Background
Clearwater Advantage was founded by Alasdair Mackay as a different approach to supporting growing businesses. After a career as a professional engineer with a focus on operations and management, initially in the MOD and more recently in industry and consultancy, he has direct experience of what makes a business grow – from the high level vision and strategy to the close-in detail of process improvement needed to deliver results and shareholder value and from cross-department cooperation to real partnership with customers and suppliers. He has worked in and supported major multi-national businesses and SMEs: some growing successfully, some wanting to grow more and some going through a turnaround from decline back into growth. He is inspired by SMEs that are ambitious and have something different to offer and enthusiastic about bringing innovation into businesses that are willing to step up a level.
His experience covers core management and strategy roles as well as technical operations, product development, process improvement, supply chain management and key customer relations; always underpinned by a passion for technology and its application to real world problems. Clearwater Advantage aims to bring this experience to bear in supporting high-energy, high-potential, ambitious businesses as they take on the challenges of increased scale and complexity that growth brings.
Innovation, a spirit of challenging the status quo and a sense of adventure are at the heart of everything we do.
Approach
As a business grows there are many sources of external support available, from Government sponsored advisors and Chambers of Commerce to business coaches and outsourcing consultants. The focus tends to be on removing the external barriers to growth by providing access to funding and new markets or by providing specialist advice in areas such as HR, finance and supply chain that take on a higher profile as a business grows and consume more of business leaders’ time. At Clearwater Advantage we believe that removing these barriers is necessary to enable growth, but not sufficient. Our focus is on driving growth from within a business so that the opportunities created by removing barriers are exploited quickly, effectively and sustainably. We build a growth model for each client based on 3 core areas:
