How we help you
Wipfli’s business strategy consulting services help you create an actionable, agile strategy that’s capable of holding up to the constant disruption organizations face today.
Know the obstacles limiting your performance and how to overcome them.
Develop and implement an effective strategic plan that keeps your organization agile.
Plan for the technology investments that deliver real value.
Execute your strategic plan and keep your organization aligned.
Guidance from vision to execution
When day-to-day demands make it difficult to focus on the future, our strategy consulting services help you step back and establish a clear direction forward. We offer end-to-end support to create a shared vision for your organization’s future and turn strategic priorities into measurable results.
Explore our services
Wipfli’s dedicated advisors focus on helping your organization identify its strategic priorities and develop actionable plans grounded in real data and organizational realities. Using a tailored methodology aligned to your unique needs, we help create strategies that are both practical and positioned for long-term success.
Data-informed approach
Wipfli’s business strategy consulting services go beyond facilitating planning sessions. We work closely with your organization to gather and analyze data to understand the factors affecting your performance.
We offer:
- Future forces and scenario planning leveraging innovative technology.
- Custom survey administration.
- Stakeholder or community needs assessments.
Three levels of strategy support
Our strategic planning services offer your organization three levels of support:
- Transactional planning: Sustain your performance by finding new ways to increase efficiency, eliminate waste and improve how you use your assets.
- Forecasted transformational planning: We analyze your performance and compare it to shifts in your organization to better understand the gaps you need to address. From there, we help you develop a plan to meet your organization’s future needs, including organizational, process and infrastructure improvements.
- Revolutionary transformational planning: We help you redefine and regenerate your organization’s advantage. Whether you need new lines of business or delivery models, we can help you innovate and transform your organization to better suit your vision of the future.
Wipfli’s services don’t stop at a paper plan. After helping you define your vision and strategic priorities, we navigate the barriers, complexities and opportunities that arise during execution.
Our strategy support services include:
- Implementation: We align your people, technology, culture and operations to help move your strategy from concept to execution and support successful adoption across your organization.
- Financial sustainability and revenue diversification: We help you evaluate funding models, identify opportunities to diversify revenue streams and implement strategies that support long-term financial sustainability.
- Experience mapping: Our customer, member and technology mapping services help you understand your strategy through the lens of those you serve.
- Implementation risk management: We help you identify and mitigate the risks associated with your strategic initiatives, so that you can act with confidence.
Wipfli’s digital advisory team applies holistic ideation and planning to help your organization transform with technology. We work closely with you to understand and accelerate your vision with the right technology strategy. Whether you’re looking to reinvent your organization, integrate AI with your business model or have a road map for incremental improvement, our seasoned practitioners help ensure that every area of your organization receives targeted guidance.
Our digital strategy consulting helps you use technology to bring your vision to life through four essential components:
- Planning and ideation: Through collaborative conversations, such as Design Thinking workshops, our advisors help you envision what your organization can become and craft a strategy to achieve your goals.
- Technology initiative assessment and readiness benchmarking: Our team helps you blend technology with your mission and vision, guiding you through the software selection process so that you can maximize your ROI.
- CIO advisory: We provide interim, partial, consultative and mentoring services for the CIO role to help shape your organization’s digital strategy at the executive level. Our range of services can be tailored to your level of need, whether you want situation-specific guidance, fractional resources to augment your team or coaching to help your leadership reach their full potential.
- Program management: Wipfli specializes in orchestrating multiple technology initiatives, combining both internal and external resources to achieve strategic business outcomes. Our services start by assessing your current practices and providing you with actionable recommendations for improvements. We then help you build a robust program management office tailored to your needs and coordinate multiple projects within your program.
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AI in senior living: How organizations can use AI to scale smarter
AI is changing how businesses and organizations operate across sectors — and healthcare is no different. But while senior living leaders are curious about AI’s potential, many are unsure of how to convert that promise into meaningful results in areas like medication management, EHR analytics, personalized care and an all-around better experience for residents. However, the biggest roadblock here is often not technology, but mindset. Keep reading to learn more about how to solve that, plus more effectively implement AI within your senior living organization. What’s stopping senior living organizations from embracing AI? Faced with challenges like rising costs and Medicaid cuts that are already taking effect, many senior living organizations could benefit from finding efficiencies through AI. But this has proven easier said than done, in part because embracing AI demands a mindset shift. AI is a change management problem While integrating AI into your senior living organization does require implementing new tools and upskilling your team, it’s also largely an exercise in change management. Your team is used to operating one way, which can make building and sustaining the momentum you need to rebuild your systems or processes to take advantage of AI or automation tools feel a little bit like pushing a boulder up a hill. According to a survey of Wipfli clients, 91% of businesses or organizations report that non-technical obstacles are the biggest blockers to better leveraging new technologies like AI. Meanwhile, only 19% of executives actually feel comfortable leading an AI-transformation effort. In other words, because AI is still such a new and rapidly developing technology, organizations and leaders don’t feel comfortable with it. And that discomfort can make it harder to create results. Haphazard AI use can actually slow adoption and create chaos Is your senior living organization currently using AI? If your first instinct is to answer no, there’s a very good chance you’re wrong, because some of your individual team members are almost certainly using AI tools, regardless of whether they have buy-in from leadership. However, this risks creating a wild west scenario, where AI gets implemented piecemeal or haphazardly and without any overarching AI strategy. In this situation, you won’t have any governance standards, policies or processes to help ensure consistency, and can even risk HIPAA violations by exposing PHI to AI tools that don’t meet compliance requirements. Plus, such haphazard efforts will often flounder, blunting momentum for a more organized AI implementation plan. How should senior living organizations more effectively leverage AI? For senior living leaders looking to develop an effective, organization-wide approach to AI, the process matters. Specifically, you want to determine where you want to go, how you’re going to get there and what tools you’ll need to succeed. 