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As we all know, personnel roles within specialty chemicals and advanced materials require specialized know-how and skills. This can make it incredibly difficult to find knowledgeable and experienced people to fill key positions. Compounding the problem is the fact that many recruiters simply are not able to fully understand the requirements of these types of roles, which unnecessarily extends the hiring/onboarding window and potentially results in unqualified hires.
Of course, the recruiting and onboarding processes bring additional costs as well. The resources required to bring a new hire up to speed can be prohibitive, particularly if the person requires additional training because they don’t have the expertise needed.
Not having fully staffed and skilled teams in place unfortunately jeopardizes your company’s ability to succeed over the long term. How many potentially impactful initiatives have been abandoned due to a lack of internal resources? Too many, without a doubt.
Expanding Your Knowledge Base
When internal resources are lacking, many companies turn to outside consultants. Though you may think me biased, this can truly be a winning strategy. Consulting companies provide access to knowledgeable personnel who you don’t need to attract, hire, train, or support with salaries and other benefits. This alone can represent a huge savings in terms of both time and money.
If you are able to connect with a consultant that has expertise in your industry, you’ll be in an even better position to more quickly identify opportunities that align with your business. Uniquely positioned in the specialty chemicals and advanced materials space, the ChemQuest team’s extensive roster ranges from business owners and leaders to senior executives and technical managers — all with decades of real-life experience.
This broad bench of experts provides us with the flexibility to quickly pull in team members with widely different backgrounds to address specific client needs. In addition, our laboratory capabilities — through the ChemQuest Technology Institute and ChemQuest Powder Coating Research — provide the scientific capabilities and facilities that are necessary to identify and address technology-related opportunities.
Let me share an example that illustrates what I mean. One of our specialty chemicals clients came to us because they wanted to expand into new markets. They lacked internal resources to explore the possibilities themselves, and they had previously hired a traditional business consulting company to help. This consultancy had mapped out potential opportunity areas (e.g., adhesives, coatings), providing data regarding the size of various end-use sectors (e.g., construction, packaging), as well as additional information such as headwinds and tailwinds for each.
While this was undoubtedly helpful information — understanding target markets is of course essential — it wasn’t at all actionable. The generalist consultant lacked the knowledge and facilities to study the client’s materials, and as a result had no idea how those technologies might translate into the markets they’d mapped out. Though the client was more knowledgeable at the end of the project regarding the potential markets, they still had no idea how to actually move forward.
In contrast, with our team’s expertise and lab facilities, we were able to study the client’s patents, formulations, molecular structures, etc. to fully understand how the materials perform, what they do, and what their current uses and value propositions are in existing markets. Using this information, we were able to correlate how those properties would translate into new and attractive markets.
The client was thrilled with our actionable, meaningful insight regarding which opportunities would best align with their very specific capabilities. And though this additional aspect wasn’t necessary for this particular client, our team could also have tweaked their existing formulations to meet different end-use requirements (or developed an entirely new formulation, if they had wanted to go that route).
Time to Dollars
As one of my colleagues recently said, “It’s all about time to dollars.” How quickly can you either kill an idea or develop a profitable strategy? Whether you’re looking at a potential new product development initiative, business acquisition or divestment, capacity expansion, reshoring effort — any opportunity, really — your success is significantly minimized if you don’t have the resources available to commit to a deep dive that results in actionable strategies.
Your internal team may be extremely knowledgeable regarding your company’s products but lack the requisite experience to explore beyond current applications. Similarly, traditional consulting companies can provide general market information but lack the specialized knowledge needed to translate that data into a customized action plan.
When you engage with ChemQuest, you’re not simply hiring a consultant – you’re embarking on a partnership that achieves the best of both worlds. We become an extension of your team, bringing our deep industry knowledge and experience, as well as our labs, in support of your long-term success. We can help you fully explore your options, identify the optimal opportunities for your business, and support you throughout the development and implementation processes. I encourage you to reach out and discover how we can work with you to drive profitable growth.
How can we help you? Let’s start talking: https://chemquest.com/lets-start-talking/
