Since 2015, Calculated Hire (CH) has provided customized talent solutions to private and public organizations through staff augmentation, the design and implementation of professional services, and workforce transformation with our patented Elevate program. Even with the recent addition of Executive Search to our service offerings, Calculated Hire has mainly assisted our clients in finding niche resources and building teams for production and ongoing support. Although our history of providing talent solutions has helped us build strong relationships with Fortune 500 and Public Sector organizations alike, it has also identified some gaps in our services.
In addition to pillars focused on M&A, Risk Management, and Business Transformation, this new service line will also focus on ERP as a whole. Despite partnering with some of the top technology providers, a notable gap remained in our ability to provide high-level advisory support to clients, particularly during the initial planning and selection phases of new enterprise applications or business transformations. That all changed with the addition of Joe Laugherty, CH’s new Vice President of Advisory Services, another expansion of our traditional service offerings. In celebration of these new enhancements, we sat down with Joe to gain a deeper understanding of the unique skills he brings to the organization and the plans he has for this new service line.
Just as any enterprise considering a significant business transformation does, before Calculated Hire leaders launched the new Advisory Services service line, they sought the advice of an expert. It may sound cliché, but Calculated Hire really does take a relationship-focused approach in everything that we do. So, when it came to finding a proven expert in launching new markets and advisory services, Ross Kathman, Calculated Hire’s President, turned to an old friend and well-respected leader in the space. Ross and Joe have been friends since college, and their shared prominence in the professional services industry and Cincinnati-based associations has continued to nurture that relationship. At one point, Joe even invited Ross to work with him, unbeknownst to Joe, Ross was in the midst of launching his own company. Oddly enough, this company was Calculated Hire, and as time passed, it was Ross who would reach out to Joe with a job offer.
Background
20+ Years of Consulting & Advisory Services Experience Leading National Teams
500+ Successfull Engagements
Past Awards & Roles
Cincinnati Business Courier's 2022 Forty Under 40 Winner
Executive Committee Member, REDI Cincinnati
Executive Committee Member, Association for Corporate Growth (ACG) - Cincinnati
Former President, Insurance Accounting & Service Association (IASA) - Southwestern Ohio Chapter
Member, Financial Executives International (FEI)
“For several years, I have watched Ross grow Calculated Hire, and I have always admired the strong foundations [Calculated Hire] has built – both with its internal resources and its client partnerships. I know a lot of companies might say the same thing, but after speaking to a few of the leaders, as well as my own industry contacts, it was clear that [Calculated Hire] really put its beliefs into practice,” explained Joe. Besides Calculated Hire’s award-winning culture, Joe was most impressed by the organization’s ability to upskill its employees on the unique nuances of Advisory Services. In the same way that he has helped clients roadmap major initiatives and implement change management for over 20 years, Joe has spent his initial months with the organization building the Advisory Services segment from the ground up. As Joe puts it best, “We've got such a high ceiling, given the caliber of the people on our team and bench. At my current career stage, you don’t usually get a chance to build something new and have this much energy invested in it. That’s what gets me the most excited about this opportunity!” From providing mentorship to building out strategy and sales collateral, Joe has crafted the service line into his ideal version. The only question that remains is what this “ideal version” entails.
As a thought exercise, think of a core area of your business and the responsibilities of the department or team that owns it. Regardless of your industry, size, or specialization, the lifecycle of every project or process can be broken down into three main phases. At CH, we refer to these phases as “Plan, Build, and Run” for simplicity. Obviously, businesses and projects are unique, but typically, a company reaches out to providers like Calculated Hire for the specific support required for each phase. However, Calculated Hire has historically only specialized in the “Build” and “Run” phases. And although this arrangement has helped our clients successfully deliver and maintain enterprise-wide initiatives, it has also created a gap in our ability to deliver end-to-end solutions.