1. Establish direction by identifying specific problems you want to solve A good AI strategy doesn’t mean buying your team a ChatGPT Pro subscription. Instead, identify specific problems within your organization where AI could make a difference. For example, if your organization is struggling to find skilled healthcare workers to fill key roles, consider whether AI could allow you to deploy your existing team more effectively by automating certain lower-level tasks so your staff can focus on more patient-centric work. Or can AI analyze data from your EHR to identify patient health trends you can use to improve care? Here, it can be good to lean on an advisory firm to help assess your current systems and processes and find gaps that AI could fill. You can also do this entirely in-house, so long as you keep the focus on looking for problems to solve. 2. Design your AI implementation strategy Once you’ve found problems that AI could help solve, you need to build a framework for implementation. This means designing an organization-wide AI strategy to help put new solutions into place. This includes laying out specific steps in the implementation process, identifying leaders or change champions to actually spearhead the rollout and establishing KPIs. It’s also essential to evaluate your existing data sources and prepare them for use by AI tools, a process that can include establishing a centralized data repository or warehouse. During this effort, you’ll need to consistently communicate with your whole team about why change is happening here and how they can help, as well as consider what training or upskilling opportunities you’ll need to provide. 3. Deliver by implementing specific tools that fit your strategy At this point, you can start implementing AI tools to solve the specific organizational problems you’ve chosen to target. However, this isn’t just a one-and-done event, but an ongoing process that involves both choosing the right tools and embracing the human, change management side of the equation. Your advisor can help you decide which AI solutions make sense for your needs, as the market has brought forth a dizzying array of options. Within your organization, communication remains essential, as you need to not just establish momentum, but maintain it. How can leaders prepare to oversee an organizational AI strategy? An effective AI strategy typically starts at the top, with commitment from leadership. So how should leaders prepare to oversee this effort with an eye towards more effective change management? Here are key leadership pillars to consider: Self-awareness: Before you ask your team to change by implementing AI, are you prepared to do the same? AI literacy: Your leadership team and organization need a shared understanding of what AI actually is and how you’ll be using it. Change leadership: Don’t just throw change at your team, but implement thoughtfully through planning, clear communication and celebrating wins or milestones. Effective use of resources: Throughout your AI implementation process, consider what work is being done, who will perform it, when it should happen and why it matters. Coaching and upskilling: Create training or coaching opportunities for your whole team to adapt to the changes within your organization. Read more Maximize new tax strategies for senior living providers 5 strategic planning imperatives for senior living organizations Embracing change in senior living: The path to innovation and growth
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FAQ
Business strategy consulting primarily helps organizations identify their desired future state and develop a plan to achieve it. A strategy consultant should help leadership gain an objective perspective on an organization’s priorities and the critical gaps that need to be addressed.
Business strategy consulting includes strategic planning and the related support organizations need to plan effectively, including performance analysis, organizational alignment, priority identification and stakeholder engagement.
It can also help leaders answer critical questions, such as:
- What opportunities might we be overlooking?
- What challenges have similar organizations faced that we can learn from?
- What industry trends should we be preparing for now?
The main benefit of business strategy consulting is that it helps leadership gain clarity around a future vision for their organization. When all teams have a shared understanding of the organization’s future, it’s easier to:
- Accelerate progress towards goals: Alignment means teams aren’t limited by working with competing priorities and directionless decision-making.
- Focus resources: A defined strategy means leaders can confidently invest time, people and resources in the initiatives that can make the greatest impact.
- Improve performance: Strategic clarity helps staff connect their work to organizational goals, leading to improved execution and outcomes.
- Maintain accountability: Clarity around ownership and expectations makes it easier to track progress and hold teams accountable.
- Manage more profitable, sustainable advancement: Growth strategy consulting helps organizations make intentional decisions that support long-term growth.
Yes, Wipfli provides end-to-end services that can help you both define and execute your strategy.
Our strategic planning and corporate strategy consulting services focus on developing strategies that are aligned with your goals and providing continuous support that turns those plans into action. Because strategy is an ongoing process, we can also help you evaluate progress and adapt plans as conditions change so your organization stays focused on achieving its objectives.
Leaders often hire business strategy consultants during scenarios including:
- When they are struggling to identify and overcome challenges to growth.
- When they are preparing the organization for significant change.
- When there is misalignment around priorities, or the organization lacks a clear future direction.
- When an organization needs to adapt to evolving industry, regulatory or market conditions.
- When leadership needs an objective perspective on opportunities and performance gaps.
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We’re ready to provide you with the practical strategies and hands-on implementation support you need to transform your organization’s trajectory.
