Alliance Professional Group, LLC (APG) started in 1998, originally as Ziegler & Associates, LLC. It continues to serve both large, and small/start-up clients. Federal Clients have up to 34,000 employees, and private sector clients are as large as $72 billion in capitalization.

Representative Client Engagements include:

Light Industrial - This Thirty Five (35) year old firm is at the front end of an expansion phase. Our services have included business valuation, site evaluation, a corridor study, press releases, key man job descriptions, and an overhaul of their financial management system.

Construction Subcontractor - This national client's mid-Atlantic divisional revenue growth had plateaud, alarming management. The selected intervention was Customer Service development over a 12 week period. Growth resumed at 20% per year thereafter.

Military - This major command (MACOM) was the driver for the automation of worldwide commercial support activities. Other major commands differed on the system's effectiveness. Alliance Professional Group, LLC (APG) was charged with the project design and evaluation of a model and comparison installation's management information system (MIS). The project mission was accomplished, and after review by federal government auditors, our project design was selected as the model for a successful and unprecedented worldwide assessment.

Military - The challenge was to determine whether to salvage or start over with a $60 million management information system (MIS) that had been installed over a five year period. The assessment was required by the Board of Directors (military generals) before approving $12 million more in funding for an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution. The assessment was completed, and the fixable problems identified. Most of the infighting stopped among various commands and departments, and worldwide managers and employees took a quantum leap forward in using the MIS to reduce paperwork by up to 40% thereby increasing productivity and customer service.

Civil Engineering - Turnover among professional engineering staff had reached 38% in the mid Atlantic region with an estimated cost of $1 million/year. The selected intervention was Management Development with a strong behavioral foundation. DiSC Management Strategies was facilitated to 22 managers in a two day offsite retreat. Turnover immediately fell to 23%.

Retail - A rapidly growing ethnic entrepreneurial business with 50 plus employees lacked the organizational infrastructure to remain profitable and to grow. A series of services have been provided including the creation of policies and procedures, job descriptions, organizational and reporting structure, and management training.

Real Estate Finance - This company was threatened with rapid extinction since its only service was refinancing. The problem was that refinancing was falling rapidly as interest rates rose. They needed to diversify their market immediately. A strategy shift was facilitated using a copyrighted Business Development process that enabled his mortgage company to sell to the new home Realtor community. Rather than drop precipitously, revenue held even during the transition year thereby positioning them to stabilize and grow thereafter.

Cable & Broadcasting - Executive Leadership Coaching was provided to the Northern Virginia Systems Manager as multiple operations were combined throughout Northern Virginia and cable franchises were being renegotiated with local governments. Senior management was also taken through multi-week leadership processes, business behavioral profiling and awareness, and time management assessments and training. An executive communications effectiveness program was also developed to improve the system budget/business plan presentation to the executive committee at headquarters in Philadelphia. Following this merger, the management team is intact and many members are being promoted. Restructure and integration of all cable operations in Northern Virginia has gone smoothly in comparison to many difficult or failed mergers.

In 2003, Alliance Professional Group, LLC (APG) completed roughly 40 focus groups to drill down on issues and patterns among all employee and managerial levels throughout Northern Virginia. APG also nominated co-wrote the application for the HR Leadership Awards of Greater Washington. The client won in the Ethics category over 130 major firms in the region.

Nonprofit - This client employs about 900 people per day 75% of which have disabilities. They also provide rehabilitative services. Alliance Professional Group, LLC (APG) was selected to facilitate their triennial strategic planning process which included getting guidance from their Board of Directors; facilitating strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities & threats (SWOT) among their functional units; facilitating the annual retreat of senior management, and providing advisory services. The process has been successful even in moving this nonprofit from more of a functional focus to a customer process focus.

Financial Institution - This client has grown rapidly over the last several years and as a result, it moved to take several steps to improve its professional image and service to its customers. Alliance Professional Group, LLC (APG) was selected to do a communications audit and style guide for all external communications. Once the interviews were complete and the audit finished, the client was guided through the implementation process in a "train the trainer" format.

