BY TOM BROWN
We were contacted by Ernst and Young, Accountants and Consultants in November 1997. They had secured an assignment with the Sultan Center, a food and non-food retailer operating 15 stores in Kuwait.
Fearing that they lacked the specific knowledge to do the assignment they had sold, they asked the International Trade Association, CIES, for a recommendation of someone who did have the necessary knowledge. Our name was put forward, so we negotiated days and billing rates for a company evaluation, the assignment that E&Y had contracted to do.
E&Y's method of operation was to work very hard to identify bad or improvable practices and hard sell a large follow on project in a presentation at the end.
I was concerned that we'd not be paid in all the confusion of playing gotcha and haggling, so I extracted a guarantee of payment from E&Y no matter what.
We were informed that it was unlikely that we would be involved in the implementation work when secured; that their specialists would do that.
Also E&Y had found a small firm of ex-Walmart execs that was also going to be involved. So there was also an element of competition! So this played out for us over a 5 month period.
We started the assignment in February during Ramadan, the one month Muslim fasting period. During this time the locals did not drink or eat between sunrise and sunset. They had big parties after dark to break their fasts each day. But otherwise business as usual. We returned to our hotel for lunch each day and did have water and tea available at the company.
I would also say that this is a country and region where people do not particularly trust each other, which showed itself all the time.
The company had nice stores and good business but was very inefficient. We saw many instances where they had allocated too much space to items and too much redundancy in assortment.
Most goods were imported and it was a significant challenge to pass goods through customs, especially perishables subject to spoilage.
Also most of the professionals in the company were foreigners on contract to them, perhaps 80% non-muslim. The Muslim professionals would come from more developed countries like Egypt. Similarly virtually all people doing manual work were foreigners on contract. Most were Muslim from Palestine, Bangladesh, India and Pakistan. To say the least, there was not a shared company culture.
Very quickly the Sultan Center President said that he wanted the ex-Walmart consultant to lead the project as they really wanted to be like Walmart. I offered to back out, but E&Y thought my perspective and direction was needed by my people, the other consultants and even the Walmart man. So I was the shadow director of the project. We did do our work. We identified a lot of savings, but right away the Sultan Center President said he did not want to spend more money.
So we were paid for our work, thanked for our services and left. Later we learned that the Sultan Center never paid anything but the down payment and some of the expenses and was not happy.
There was lots wrong with this project.
The consultants should not have had so much redundancy in leadership and given the client a choice. The concept of a big feasibility study was flawed for these people. It should have been a very short feasibility study and immediate implementation with some immediate results. The president should have been brought along so that whatever was decided would be owned by him.
This experience was really interesting for us. Sadly it was not too good for the Sultan Center or the accounting firm that brought us in.
