ACS Business Partnering

Atlanta, GA

The Atlanta metropolitan area is the eighth-largest economy in the country and 17th-largest in the world. Corporate operations comprise a large portion of the Atlanta’s economy, with the city serving as the regional, national, or global headquarters for many corporations. Atlanta contains the country’s third largest concentration of Fortune 500 companies, and the city is the global headquarters of corporations such as The Coca-Cola Company, The Home Depot, Delta Air Lines, AT&T Mobility, UPS, and Newell-Rubbermaid. Over 75 percent of Fortune 1000 companies conduct business operations in the Atlanta metropolitan area, and the region hosts offices of about 1,250 multinational corporations. Many corporations are drawn to Atlanta on account of the city’s educated workforce; nearly 43% of adults in the city of Atlanta have college degrees, compared to 27% in the nation as a whole and 41% in Boston. Delta Air Lines, the city’s largest employer and the metro area’s third largest, operates the world’s largest airline hub at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport and has helped make Hartsfield-Jackson the world’s busiest airport, both in terms of passenger traffic and aircraft operations. Media is also an important aspect of Atlanta’s economy. The city is a major cable television programming center. Information technology, an economic sector that includes publishing, software development, entertainment and data processing has, garnered a larger percentage of Atlanta’s economic output. Indeed, Atlanta contains the fourth-largest concentration of information technology jobs in the United States.

Boston, MA

A global city, Boston is placed among the top 30 most economically powerful cities in the world. The Greater Boston metropolitan area has the sixth-largest economy in the country and 12th-largest in the world. Boston’s colleges and universities have a significant effect on the regional economy, with students contributing to the city’s economy. The area’s schools are major employers and attract industries to the city and surrounding region. The city is home to a number of technology companies and is a hub for biotechnology, with the Milken Institute rating Boston as the top life sciences cluster in the country. Boston receives the highest absolute amount of annual funding from the National Institutes of Health of all cities in the United States. The city is also considered highly innovative for a variety of reasons that include the presence of academia, access to venture capital, and the presence of many high-tech companies. Tourism comprises a large part of Boston’s economy, with 21.2 million domestic and international visitors each year. Because of Boston’s status as a state capital and the regional home of federal agencies, law and government are another major component of the city’s economy. The city is a major seaport along the United States’ East Coast and the oldest continuously operated industrial and fishing port in the Western Hemisphere. Other important industries are financial services, especially mutual funds and insurance. Boston-based Fidelity Investments helped popularize the mutual fund and has made Boston one of the top financial cities in the United States. The city is home to the headquarters of Santander Bank, and Boston is a center for venture capital firms. State Street Corporation, which specializes in asset management and custody services, is based in the city. Boston is a printing and publishing center – Houghton Mifflin is headquartered within the city, along with Bedford-St. Martin’s Press and Beacon Press. Pearson PLC publishing units also employ several hundred people in Boston. The city is home to three major convention centers – the Hynes Convention Center in the Back Bay, and the Seaport World Trade Center and Boston Convention and Exhibition Center on the South Boston waterfront.

Chicago, IL

Chicago has the third largest gross metropolitan product in the United States. The city has also been rated as having the most balanced economy in the United States, due to its high level of diversification. Chicago is a major world financial center, with the second largest central business district in the United States. The city is the headquarters of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago (the Seventh District of the Federal Reserve). The city and its surrounding metropolitan area are home to the second largest labor pool in the United States with approximately 4.25 million workers. In addition, the state of Illinois is home to 66 Fortune 1000 companies, including those in Chicago.

Consultancy

Management consulting, the practice of helping organizations to improve their performance, operates primarily through the analysis of existing organizational problems and the development of plans for improvement. Organizations may draw upon the services of management consultants for a number of reasons, including gaining external (and presumably objective) advice and access to the consultants’ specialized expertise. Consultancies may also provide organizational change-management assistance, development of coaching skills, process analysis, technology implementation, strategy development, or operational improvement services. Management consultants often bring their own proprietary methodologies or frameworks to guide the identification of problems and to serve as the basis for recommendations for more effective or efficient ways of performing work tasks. Management consulting has grown quickly, with growth rates of the industry exceeding 20% during the past 30 years. As a business service, consulting remains highly cyclical and linked to overall economic conditions. Currently, there are three main types of consulting firms. Large, diversified organizations, Medium-sized management consultancies and boutique firms that have focused areas of consulting expertise in specific industries, functional areas, technologies, or regions of the world. The value of the management & marketing consultancy market is calculated as the total revenues received for the provision of corporate strategy services, operations management services, information technology solutions, human resource management services and outsourcing services. The global management & marketing consultancy market has total revenues of $305.0bn, representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 3%. The operations management segment is the market’s most lucrative, with total revenues of $93bn, equivalent to 30.5% of the market’s overall value. The performance of the market is forecast to accelerate, with an anticipated CAGR of 7% during the next 5 years, which is expected to drive the market to a value of $427.9bn.

Consumer Goods

In economics, any commodity which is produced and subsequently consumed by the consumer, to satisfy its current wants or needs, is a consumer good or final good. Consumer goods are goods that are ultimately consumed rather than used in the production of another good. For example, a microwave oven or a bicycle which is sold to a consumer is a final good or consumer good, whereas the components which are sold to be used in those goods are called intermediate goods. For example, textiles or transistors which can be used to make some further goods. When used in measures of national income and output, the term “final goods” only includes new goods. For instance, the GDP excludes items counted in an earlier year to prevent double counting of production based on resales of the same item second and third hand. In this context the economic definition of goods includes what are commonly known as services. Manufactured goods are goods that have been processed in any way. As such, they are the opposite of raw materials, but include intermediate goods as well as final goods. Consumer goods are goods which are intended for everyday private consumption. They cover a large product portfolio including food and non-food categories in order to meet consumer demand. They are further classified in fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) and slow moving consumer goods (SMCG). The definitions are based on how fast products are sold to the customer, a determining factor in the rotation of goods. SMCG are goods with a useful life longer than a year comprising items such as household appliances, furniture and home improvement products. These items have a lower sales frequency and are not rotating as rapidly as FMCG. The competitive landscape of the consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry is shaped by global leading CPG companies such as US-based Procter & Gamble (P&G), Unilever, L’Oréal and Nestlé. Many companies invest large amounts of money for the development of new products in accordance with recent market trends and the latest research findings. As many manufacturers operate globally, product packaging and labeling regulations have to be fulfilled in order to meet the country-specific requirements. In addition, product formulas may have to be adapted to suit different consumer tastes.

Franchise

Franchising is the practice of selling the right to use a firm’s successful business model. Essentially, and in terms of distribution, the franchisor is a supplier who allows an operator, or a franchisee, to use the supplier’s trademark and distribute the supplier’s goods. In return, the operator pays the supplier a fee. Thirty three countries, including the United States, and Australia, have laws that explicitly regulate franchising, with the majority of all other countries having laws which have a direct or indirect impact on franchising. There are approximately 909,253 established franchised businesses, generating $880.9 billion of output and accounting for 8.1 percent of all private, non-farm jobs. This amounts to 11 million jobs, and 4.4 percent of all private sector output.