Light to Medium Manufacturing - The founder was aging and needed to build organizational infrastructure and competencies to begin a succession process. Ziegler facilitated a Strategic Marketing plan, developed job descriptions/compensation plans and an incentive plan for departmental managers, and provided supervisory development for their management team. For several months, Ziegler also stepped in to run a department that had suddenly lost a key manager.

Information Technology - The information management (IM) directorate was not well positioned to meet current and future challenges. The department chiefs all disagreed on the right way to organize to achieve its mission. Another problem was that there was no long range plan around which to build a new organizational structure even though the client had a strategic planning department. Interviews, assessments, and analyses were performed over eight months. The thoroughly documented study was presented to the Director and department chiefs. They all finally agreed that organizational structure changes were needed. The study gave the client a systematic means of identifying and implementing the best organizational structure going forward.

Light to Medium Industrial - The founder was aging and wanted to turn the business over to his three sons. He was unclear how to do this, what roles the sons would play, etc. Ziegler facilitated a process to enable him to make those decisions and put the sons into the proper roles. Policies and Procedures were also developed for the company. Finally, a plan was developed to reverse revenue decline due to changing industry trends in the large control panel market.

Department of Defense - The problem was that the four military services (Navy, Army, Air Force, and Marine Corp) commercial activities information technology functions operated independently from one another. The decision was to set up a collaborative body to share best practices. Ziegler successfully facilitated their Charter using Vantana decision making software with 20 participants working from wireless laptops. Joint Services collaboration has accelerated.

Construction General Contractor - This company had just downsized by two thirds over the prior year. The business had to be stabilized. The chosen intervention was supervisory development of all project managers, superintendents, and the president. Over 12 weeks supervisory skills were provided to help the managers "manage", and a plan for the future was communicated by the president. Buy-in was accomplished, and the business stabilized.

Non Profit - This is a regional nonprofit. They required a business plan to support a requirement by the Virginia Health Care Foundation (VHCF) for a $100,000 grant. The business plan included strategies for becoming self sufficient over four years as VHCF funds were replaced by County, private citizen, and grant funding.

Hospitality - This rapidly growing Marriott multi-location hotel franchise needed to accelerate management training and improve productivity so that managers could be more effective. The client installed customer relationship management (CRM) software in all its locations, but needed to integrate that software with advanced time management principles. At offsite training, the President and General Managers took a 12 category time management self assessment, then were provided with the methods to improve their skills and leverage/integrate the CRM database in support of improved time management.

Foundation - After operating for 13 years, the Foundation was ready to grow more rapidly. The solution was to create an ongoing multilevel planning process starting with Strategic Planning then integrating committee business planning and action items. Job descriptions and other "infrastructure" were created. In the first year of this process, fundraising increased significantly.

Chamber - In the late 1990's, the environment for Chambers of Commerce had changed, leading to declining membership and budgets. The solution was to proceed with Strategic Planning. Before our involvement, the Chamber decided to reorganize first and plan second. The consequence was a concerned membership and a potential exodus of a significant number of members. Ziegler stepped in, organized all their data and planning meeting minutes into a true strategic plan format, which was then communicated to the membership. The Chamber stabilized, and membership and revenue continues to grow.

Construction Subcontractor - To continue growing rapidly, this company needed to consolidate debt and obtain more investment capital. It also needed a business plan to guide its growth. In collaboration with the client, a multipurpose business plan was developed to communicate information to a) banks, b) senior management engaged with guiding the company through operational metrics, and c) employees (history of company, etc.). All objectives were met, investment capital was secured, and the company continues to grow.

Public Utility Subsidiary - The subsidiary was a "roll up" of ten smaller companies in the Washington, DC metro area. However, the company was still operating like ten separate smaller companies. Alliance Professional Group, LLC (APG) provided three separate integrative solutions. The first was to facilitate the establishment of annual goals through a collaborative facilitation with all senior managers. In four weeks the client achieved what had been delayed 18 months in setting the direction of the new company. Second, each goal was championed by an implementation team, and APG facilitated the development of measurable action plans to guide each team. The president was provided with visual Gantt Charts as a "dash board" for monitoring progress. Finally, it was realized that the level of management expertise/capacity was not sufficient for this larger company so APG developed and executed a management development process over 12 weeks called "The Turn Around Manager". At the end of this process and presentations by each manager, the President started his closing remarks with "Wow".