Latest news with #operationalexcellence
Associated Press
a day ago
- Business
- Associated Press
Salsbury & Co. Celebrates 10 Years of Empowering Small Businesses
06/19/2025, Vancouver, Washington // PRODIGY: Feature Story // Salsbury & Co. , founded by visionary April Salsbury, is proudly celebrating its 10-year milestone of helping small businesses across the country build strong operational foundations and sustainable growth strategies. What began as a solo consulting firm in a home office has evolved into one of the West Coast's most trusted names in small business consulting. Salsbury, who left her role as a healthcare executive to pursue her vision of operational excellence for small businesses, recalls the early days with clarity. 'I gave a six-month notice, started saving every penny, and launched the company the very next day after I left,' she said. 'The goal was simple: create a business where I could have flexibility, provide a fair wage, be a trusted voice in the business community, and empower other businesses to do the same through my consulting.' That founding principle, written down on a slip of paper in her home office, became the compass for what Salsbury & Co. is today: a full-service business consulting firm with three core departments: business bookkeeping, HR management, and medical billing services for integrated medicine, alongside its flagship business consulting services, business bookkeeping In its first year itself, the company grew fast, hiring its first employee six months in, as Salsbury recalls. But what truly sets it apart is not just its services but its commitment to full transparency and hands-on support. 'We are not a corporate overlord,' Salsbury explained. 'We work side by side with our clients, teaching them systems, integrating tools, writing policies, and ensuring they truly understand how to run their business day to day.' One of the firm's proudest moments came during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. While small businesses across the country shuttered, the company helped its clients pivot, adapt, and survive. 'We were already set up for remote work, and quickly became the go-to support system for companies needing help rewriting job descriptions, shifting to virtual operations, and handling compliance,' Salsbury shared. Today, Salsbury & Co. operates from its third and largest office space, and many of its team members have been with the company for over five years now, testament to a culture rooted in openness, collaboration, and continuous learning. 'Our staff feel heard. We do regular internships with students, and we prioritize building up the next generation of entrepreneurs. If we expect small businesses to thrive, we need to equip people early with the tools and confidence to lead,' the founder stated. Perhaps the most inspiring is the ripple effect of Salsbury & Co.'s work. 'I just wrapped a project with a client who not only became profitable in her first year, but she even made back every dollar she put into launching her business. And now, she's opening a second one,' says Salsbury. 'What drives us is seeing our clients succeed, expand, and gain the freedom they dreamed of when they started.' As the firm looks ahead, the focus is on agility, automation, and AI. Salsbury believes that organizations must evolve or risk being left behind. 'There's a real danger in thinking AI won't impact you. We're diving headfirst into exploring how automation can support small businesses, streamline operations, and increase competitiveness. We're helping clients adopt tools that give them time back, time to focus on what matters most.' The next chapter also includes a national expansion. While most clients are still based in California, Oregon, and Washington, Salsbury & Co. has recently taken on clients in Florida, Ohio, Texas, and Maine. 'We've hit a point where we're ready to scale,' she says. 'We could bring on a few hundred new clients tomorrow and be ready. The infrastructure is there. We're ready to become a nationwide resource.' Media Contact Name: Salsbury & Co. Email: [email protected] Source published by Submit Press Release >> Salsbury & Co. Celebrates 10 Years of Empowering Small Businesses
Forbes
6 days ago
- Business
- Forbes
Operational Excellence Is No Longer Optional For Family Offices
Pets might not have made it to become our trusted office assistants, but the agentic era will bring ... More new opportunities that will require us to relook operations. Each year, a growing number of industry reports compete for relevance by claiming to offer insight into the inner workings of family offices. This surge is understandable. The family office sector is rapidly growing but remains opaque, highly fragmented, and often misunderstood, and this makes credible data both rare and valuable. However, many of these reports fall short, both in their content and the sources for insights. Many reports rely on anecdotal evidence or small sample sizes that do little to move the conversation forward and create more noise than anything useful. Amongst all of this noise, a few sources stand out for their consistency and methodological rigour. Campden Wealth, one of the few independent research firms focused