Case Studies:

Client: A $2 billion+ sales, U.S. based, privately held medical device company

Timeframe: 10 months

Client Need: Client made the strategic decision to migrate manufacturing operations from the U.S. to lower cost locations (LCCs) in Asia and the Caribbean, but didn't have the requisite in-house experience to manage this involved strategic change.

What We Did: HPA provided specific expertise in:

• Medical devices
• Manufacturing operations
• FDA approvals
• International manufacturing (green- and brown-field)
• Negotiations
• Finance

The HPA team, working between client facilities in the Midwest, West Coast, and East Coast, as well as in China and Puerto Rico, led the manufacturing transfer efforts with key client team members, which included closure of U.S. manufacturing and warehouse facilities, negotiation of third party manufacturing agreements in multiple countries, launch of international operations, quality control and delivery.

The Result: The efforts were brought in on time and on budget. The client realized 20+% savings on a COGS base of $600mm+ and SG&A base of $750mm+ in 2008, and on a permanent basis starting in 2009.

Client: $3 billion information management and storage company

Timeframe: 4 months

Client Need: Client identified changes in the healthcare and technology industries that would obsolete their current offerings, and lacked in-house expertise to develop a more robust healthcare strategy and product offering.

What We Did: HPA deployed a former strategy consultant (and MD) from McKinsey's Healthcare Practice. Working with the Client's internal strategy team, he led strategic evaluation efforts across a dozen different potential product/service offerings, ranging from rural to urban clients, storage, analytics, EMR, shared services and outsourced IT. He also led multiple analytical efforts, including 3rd party research, industry interviews, customer discussions, and build out of financial models and business cases.

The Result: Developed a targeted plan and product offering for the Client to re-address the healthcare market. HPA's strategic and operational experience is currently being leveraged during implementation, with expected roll-out in late 2011.

Client: Key regional division of the largest charity organization in the U.S.

Timeframe: 4 months

Client Need: The region was experiencing an increased need for effective social services due to economic downturn, shifting demographics, and erosion in private sector resources. This key non-profit organization needed assistance reviewing and optimizing their state's "safety net".

What We Did: HPA deployed a team of 5 consultants with extensive experience in the public and non-profit sectors to work closely with Client's internal team and over 100 regional business, community, and political leaders to evaluate the current state of the safety net, suggest a new and improved future state, define a new and appropriate role for the Client, and help the Client build stakeholder support.

The Result: The team was able to highlight the critical needs in a way that banded together leaders from multiple groups and generated joint support and funding for a wide scale effort to address these issues in 2011 and beyond. The client noted that the level of analysis, conclusions, stakeholdering, and ongoing support would have been impossible without HPA's involvement.

Client: $120 million third party service revenue (maintenance, support, subscription renewals) solutions provider

Timeframe: 4 months

Client Need: Company sales focus yielded 50% top line growth in 24 months, without requisite focus on costs. Company wanted to optimize operations on a scale and efficiency basis to drive bottom line growth.

What We Did: HPA deployed a senior operational and process improvement leader who has worked with dozens of mid-size to F500 industrial and technology companies. HPA resource led project to improve client profitability, both on a service line and overall basis. In conjunction with a dedicated client team, as well as the Client's COO and EVP of HR, focus was to:

• Identify and execute against an aggressive near term cost savings goal
• Establish an optimal financial / organizational framework
• Ensure that implementation and new structure did not impact existing service levels

The Result: Within 90 days, identified and developed plan to execute against $11 million in operating cost reductions, directly impacting bottom line. Implementation is currently ongoing and client should realize full impact of savings by end of 2011.

Client: $4 billion+ U.S. based wine & spirits company

Timeframe: 12 months

Client Need: The Chief Financial Officer of the client's $1.5 billion joint venture with a European competitor abruptly departed at a critical juncture in the organization's development.

What We Did: HPA quickly identified candidates with industry-specific experience that could step into the breach and keep this large venture running. Within three days, HPA provided three of its senior professionals who had food & beverage CFO experience at companies of similar size.

The Result: Within a week, the client was able to interview and personally meet with the HPA candidates and place one directly into the CFO role. He hit the ground running and was able to step right in without allowing the business to skip a beat. Additionally, within the first few months, he identified and addressed distributor, pricing and marketing issues that had not been resolved by previous management. The original term of 3 months was eventually extended by the client to 12 months as the HPA professional proved invaluable to the JV partners and was instrumental in leading the eventual JV dissolution between the companies.

Client: Industry-leading, non-profit client with 100+ years of service history in the New York area

Timeframe: 10 months

Client Need: The client realized the need for both a change in their service offering and an embracing of the technological advancements driving the new wave in the health care services industry, but needed direction on executing these changes.

What We Did: After a competitive process involving over a dozen firms, HPA was chosen to bring in a team with expertise in:

• Health care services
• Non-profits
• Financial and business venture modeling
• Industry-specific business development

HPA also provided an additional "advisory team" of on-call specialists, each with 20+ years of experience across areas as varied as home health care, telehealth, emergency services, and the like.

