BEST CLIENT SERVICE 2019

Winner: The Barton Partnership

The judges asked what would great client service look like, and The Barton Partnership fitted the bill, along with demonstrating strong financial performance and growth.

The Barton Partnership is a niche consultancy providing permanent recruitment and independent consulting support on an interim basis within the strategy, transformation & change and M&A arenas in London, New York, and across Europe and Asia.

• Examples of excellent value-add for clients include organising and hosting a strategy/transformation/M&A conference for the third year running, attended by 200 organisations from the strategy and transformation sector; hosting regular roundtables with senior strategy leaders; and launching Hourly Consulting, a portal connecting contractors with clients for when a subject matter expert is needed for a number of hours rather than days.
• An example of the outstanding client service was for a client who was using a multi-agency approach and experienced a lack of quality delivery before Barton stepped in. As a result of Barton’s service, the company substantially scaled back the number of agencies it engaged and dramatically improved its time-to-hire at senior level.
• The results have led to a 53% increase in year-on-year turnover, a 26% YOY increase in profit and a 67% increase in headcount. As a result of the ongoing financial growth, Barton was able to acquire The Shackleton Group in Singapore, as well as open physical offices in New York and Paris.
• Barton established a standalone division that takes on consultancy projects through an in-house team of consultants. Through this division, 85% of clients have returned within 12 months for help with another project.

Judges’ comments: “The Barton Partnership demonstrated more than any other some great examples of innovative practices designed to improve service. They showed plenty of signs of moving the image of the recruitment consultancy forward with its service offering.”

SHORTLIST:

• ASAP Pertemps
• BOWER Talent
• Bramwith Consulting
• Class People
• Darwin Recruitment
• fdu
• ISE Partners
• Kite Human Capital
• Net Talent
• Trust in Soda