solely on the sector, has earned a reputation for producing some of the most trusted data in the space. Its long-running studies are complemented by proprietary surveys from other family office insight firms and global banks like Morgan Stanley, UBS, and Citi, which draw insights directly from their family office clients. Campden's latest collaboration with ALTi Tiedemann Global, the Family Office Operational Excellence Report 2025, continues this tradition. The new edition offers a detailed and wide-angled view of how family offices are evolving—not only in how they manage wealth, but in how they structure operations, approach talent, and define long-term purpose. When read alongside UBS's Global Family Office Report 2025 and Morgan Stanley's Future-Ready Family Office white paper, a unifying theme emerges. Operational excellence is no longer a background process. It has moved to the centre of strategy, becoming the foundation for long-term resilience and the defining feature of a future-ready family office. Across all three reports, one trend stands out. Family offices are shifting from a purely administrative or wealth-preserving role toward something far more intentional. According to Campden Wealth, areas such as governance, next-generation engagement, and family education have risen significantly in priority. Yet these are also the areas where family offices report the lowest satisfaction, suggesting a clear aspiration-performance gap. This theme is echoed in Morgan Stanley's report, which identifies the presence of a family mission statement as the single most important predictor of long-term success across generations. Family offices that help articulate and institutionalize a shared 'why' — and embed it into governance, communication, and investment strategy — are more likely to survive generational transitions with unity and clarity intact. These shifts mark a broader redefinition of the family office mandate. Offices are evolving from focusing on wealth protection to stewarding family legacy. This transition requires not only new services and capabilities but also new ways of thinking, business models and service delivery. The traditional family office model, heavily internal, staff-driven, and built for permanence, is being replaced by more agile hybrid structures. Campden's data shows that outsourcing has become mainstream, not just for compliance or IT, but for education, succession planning, and governance architecture. Morgan Stanley offers a practical lens on this shift. It encourages offices to regularly assess which capabilities are truly core, those that must remain in-house, and which are best delivered through trusted partnerships. Offices that intentionally design this delivery model around family needs, rather than legacy roles, are proving more resilient and scalable. What is emerging is a layered model of operations. Service partners, whether consultants, technology providers, or multi-disciplinary advisors, are playing a larger role in coordinating these layers. This helps ensure that the service delivery aligns with both strategic goals and operational demands. Despite the evolution of operating models and other structural changes, one often cited challenge seems to remain for family offices: talent acquisition and retention. According to Campden, recruiting and retaining the right people remains a top concern for many offices. UBS also highlights a steady increase in executive compensation, driven by intense competition for a dwindling pool of experienced professionals. Importantly, this issue is not limited to newer offices; even well-established, multigenerational family offices are under pressure to modernize outdated staffing models and reduce their overreliance on a few key individuals. However, this challenge is not unique to family offices. Across industries, roles are undergoing rapid transformation due to the continuead rise of artificial intelligence and automation. As Morgan Stanley highlights, the most progressive family offices are trying to adapt to this shift by designing talent strategies that are flexible and aligned with long-term vision. This includes succession planning not only at the family level but within the office itself — ensuring continuity as leadership roles evolve or transition. AI and outsourced talent are increasingly handling a variety of repeatable, transactional, and analytical tasks, such as portfolio reporting and compliance workflows. Gartner even highlighted this trend in their latest fintech hype curve, indicating that we are approaching the plateau of productivity for many of these technologies. This move allows human teams to focus on areas where human expertise is most valuable, including relationship-building, strategic planning, and managing complex family dynamics. Moving away from overly personalized, ad hoc structures is no longer optional. The offices that thrive in this new phase will be those that establish clear and adaptable roles, cultivate a culture of institutional memory, and utilize technology and partnerships to maximize the potential of small, high-impact teams. Ultimately, the family offices best positioned for the future are the ones that see talent not simply as