This posed an opportunity to expand our services. We consider ourselves true partners in our clients’ success and growth, regardless of the form it comes in. With the expansion of our service lines to include Advisory Services, Joe believes CH will be better equipped to assist our clients with some of the challenging issues they face during the initial “Plan” phase. “[CH] has done a great job of establishing trusting relationships with its clients, and that is a vital element of my approach to Advisory Services. Unlike most firms that attend the first meeting with a cookie-cutter playbook of pre-built solutions and industry assumptions, we take the time to build rapport with each client, understand their individual concerns, and develop a customized solution. You cannot do that without building a personal relationship first,” shared Joe. This emphasis on customizing solutions for each organization is part of the reason we have tailored our support to the traditional business roles that every business needs to thrive. Whether you need resources or support in Accounting and Finance, Marketing and Creative, Sales and Customer Experience, HR and Operations, or Governance, Risk, and Compliance, our services assist you where you need it most. This is a trait our clients have come to appreciate. It’s also why Joe was so intentional in developing a similar encompassing scope for Advisory Services.
Before you can enhance your business with a new process or asset, you need to first plan for things like “Which product will you choose?”, “How will you implement it?”, or even “What risks and benefits does this product’s implementation bring?”. This same methodology applies not only to Business Systems but also to Business Transformations, Integrated Risk Management, and Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A). With that in mind, it probably comes as no surprise that these areas are the exact specializations that our Advisory Services practice focuses on. And just like CH’s other service lines, our support is capable of fitting where you need it most. “What really sets us apart from other firms is that our solutions are so agnostic. Agnostic to one’s industry, the system or system integrator (SI) a company chooses, and even agnostic to your project methodology. Regardless of the level of ownership a client is looking for, we offer the strategy and methodology that will guarantee success,” highlighted Joe. This versatility also opens the door for co-sourced business processes and staff augmentation, two additional use cases for CH’s Advisory Services that expand past the “Plan” phase as illustrated in the graphic below.
In addition to flexibility, another prominent feature of Advisory Services, and a key factor in our client’s success, that Joe emphasized during our conversation, was CH’s ability to scale resources and solutions quickly. Or in Joe’s words, “Major transformations and the implementation of new technologies both inherently require access to the most in-demand skill sets on the market, and CH has a proven history of empowering its clients to engage scalable and niche resources.” When questioned about how CH’s traditional service offerings, such as Teams-as-a-Service (TaaS) or experience-driven staffing, played a role in Advisory Services, Joe shared an example illustrating how CH supports clients amid rising M&A activity, particularly with carve-outs. As organizations look to divest underperforming assets or business units, acquiring companies gain opportunities to expand their revenue streams. However, many are not equipped to efficiently integrate new entities or quickly establish supporting operations.
To address these challenges, Calculated Hire (CH) delivers both strategic guidance and tactical execution across Finance, HR, and Technology workstreams. These areas often face resource constraints due to competing priorities, so we’ve developed custom, scalable teams to manage cutovers and reporting. Additionally, we’ve provided Run-the-Business (RTB) support to ensure continuity of operations during transitions. Those familiar with CH’s core offerings might even highlight our Right-to-Hire model, which seamlessly enables clients to convert consultants into full-time employees upon completion of the engagement. Ensuring both operational continuity and successful knowledge transfer for our clients.
This use case, and many other similar scenarios requiring the quick scaling of niche resources, are the exact situations where partnering with an Advisory Services provider as versatile as Calculated Hire becomes so enticing. Calculated Hire has a proven history of building scalable teams and engaging niche resources. Now, thanks to the addition of Joe Laugherty and Advisory Services, we are well-equipped to deliver end-to-end solutions to our clients. Or, as Joe illustrates it best, “[Calculated Hire] has gotten comfortable playing the tactical role for its clients like managing underlying workstreams or addressing talent constraints, and now that we’ve paired that tactical support with strategic, high-level advisory, there’s no limit to the support we can provide!”