ANTIVA Professional Services
The "Lean Thinking" and "Agile" business consultancy and home to the Agile Listening Project
Services
What We Do
Whether Antiva is asked to assist companies to grow profitability, undertake a Business Transformation or assist organisations to deliver value to their clients, it uses the same set of tools to deliver a successful result.
Success always starts with developing a sound strategy , and yet so many businesses and organisations we are asked to work with fail to produce a map for the future. In many cases, where they have articulated a strategic plan, then they do not have the skills to implement change and deliver the objectives.
Quite simply, Antiva works with your executives and staff to build a sound strategic plan and produce a programme that will deliver your goals. The Antiva Consultant will mentor your management and encourage team work, and in many cases there will be a requirement to develop a business plan to submit to investors or banks to obtain additional working capital or in the case of business recovery, a sound plan to set before the creditors.
Underpinning all the work Antiva does is the culture of Lean / Agile Thinking, which ensures that all elements of the value chain work together and not in silos, whether they are part of the organisation, a supplier or a client, ultimately eliminating wasteful processes, reducing cost and providing products and services based on Customer Value.
Based on years of experience in building a strategy that embraces Lean Thinking, Antiva has typically helped companies reduce inventory by over 50%, cut production times by a similar amount, reduced lead times to customers by 65% and reduced quality issues by 90%. All this frees up working capital, reduces cost of sales, ties in customers and most importantly to many embraces a work culture where everybody enjoys themselves because of the team work ethic.
Strategic Planning
An Antiva consultant will guide the executive team through a two day strategic planning workshop, the output being a sound credible road map, realistic objectives and a list of activities (projects) which are prioritised into a programme. The consultant will usually require 5 days preparation with individual members of the executive to ensure that they pull together the requisite items. For more details of the workshop content - Click here
Programme & Project Management and Change Management
All our programme and project managers have been trained in Prince2, Managing Successful Programmes and Agile methodologies. Versions of these are not just used in IT developments but used to implement other types of projects ensuring a much higher success rate. Indeed our principal consultant Andrew Jones was involved in the development of Prompt the forerunner of Prince and Prince2. Over the last five years more and more of our clients have asked that we adopt an Agile approach in systems and App developments and all out team members have experience in this methodology.
Change Management is just as important as Programme and Project Management. Change can only be successful if owned by the people it impacts. Antiva works with all stakeholders to ensure that they feel that the changes really benefit them and the value chain.
Business Turnaround / Rescue / Transformation
Since 2000, Antiva has managed the turnaround or rescue of many businesses examples of which can be seen on the Projects Page.
In nearly all instances the approach has been made by either VC or Private Equity Funds concerned at losing their investments, banks with clients in default of the loan covenants or Insolvency Practitioners looking to see if the business is sustainable through administration and able to meet creditor demands.
Apart from the business management skills required to turnaround/rescue the company involved, Antiva provides a full valuation service and draws up business and financial plans to present to creditors if required. The identification of value is important as quite often even the company being rescued has not been able to percieive value within their own business. A typical example was the turnaround of a software and chip design company who had not envisaged the use of their software in the Film Animation market, where a licence for the software came to the equivalent of one hundred standard licence sales.
Antiva consultants have a vast international network of contacts who can be contacted with regards to sales and marketing opportunities or indeed the sale of the whole or elements of the business.
System Design and Off-Shore Application Developments
As part of any strategic plan for a business, systems development has become key to successful management and within a lean value chain essential for passing information between each participant in the chain and monitoring key objectives and values in real-time. The development of the "App" has provided an incredible improvement in communication between the business, supplier and customers, often tieing customers in when before they client always shopped around on the basis of price.
Antiva can provide a full IT Strategic Planning service including the identification and procurement of ERP Modules, CRM, Knowledge Management and Big Data solutions and the development of Apps from respected and tried and tested off-shore development and system management companies.
Over the last few years Antiva has been working with Accely and Brainvire, two companies based in India which provide a full IT implementation and development services employing the latest technologies to ensure companies get the greatest value from their IT investment.
Once the IT solution has been designed (in some cases developed) and implemented Accely and Brainvire can provide Cloud based environments to best suit the business in terms of functionality and cost.
Read more about Accely and Brainvire in the Partners section.
IT Dispute Resolution
Information Technology is such an important component to delivering strategic objectives and yet often Antiva has found that a clear IT Strategy has not been defined. When it comes to upgrading the technology companies often do not have the skills to articulate what they want or know what is available. This inevitably leads to disputes with IT Suppliers who have struggled to understand what a company needs and ultimately delivers an inappropriate solution.
When this arises a dispute between the organisation procuring the systems and the supplier can lead to a stalement and often brings business to a standstill costing many thousands, and in some cases we have seen millions.
So Antiva offer two services to organisations. They can assist in developing an IT strategy and proper Statements of Requirements that will prevent disputes and deliver what is required, but, if its too late and you are in dispute we can help resolve the issues between the two parties and resolve to get what is required.
Antiva has saved organisations from despair many times and the outcome has been a staisfied client and satisfied supplier.
Practice Areas
Since 1999, Antiva has assisted many types of businesses, not-for-profit organisations and government departments build sound strategic plans and deliver their objectives through sound project management methodologies.
Many of the consulting activities have been international, especially in Africa, where Antiva through Standard Bank has provided consulting on business recovery, corporate and retail banking consulting on credit risk management, M&A of two banks in Nigeria and Kenya, as well as asssisting in the development of a new PMO after many years of high project failure. Standard Bank also recommended us to the SA Government where we assisted in projects with Home Affairs and also brought us in to assist in the turnaround of a union owned Insurance Company who's image had been severely tarnished by poor service delivery and failure to comply with Financial Services Authorities regulations.
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Manufacturing
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Logistics
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Marketing & Communications
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Banking & Insurance Services
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e-Trading Platforms
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Government Departments
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FMCG Companies
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Energy & Renewables
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Resources & Infrastructure
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Banking the Unbanked in emerging markets