employees, but as architects of continuity, innovation, and long-term relevance. Technology remains a persistent blind spot. Campden's findings paint a mixed picture. While digital transformation is widely accepted as essential, many offices continue to rely on fragmented systems and manual processes. UBS notes that only 8% of family offices currently use AI tools, yet over 40% plan to adopt them soon. Morgan Stanley offers concrete examples of AI in action, from portfolio reporting and deal evaluation to onboarding workflows and risk monitoring. These use cases are promising, but implementation is often hindered by a lack of foundational structure. Offices cannot simply plug in technology and expect transformation. Instead, digital tools need to be mapped to an operating model that already reflects strategic clarity. The sequencing matters. Without a clear architecture of governance, data, and accountability, even the most sophisticated tools underdeliver. But with those foundations in place, even modest automation can yield disproportionate returns. A significant shift across recent reports highlights how families are increasingly aligning their investments with their core values. There seems to definitely be an interest in values-aligned strategies, with the rising generation taking the lead on this trend. This is something that has been discussed a lot, but more in the context of sustainability. The reality is that values alignment is about more than sustainability and requires greater coherence between capital allocation and family identity. This evolution affects more than just the traditional notion of social responsibility. It starts with an investor or owner, defining their values and how these relate to the various spheres in their world - community, people, planet and beyond (for some). Investment strategies can now reflect these family values, serving as a tangible expression of their impact and role in the world. Offices that can help align these values with actual investment decisions are becoming essential strategic partners. In practical terms, this means embedding purpose into every aspect of the investment process—from deal sourcing and due diligence to structuring and impact measurement. It calls for new frameworks that extend beyond traditional returns to also consider legacy, risk tolerance, and community involvement. Taken together, the insights from Campden, UBS, and Morgan Stanley point to a deeper redefinition of operational excellence. No longer a static checklist of compliance or efficiency, excellence is becoming a dynamic capability — the ability to adapt, align, and deliver under changing conditions. True operational maturity means having a clear mission that informs every decision. It means building an office structure that is flexible, collaborative, and designed for longevity. It requires talent strategies that are forward-looking, not reactive. It means embedding technology that works with, not against, strategic clarity. And perhaps most critically, it involves anchoring financial decisions in a sense of purpose that transcends generations. The era of quiet competence in the back office is giving way to something more ambitious. Families are demanding more. Complexity is rising. And the expectations placed on family offices, both from within and beyond the family, are growing faster than ever. Operational excellence is no longer optional. It is the platform on which everything else depends.
Hospitality Net
13-06-2025
- Business
- Hospitality Net
Emmanuele Selvaggi has been promoted Hotel Manager at Rosewood London
Rosewood London has promoted Emmanuele Selvaggi to Hotel Manager, effective 16th June 2025. In this elevated role, Emmanuele will continue to drive the hotel's operational excellence and reinforce Rosewood London's position as the preferred luxury destination in London. Emmanuele brings over 18 years of distinguished experience in luxury hospitality to his new position. He began his career with Four Seasons Boston in the Rooms Division and successfully progressed through the ranks across multiple international locations including Geneva, Doha, Prague and London over 15 years with the prestigious brand. His tenue with Four Seasons culminated as Hotel Manager at Four Seasons Florence before returning to London in November 2021 to join Rosewood London. Since joining Rosewood London, Emmanuele has served as Director of Rooms, where he has been instrumental in driving exceptional results across the Rooms Division. Under his leadership, the Front Office team achieved the highest upselling revenue in 2024 since the hotel's opening. His analytical approach and creative vision have led to numerous successful guest initiatives, while his commitment to personal service has significantly improved the hotel's LQA scores and TrustYou ratings through increased use of guest recognition throughout the property. Emmanuele is recognised for his exceptional leadership style, characterised by hands-on management and leading by example. His ability to build and develop high-performing teams, combined with his dedication to delivering memorable and seamless guest experiences, perfectly embodies Rosewood's philosophy of Relationship Hospitality.
