Frost & Sullivan Reviews

Pros

Flexible working time. Friendly colleagues.

Cons

Loss focus on quality. Rack in as much revenue as possible but loss focus on quality.

Pros

Friendly environment, you will learn a lot (mainly from your own experience), possibility of being tranferred between offices/regions, nice people.

Cons

Poor management, inumerous senior position filled by people who have no idea on how to manage people, a "never seen" amount of pesidents/chairmans and VP's (i do not think there is any other company in the world with the same amount of presidents). High management absolutely do not care about people which makes the turn over in contact centers seem nothing compared to F&S.

Advice to Senior Management

Please open you eyes with regards to the amount of senior people doing absolutely nothing to contribute to the company. Another important point is the amount of couples, family and other related issues that only add cost to the payslip at the end of the month.

Pros

Good Brand Name
Nice office - with a view of the city

Cons

Poor Management
Poor work ethic

Advice to Senior Management

Please take care of your employees.

Pros

The company allowed employees to work remotely from their homes. The management team i was directly under was great and competent...the best part of the job. When economic downturn hit the company was fair in how it managed having to handle layoffs and salary reductions.

Cons

Upper level management put on lots of spin and often appears to put up barriers. The company is filled with lots of Type A personalities that are often difficult to work with and micromanaged reports and studies to the point of disempowering employees. Little to no training was provided for remote employees which often lead to feeling disconnected with the company and unclear of their process and procedures. Remote employees are responsible for all home office expenses except phone and computer (provided). Printers, internet access, paper, etc. were all supplied by employees with no compensations.

Advice to Senior Management

Pay to fly employees to training. Set up training programs and self development tools/classes. May employees of skills outside fo the business unit into which they were hired. Remove those roadblocks (billing issues) that prevent groups from sharing or using staff outside of their areas. Fix the timesheet reporting tool to accommodate the work cycles of consultants....and respect them as value to the company.

Pros

Great office view
Central location
Exposure to quite a wide variety of industries and divisions. Few people who are downright horrible.

Cons

Some consultants are horrible, but others are really nice. It depends on who you work for.
Interns aren't given the opportunity to sit in meetings.

Advice to Senior Management

Senior management should allow interns to sit in during meetings and play a greater role in discussions and client projects

Pros

It is a good place to balance your life with work. After joining F&S people here feel somehow to be convicted to work here for some time. In effect, the relations between employees are good as they are all partners in misery.

Cons

Many.
1) No training despite of the catchy job advertisements declaring such fact.
2) No competence. All good people has left the company, and few believers are still fighting to keep the level of competence. Managers are only by the name. Especially, those from Asia are loving to feel the power. Most of them got their managing position due to the long period at Frost
3) Privilege of Indian workers. Despite of the name, which would suggest American core of the company, most of the employees including top management is from India. This fact impacts the culture of the company, way of managing people (typical Asian) and style. In result, the Company is trying for many years to build reliable brand name, but without success.
4) Cowboy consultancy. There are few persons who know consulting and how it should be done. Rest is spending time on targeting clients with projects for few thousands dollars based on low competence of managers and some knowledge of analysts, who did not run away yet.
5) Lack of authorities. Most of the top managers I get to know can run small business only. They performance, behavior and clothes are typical for low class sales guys such as regional sales engineers etc.. I would not give them money when I met them. And those shoes,.... cheap shoes that cannot be worn by CEOs, Partners, VP etc..However, their style perfectly represents company's level
6) No professional tools. No databases. No external data sources. Nothing which requires payment.
7) Fresh employee represents the highest value for the F&S, because of few reasons. First of all, such employee usually has some work experience in industry, business or other consultancy. Frost would not spend money on training them. In fact, what they brought with their heads is what F&S is paying for. They would not learn nothing new through the trainings, because usually there are no trainings. If they are, they are organized by people who also joined Frost and usually have little to say and very often on subject that is not useful. With time fresh employee is getting accommodated within Frost and his salary and bonus expectations are beginning to raise. However, at that moment company becomes to be hostile, because it is not going to pay more or the raise will be small. Thus, the highest value comparing price to the quality, F&S gets from new people.

Advice to Senior Management

Most of the management should be replaced. You can not build anything valuable with people who represents low value.

Pros

- Exposure to a broad number of industries (the "account book" is non-existent and most clients are "up for grabs", so you end up calling everyone from medical to environmental)
- You make some good friends there, as everyone acknowledges the fact that the ship is rapidly sinking.
- The working hours are flexible - probably because the Managers acknowledge the sinking ship also.

Cons

No payrise, no promotion, no benefits - no change in years of employment, despite achieving to ambitious targets
No training, no guidance, no leadership - multiple Managers, all with very little to offer in terms of management expertise. I was told in my first week, a successful Sales Rep should be making an average of 80 cold calls per day.
No retention, no client service, no delivery - High Analyst turnover, with the majority based in India. Selling the GPS is more trouble than its worth when the client finds out they've spent half their budget on two or three poorly written reports a year.
Nonsense - GPS, GTM, CVE, CBU, SBU. Talking in acronyms does NOT work with European clients.

Advice to Senior Management

Work more ethically with the long-term in mind. The focus is on short-term gains, with poor management running from the top of the organisation down to the middle. Below middle management are university leavers on miniscule salaries, who jump ship before they have time to become conversant in the industries they are researching. The products have fanciful names but are basically empty. As I understand it, GTM gives CEOs access to 2-page M&A pamphlets and entry into F&S awards ceremonies.

Pros

Known brand name to have on your resume
Good work - life balance (of course that depends on your supervisor)
Cannot think of anything else

Cons

Really don't know know where to start, but these are the few really sad experiences I had:
- Pay is not up to the mark: You might think you are coming with a good hike compared to your previous job, but don't get too excited, because its still not worth it.
- Poor infrastructure: For a company that earns huge revenue every year, it is sad that they have no cafeteria, unacceptable facilities, and an internet server that is mostly slow or down.
- The emphasis on awards: I understand that awards are a great source of revenue, but does that mean you evaluate an employee's performance only based on the kind of awards they have written? Let's face it, Frost and Sullivan awards are a joke!
- No room for creativity: Rigid structures and so called "templates" provide no opportunity for creative expressions
- Lack of proper feedback and appreciation: Managers, if you are reading this, please appreciate work well done and not just criticize, and before you criticize, please consider how little help and timely feedback you had given to the employee!

Advice to Senior Management

Senior management needs to rethink about the way they run the company. If the method of working and the focus of the work is not changed soon, the future of the company might be in question.

Pros

Entrepreneurial. Gave me opportunities to try out my ideas. As the company was growing rapidly I got a chance to grow very quickly. Lots of young bright people who are ambitious and thats fun.

Cons

Benefits can be improved. Need to be tougher on non performers. Not the best organized. You have to find your own way and be a self starter.

Advice to Senior Management

Reduce number of new ideas. Eliminate the things which are not working quickly. Invest in good IT systems. Improve benefits.

Pros

good work-life balance,
you can get away with working for 3 hours per day... and many do
it's in central london
good name to have on your CV

Cons

no benefits
no training
no real management
no real ideas
you really learn what you teach yourself

Advice to Senior Management

go and do something else.... you are a wast of time