Liqueo – Why we are Different

By Andy Proud, Founding Director of Liqueo

liqueo
liqueo, liquere, licui
verb be clear to a person; be evident; be transparent

Who is this article aimed at?

This article is relevant to any person in the Asset & Wealth Management domain. You could be a consultant looking for a change from your current employer. You might be an employee of an existing client Liqueo is engaged with. You could be a potential new client considering engaging a consultancy to assist with BAU or a programme of change. Whichever you are, you’ll want to read on…

Who we are and why we are different.

To stand out in a competitive marketplace, every business needs to offer something different. But where every Asset and Wealth Management Company aims for a unique selling point, at Liqueo we represent a completely distinct approach.

People make the difference. Knowledge is our product

At Liqueo, we realised early in our genesis that people are core to our company and knowledge is our product. These two pillars are what set us apart. Many of our key decisions and much of the culture at Liqueo stems from this point.

It’s not about quantity of time spent consulting or number of consultants on the ground, it’s about the quality of the expertise a client benefits from. Ultimately it is the knowledge and experience of the consultant that the client desires. Clients want knowledgeable, experienced consultants, either to deliver tasks, impart their knowledge, or both.
For these reasons, we’ve taken some crucial steps to differentiate our offering.

1. Permanent Employees with a desire to join our journey

   Our business is built on our ever growing permanently employed team. “Reselling” expertise through a contractor or “Associate” workforce is not our business model. Our model is to build a strong team of  people who are equally invested in our core values and our journey.

   That’s not to say that time spent contracting has no value. I personally have 25 years of contracting experience prior to forming Liqueo. I picked up an immense amount of knowledge. I’ve used that in each role I’ve taken and that knowledge only helped me grow. But while I worked for some fantastic agencies as a contractor, I was never obliged or even encouraged to use that knowledge to help others within the organisation expand. I was independent. As were all of the vast army of contractors in the City.

   At Liqueo, we attract people who have a desire to share their experience and to receive knowledge from others. We encourage collaboration. We knit together the experience of all our employees to enable the delivery of much larger source of information to our clients.

2. Job Specs not required 

   As a contractor or Project Manager whether recruiting or applying for roles, I saw many Job Specs. I often explained the problem that I was trying to recruit for in great detail only to be met with the response. “yeah thanks… Have you got a Job Spec. “

   Job Specs stated things like:
   “Must have x years Product experience”
   “Must have knowledge of Derivatives” 

   This box-ticking approach to employment might work for a more traditional consultancy. And having specific knowledge is also useful at Liqueo. But these rigid job specs are not a requirement for a consultancy with our model. Drawing on our considerable domain experience, we talk to our clients and get to the heart of what they need and resource appropriately. Whether for a prospective or existing client, we advise and shape the best solution. Often this is not as simple as “x bodies for x months”. It may be, for example, that we have a different shaped team for a ‘Discovery’ phase, or we have senior consultants assisting on a part time basis with the Steering Committee. It may also be that knowledge is required across a wide array of skills but only one consultant is engaged fulltime as the conduit for this knowledge.

   This scenario is only possible because we have a permanent team who want to collaborate and work in support of each other and our wider client base. At Liqueo we deliver a truly flexible model that can be moulded to respond to the problem.

3. Growth 

   There are only two ways of growing any company. 1) Growth by Acquisition or 2) Organic Growth.

   Growth by acquisition for us is hiring great people. By hiring great people with domain or product knowledge, we increase the depth of knowledge within our organisation. For this reason we focus on hiring people who already have considerable knowledge and experience. A common complaint about consultancies from client organisations is that they are asked to pay premium ‘consultancy’ rates for graduate trainees. They are further infuriated when the consultancy puts the rate up after 1 year, because the trainee now has experience gained whilst at the client.

   This can’t happen with Liqueo as we only hire domain experienced professionals. Our growth figures by ‘employee count’ have been impressive since we formed. That figure would not be important if we were hiring an army of graduate trainees or less experienced resource.  But at Liqueo, we are proud of the vast amount of expertise we have acquired in just a few years. The average Liqueo consultant employee has over 10 years’ domain experience.

   Therefore, Organic Growth for us is actually personal development. Training, Mentoring and Coaching our people expands knowledge individually which inevitably increases depth of knowledge within the Liqueo organisation. During the hiring process we always focus on the desired growth trajectory of our candidates as much as on their experience to date.

   Every member of our team receives an annual budget to spend on their training and development. We believe that people will do better on courses they are interested in, rather than courses they are told to attend.  We therefore do not specify their training paths. Our employees pick the courses they want, to help them reach their potential.

   Each employee within Liqueo is assigned an executive coach. This coach is responsible for ensuring the employee’s continued growth. This is separate to the Mentoring provided by Line Management. The coaches work with consultants to move their career forward in their desired direction. For example, a Compliance Rule Coder may wish to move towards Business Analysis, or a Business Analyst may wish to move towards Project Management.

Nice people doing a good Job

At Liqueo we hire people with excellent domain knowledge and a desire to grow. We support the growth of our people through Training and Coaching so they can achieve their desired goals. We believe people will perform better within Liqueo and on client engagements if they are working on engagements that interest them. This emphasis on passion and personal growth creates the culture at Liqueo. As our website states, our mission is “Creating a business known for how nice our people are to work with and the quality of the work we deliver”. We never stop striving for ways to improve this.

So that’s why we’re different

At Liqueo we’re passionate about inspiring others – whether it’s our own people or our clients. We hope you feel inspired by us and want to join us on our journey.

Whether you want to work for us or with us – there is a massive sense of ‘Team’ and a real pride in what we deliver.

Contacts

As you can probably tell, this is a topic I love talking about!

If you would like to learn more about Liqueo please contact me

Andy.proud@liqueo.com