Associated Press
11-06-2025
- Business
- Associated Press
Persistence Management Holdings Acquires CultureWise to Drive Human-Centric, High-Performance Company Growth
Acquisition marks a pivotal step to help companies build world-class cultures, drive continuous improvement, and achieve operational excellence. 'This acquisition is more than just a transaction – it's an acceleration of our shared vision.'— David Friedman, Founder of CultureWise CONCORD, MA, UNITED STATES, June 11, 2025 / / -- Persistence Management Holdings (PMH) announced today the acquisition of CultureWise, the organization behind the Culture By Design system created by David Friedman. This acquisition marks a pivotal step in PMH's mission to help companies build world-class cultures, drive continuous improvement, and achieve operational excellence. Following the acquisition, CultureWise will continue to operate as an independent entity within the PMH structure, alongside the consulting firm Persistently. Together, these businesses lay the foundation for PMH's growing portfolio dedicated to fostering human-centric companies that prioritize collaboration, exceptional service, and customer-driven innovation. David Friedman, Founder of CultureWise, will remain with the company to promote and teach the Culture By Design methodology. 'This acquisition is more than just a transaction – it's an acceleration of our shared vision,' said Friedman. 'The PMH team fully embraces what we believe: that culture is the engine of performance. I'm excited to collaborate with Persistence Management to expand our reach and deepen our impact.' Persistence Management Holdings was established to create and support companies that continuously evolve through operational excellence and a commitment to human-centered practices. Some PMH companies, such as CultureWise and Persistently, are dedicated to guiding other organizations through this transformational journey, while others will serve as models of internal excellence. 'CultureWise has set the standard for institutionalizing and sustaining high-performing cultures,' said Erik Waters, Co-Founder of PMH. 'By bringing them into the PMH family, we are furthering our goal to create a network of companies that operate with clarity, excellence, and humanity.' About CultureWise CultureWise helps organizations cultivate high-performance cultures through a structured, actionable system. Founded by David Friedman, author of Culture By Design, the company has empowered hundreds of organizations across various industries to create intentional, resilient cultures. As part of the acquisition, Alex Hill, PMH's current executive, will serve as President of CultureWise, overseeing its day-to-day operations, while Dustin Campbell, PMH Co-Founder, will lead strategic initiatives as Executive Chair. About Persistently With CultureWise leading the cultural development for PMH clients, Persistently will focus on enhancing organizations' managerial, operational, and strategic capabilities. Both companies share a foundational commitment to continuous improvement, now providing a comprehensive set of solutions for middle-market and growth company leaders addressing their most pressing challenges. About Persistence Management Holdings Persistence Management Holdings is a holding company focused on supporting, building, and backing organizations that recognize the power of extraordinary cultures in driving exceptional operations. PMH invests in companies that understand that culture is a key differentiator in today's competitive landscape. Kristen Saponaro CultureWise, LLC +1 202.255.8284 email us here Visit us on social media: LinkedIn Legal Disclaimer: EIN Presswire provides this news content 'as is' without warranty of any kind. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information contained in this article. If you have any complaints or copyright issues related to this article, kindly contact the author above.
Entrepreneur
26-05-2025
- Business
- Entrepreneur
This Hidden Retail Tech Is Transforming Customer Experiences
A new class of operational technologies is quietly transforming how retailers engage customers — by empowering the people and processes behind the scenes. Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. In retail, the concept of customer experience (CX) is typically framed through a consumer-facing lens — think loyalty apps, curbside pickup or influencer-driven TikTok campaigns. But the real transformation of CX in the post-pandemic era isn't happening in apps or ads. It's happening in the unglamorous trenches of store operations — through workforce tools, communications systems and intelligent infrastructure that the average customer may never even notice. What's emerging is a new truth: The future of CX is operational. And the companies quietly reshaping it aren't your usual suspects. Related: The 6 Essential In-Store Experiences That Your Customers Want to See From flashy to functional In the early 2010s, retail tech was dominated by bold digital concepts designed to "surprise and delight" the shopper. Magic mirrors. Augmented reality. Endless aisle touchscreens. Most of these either flopped or became museum pieces in a few flagship stores. They failed not because they were uncreative, but because they were disconnected — from operations, from employees and from the shopper's actual intent. What today's most innovative