Spero Consulting

For a small firm, Spero Con­sult­ing pro­vides a diverse set of con­sult­ing ser­vices to busi­nesses and orga­ni­za­tions of any size. We spe­cial­ize in cre­ative, prac­ti­cal, and rig­or­ous solu­tions to dif­fi­cult prob­lems in the fol­low­ing main areas:

• Decision-​making, Orga­ni­za­tional Con­trol & Strategy
• Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems, Web Site Design & Web-​Based MIS
• Val­u­a­tion, Risk Analy­sis & Modeling

Deci­sions, Orga­ni­za­tional Con­trol & Strategy

Orga­ni­za­tional con­trol is very broad. Sim­ply put, we help solve (or mit­i­gate) busi­ness prob­lems across a wide range of func­tional areas. That means:

1. Care­fully iden­ti­fy­ing prob­lems and deter­min­ing their often-​hidden, root causes;
2. Deter­min­ing the organization’s goal (and the asso­ci­ated deci­sion criterion);
3. Cre­atively iden­ti­fy­ing poten­tial solu­tion alternatives;
4. Rig­or­ously ana­lyz­ing fea­si­ble alter­na­tives, includ­ing esti­mat­ing rel­e­vant costs and ben­e­fits – both known and uncertain.
5. Thought­fully deter­min­ing the best solu­tion and implementation.
6. Ener­get­i­cally assist­ing with the implementation.

Suc­cess­ful imple­men­ta­tion often involves the design of effec­tive con­trol, incen­tive, and per­for­mance mea­sure­ment sys­tems and the design of infor­ma­tion and cost sys­tems. Your poli­cies and pro­ce­dures and mech­a­nisms need to be inte­grated and sup­port­ive to get the result that you want.

Deter­min­ing the best design involves pre­dict­ing how oth­ers – sub­or­di­nates, com­peti­tors, peers, whomever – will respond to dif­fer­ent incen­tives and infor­ma­tion sets. So, besides the abil­ity to think clearly, the most cru­cial – yet the most ignored – char­ac­ter­is­tic that you should seek in a con­sul­tant is empa­thy. The con­sul­tant needs to have the imag­i­na­tion to iden­tify with yours (and every­one else’s) plight.

Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems, Web Site Design & Web-​Based MIS

By pure hap­pen­stance, we design and build web sites, includ­ing on-​line stores.

We built our site and described its fea­tures and back-​office func­tion­al­ity to other busi­ness own­ers and man­agers. As it turns out, they want the same things: a site that is clean, beau­ti­ful, well-​organized and, most impor­tantly, both easy-​to-​self-​maintain and infor­ma­tive (for the owner or manager).

So, we design and devel­op­ment web sites for any size orga­ni­za­tion – both for the inter­net and for pri­vate intranets.

We design sites as con­tent man­age­ment sys­tems, and they can be edited and man­aged by any­one who has used a word pro­cess­ing pro­gram or sent an e-​mail. Finally, after years of promise, the ben­e­fits of infor­ma­tion tech­nol­ogy can be real­ized by small and mid-​sized firms – hey, maybe even large firms, too.

What is truly amaz­ing is that the same free, open-​source, web appli­ca­tions that make site main­te­nance a breeze are excel­lent plat­forms for inter­nal infor­ma­tion sys­tems – much cheaper and much more flex­i­ble than tra­di­tional sys­tems. Inex­pen­sive, yet very pow­er­ful and sophis­ti­cated. That’s why we no longer sim­ply advise on infor­ma­tion sys­tems, but we build them, too.

Val­u­a­tion, Risk Analy­sis & Modeling

We can value, ana­lyze, and model just about any­thing finan­cial: mar­ket and credit risk issues, includ­ing counter-​party credit risk; the design of risk mea­sures and hedg­ing strategies; the devel­op­ment of pric­ing and risk mod­els; and devel­op­ment of rou­tine or ad hoc , sta­tic or dynamic, and port­fo­lio or enterprise-​wide sce­nario analy­ses and stress tests.

We use our expert eco­nomic knowl­edge and math­e­mat­i­cal tech­ni­cal skills to develop sophis­ti­cated, yet practical, models. How­ever, we believe that the key to a suc­cess­ful engage­ment involves clear-​thinking, com­mon sense, and empa­thy. Thus, our motto “Thought before Calculation.” Just as impor­tantly, we know and com­mu­ni­cate the short­com­ings of every model that we develop.

Within this prac­tice, we are now empha­siz­ing inte­grated orga­ni­za­tional hedg­ing for non-​financial firms. By uti­liz­ing our exper­tise in the above fields we offer this new advi­sory ser­vice, par­tic­u­larly to indus­trial firms. Our focus goes beyond risk man­age­ment or risk mit­i­ga­tion to ask: how can one profit from the risky envi­ron­ment that they and their cus­tomers face?

We com­ple­ment our con­sult­ing ser­vices by pro­vid­ing cus­tomized train­ing sem­i­nars to groups as well as indi­vid­u­als, includ­ing con­fi­den­tial ses­sions for senior exec­u­tives inter­ested in dis­creetly build­ing his or her knowl­edge base.

Tal­ent Recruit­ment & Other Services

Small and medium-​sized (and even large busi­nesses) often do not have suf­fi­cient sub­ject mat­ter exper­tise to recruit the right top tal­ent. Firms can rely on recruit­ing firms, even spe­cial­ized recruit­ing firms, but many recruiters lack suf­fi­cient sub­ject mat­ter exper­tise to thor­oughly vet job can­di­dates. That’s where we can help in a vari­ety of fields, includ­ing account­ing, finance, strat­egy, mar­ket­ing, and infor­ma­tion systems.

Spero Con­sult­ing is majority-​owned by Jill E. Tay­lor, a woman. Jill con­sults on com­mu­ni­ca­tions, pub­lic rela­tions, and writing.

We also solve mar­ket­ing prob­lems because they are closely related our web design prac­tice and our pub­lic rela­tions practice.