross-functional involvement and support. Having collectively embraced this innovation process, we are now better positioned to ensure our ongoing strategic and new product development initiatives will be successful in the marketplace.”
Barbara Christon
Former Global Director Consumer Customer and Market Insight
Bayer HealthCare Diabetes Division
“Del Taco is focused on innovative and fundamental growth with consumer occasions. The basis for how that growth can occur was an insightful and impactful segmentation study followed by the use of innovative simulation research techniques for addressing a targeted occasion. In doing the studies and applying the information, Solution Partners and its team have provided expertise, application insights and partnering that have made a significant difference for Del Taco’s progress.”
Tom Johnson
Director, Consumer Insights
Del Taco
EMPLOYEE COMMUNICATIONS, OPTIMIZATION, AND EXECUTION
“To help drive Granite City’s progress, we used enhanced information/learning, applied best practices, applied clear messaging/involvement, and gained commitment and performance from our employees. Solution Partners, and Julie Chandler specifically, helped us achieve those objectives with focused newsletters, updates as needed, facilitated field leadership meetings, and a significantly enhanced annual conference. Today, we are continuing to grow and succeed with communication playing an important role.”
Rob Doran
CEO
Granite City Food & Brewery
TRUSTED ADVISOR
"Solution Partners has been a trusted advisor for our company for many years. They make a commitment to understand our business and provide us with actionable market research and strategic insights on a host of business and marketing initiatives. This sets Solution Partners apart from most market research consultants. We value our relationship with them."
Kate Brower
President
The Education Center, Inc.
ACCELERATING COMPANY GROWTH
“At Coalision, we have been pleased that we are achieving unprecedented growth for our Lole and Paradox brands. That growth has occurred in large part because we have a strong leadership team that has effectively motivated and focused our whole organization on our brands' growth. Our leadership team has grown in their impact, their strategic thinking, and their results achievement to some significant degree because of the leadership coaching, change management planning, and strategic input of Larry Chandler from Solution Partners. He has been and is an important partner in our progress.”
Bernard Mariette
CEO
Coalision
“With the help of Julie and Larry Chandler from Solution Partners, our Lexus dealership has dramatically grown its capability, market share, and long term sustainable success. Their ability to help us strategically, organizationally, and through orchestration has been a valuable part of why our family dealership is achieving sustained success.
Alan Nusinow
CEO
Lexus of Highland Park, IL
TRAINING: STEPS FOR INSIGHT ACTIVATION
“Solution Partners was instrumental in helping my team build new skills in terms of their overall written communications. They also helped raise the bar in terms of being able to build insights into their research reporting. Senior Management has already noticed the difference and has now initiated a companywide insights initiative.”
Gill Potter
Director of Consumer Research
Humana
LEADERSHIP IMPACT GROWTH
“At Granite City, we nearly doubled in size with significantly higher profit growth. In achieving that success, Solution Partners helped us grow with a disciplined process of insights, enhanced teamwork, leadership growth, strategic planning/focusing, and communications. Larry Chandler and Julie Chandler have been committed partners working with us to help drive our polished casual restaurant growth and brand.”
Rob Doran
CEO
Granite City Food & Brewery
RESEARCH FUNCTION 360
“The interviews with executives caused a paradigm shift: higher expectations, more open and honest dialogue and better working relationships. The assessment helped my team to develop a more robust operations infrastructure (better process standards, more consistent frameworks and new associate training). We are now better positioned to influence strategy within Washington Mutual.”
Ron Gailey
Senior Vice President Marketing Research
Washington Mutual
ASSESSING, DEVELOPING & CHANGING CULTURE
“We have achieved extraordinary growth at our family owned Lexus dealership. Central to that growth has been the strengthening of our strategy, our culture and our implementation. Julie and Larry Chandler of Solution Partners have played a vitally important role in helping us achieve this. They have done that with their coaching, their support for leadership growth, and their assistance in creating a vibrant culture linked to our strategies. And they have also helped us work smoothly and effectively through a family business transition.”
Ben Nusinow
General Manager
Lexus of Highland Park, IL
FUTURE TRENDS
“Being able to anticipate our industry’s future provides us a significant advantage over competition. Solution Partners’ expertise and discipline provided us insights into the future landscape of our marketplace, using a unique process for identifying and reaching experts in a range of subject matters that enabled us to shape strategies to drive our business. We now have the ability to focus company direction, resources and initiatives to assure both near- and long-term success.”
Barbara Christon
Former Global Director Consumer Customer and Market Insight
Bayer HealthCare Diabetes Division