retail technologies have in common is subtlety. They don't shout for attention; they support it. They equip frontline teams with faster information, they adapt to real-world constraints like store layouts and staffing realities, and they improve performance metrics that most shoppers will never ask about but always feel. Let's take a closer look at how this shift is playing out. 1. The rise of retail communications infrastructure A shopper enters a store with a question — say, whether a jacket is available in another size. A decade ago, the employee might leave the customer waiting while they "go check in the back," perhaps never to return. Today, with voice-controlled mobile communication tools, that same employee can instantly ping the stockroom team without taking a single step away. Within seconds, the customer has their answer. What this technology enables is more than a productivity boost. It's a moment of trust. A micro-interaction where a shopper feels heard, respected and helped — without the friction that defines so many in-store experiences. It's frontline enablement as CX, and it's catching on fast. And while tools like these improve person-to-person communication on the floor, other solutions focus on the digital touchpoints customers encounter throughout the store — promotional screens, endcap displays and in-aisle messaging. These systems help major retailers manage these assets across thousands of locations, keeping content synchronized, compliant and up to date as campaigns change. When the system is working, the store feels intuitive: Offers make sense, signage matches what's on the shelf, and the experience runs smoothly. When it's not, shoppers may not pinpoint the problem, but they notice the friction — and it quietly erodes confidence in the brand. Related: How Technology is Improving Retail Business 2. The shopper sees the surface. Operations define the substance. There's a certain irony in modern retail: The more seamless an experience feels, the more operational complexity is likely happening behind the scenes. You can't staff a store like it's 2015 and expect to win on experience in 2025. Yet, that's still the reality for many brands struggling with turnover, outdated scheduling systems and lack of execution. This is where workforce optimization solutions play a crucial role — providing the workforce intelligence and operational backbone that modern retailers need to keep stores running efficiently. By forecasting demand more accurately, aligning staffing to actual foot traffic and helping managers execute daily tasks without the usual chaos, they're helping retailers deliver on the promises their ads make. And perhaps more importantly, they're restoring sanity to the employee experience — a deeply overlooked component of CX. After all, burned-out workers don't deliver exceptional service. They follow the script, if you're lucky. But a team that's well-staffed, well-informed and empowered? That's the secret sauce behind any successful in-store experience. 3. Infrastructure that moves with the customer Retail environments have always been built for stability — fixed shelves, anchored signage, permanent displays. But shoppers are increasingly fluid. Planograms shift monthly. Promotions change weekly. And in pop-up or seasonal formats, store layouts are reinvented overnight. Traditional digital signage — especially fixed, hardwired displays — can be limiting in dynamic environments. As store layouts shift or temporary formats emerge, retailers increasingly need solutions that can move and adapt just as quickly. That's where innovative portable display technologies are shifting the paradigm. These battery-powered, cordless solutions are purpose-built for agility. No cords. No construction. No waiting weeks for installation. What this enables isn't just convenience — it's responsiveness. A retailer can reposition signage based on observed foot traffic patterns, launch a flash sale at a specific display or bring product education directly to the point of decision — all without waiting for IT tickets to clear or maintenance crews to arrive. It's a subtle but powerful idea: making digital signage behave more like merchandise. It moves. It adapts. It responds. Related: How to Write an Operations Plan for Retail and Sales Businesses 4. Why this shift matters now We're entering an era where the margin between customer loyalty and abandonment is razor-thin. Shoppers don't give second chances the way they used to. If an in-store experience feels disjointed, slow or inattentive, they go elsewhere — or back online. At the same time, retail teams are being asked to do more with less. Labor shortages. Shrinking budgets. Rising expectations. There's no room for bloated tech that dazzles but doesn't deliver. That's why the "silent revolution" matters. These operational technologies aren't designed just to dazzle; they're built to remove friction. Some may look impressive, even attention-grabbing, but their real value is in how seamlessly they empower employees, streamline execution and support smarter customer interactions. In the end, the best customer experience isn't one shoppers post about; it's one they don't have to think about. The store just works. And more and more, it's the technology behind the scenes — well-placed screens, real-time communication, smarter staffing — that makes that kind of experience possible.