The Result: HPA helped the client structure a new venture planning process, vetted out new venture concepts with industry experts and detailed business modeling, and helped the organization prioritize its new business efforts for the coming years.

Client: $200 million retail health care services company

Timeframe: 6 months

Client Need: The client hit a growth plateau and identified a need for strategic and operational change.

What We Did: HPA installed an expert team consisting of professionals across:

• Healthcare
• Marketing
• Sales
• Operations
• Market research
• Organizational improvement

The team spent several months highlighting issues ranging from pricing and customer service to recruiting and internal operations based on a combination of patient surveys, doctor surveys, interviews with industry experts, and the team's experience and expertise to advise the client.

The Result: In the end, not only did the company adopt the HPA team recommendations, one of the HPA team members was brought on board as COO to help drive the execution. In the intervening 18 months since the project conclusion and hiring of our consultant as COO, as of 12/09, the client had experienced record profitability and revenue levels, despite a significant downturn in the economy and their industry.

Client: $2 billion wholesale food services company

Timeframe: 12 months

Client Need: The client was on the brink of its second bankruptcy, after emerging from bankruptcy only 24 months earlier. The client needed an immediate financial and operational turnaround, and contacted HPA after realizing that the firms it had already talked to were more "thinkers" than "doers".

What We Did: HPA provided a team of experts with wide-ranging skills. These HPA professionals were deployed across the client's European operations in England, Germany, Switzerland, Spain and Scandinavia to lead restructurings, consolidations and improvement efforts across manufacturing, internal operations, finance and real estate arenas.

The Result: Over the course of a year-long effort, HPA was able to drive millions of dollars to the client's bottom line on an annualized and permanent basis, setting the stage to allow its private equity owners to exit its investment at an attractive IRR, a scant 12 months after almost allowing the portfolio company to declare bankruptcy for a second time.

Client: $800 million media industry services provider

Timeframe: 4 months

Client Need: Client company needed strategic transition plan away from traditional offline service provision to newer digital and online offerings.

What We Did: HPA provided an individual HPA professional with expertise in strategic planning in the digital media arena, with both consulting (McKinsey) and industry (major studio digital division) experience. The HPA professional worked hand in hand with CEO to assess strategic options across acquisitions, new product development, and partnerships; the work culminated in a long term strategic plan for new business areas heretofore unaddressed by the company.

The Result: At conclusion of the engagement, the client exercised the option to hire the HPA professional as a full time executive of the company. The HPA Professional is also member of the management team, leading execution of their strategic market efforts.

Client: $5 billion enterprise communications systems provider

Timeframe: 3 months

Client Need: Client is an industry leader selling hardware and software products & services to an overlapping enterprise customer base. There was a lack of internal agreement on customer segments and lack of strategy or systems around product/service bundling, pricing, and sales efforts within the organization.

What We Did: HPA team led a wide-scale strategic analytics effort, encompassing a 5 year database of 700,000+ transactions to help drive client agreement and decision making around several key areas, including: a new customer segmentation model; individual product/service pricing optimization; offer bundling and requisite pricing optimization; and strategic plan to drive revenue and profitability lift across the organization based on pricing and bundling changes.

The Result: Completed in early 2009, the client successfully implemented HPA's recommendation and drove increases in sales across multiple metrics, including frequency, AOS, cross/up-sell, and the like, despite a downward shift in the overall market.

Client: $100 million online retailer of licensed team sports merchandise

Timeframe: 2 months

Client Need: Company runs numerous online stores for NFL and NCAA teams, and was getting squeezed by pressure from customers and bigger competitors.

What We Did: HPA team of 3 consultants with extensive supply chain, fulfillment and online sales experience in the branded apparel and merchandise arenas was deployed to help optimize pricing and go-to-market strategy for the company, as well as help management team prepare for upcoming licensing negotiations with key NCAA and NFL partners. Work also entailed a unique consumer survey to address long held industry beliefs about decision making, product selection, pricing, and fan loyalty.

The Result: HPA's work has become core component and tool of client's ongoing sales and marketing efforts with new teams, conferences, and leagues and yielded immediate dividends as the client was able to retain key partners whose contracts were up and looking to leave.

Client: Industry leading global cosmetics and skincare company

Timeframe: Efforts ranged from 5-12 months

Client Need: Client required additional management capacity to insure the "strategy to execution" process was optimally achieved. They also needed the consultants to be able to be able to work seamlessly with both the project teams and senior executive sponsors.

What We Did: HPA deployed multiple individuals to lead several efforts across the company, including implementation of corporate reorganization plan, testing and rollout of new retail initiatives, and pricing optimization work in Europe. HPA professionals were former McKinsey and Bain professionals with extensive operating experience in these areas; roles included:

• Chief of Staff for Global Head of Strategy, to lead reorganization and strategy work
• Management of PMO and bridge between corporate and 'line' roles to lead retail initiative work
• European based resource to focus on price optimization across product categories and brands (and, potentially, across geographies), pricing infrastructure implementation, and overall project management

The Result: Many of these efforts are still ongoing but early results are excellent and client continues to be impressed with both the quality and experience of HPA consultants and an advocate for the model of accessing top talent without the typical staffing leverage of traditional consulting firms.