Case study: Steve Sussman
Formulate three recommendations to Steve Sussman
Sussman Consulting, LLC, has been in business for over nine years, providing a comprehensive, cost-effective suite of services that help employers to reduce the costs of their Workers’ Compensation Industrial Insurance premiums and obtain additional premium refunds from the state of Washington (see: http://www.pciwc.com/)
Sussman Consulting is unique in the industry for providing literally all the services needed when acting as an Employer’s Advocate regarding the cost containment of controversial Workers’ Compensation claims benefits issues.
Sussman Consulting consists of a team of certified experts, including Board Certified Occupational Medical Physicians, Attorneys at Law, Vocational Rehabilitation Counselors, and Private Investigators.
In 2005 he served 5-6 clients and was not sure that he could serve more than ten simultaneously. He was satisfied with his income (it was around $50,000 per year). He targeted his service only at big construction companies that had many injury cases because the time for serving a client (big company or a small one) was the same. He worked himself without assistance and he did not want to hire any employees. Why? Because he was afraid to share his know-how with unknown people. He arranged his office in his garage and there was no place for employees. He did not have money to rent an office.
The bottleneck of Steve service was the process of preparing letters and memos for different addressees:
• for an injured employee,
• for HR department, for the Administration,
• for the medical doctor of the injured employee,
• for his/her lawyer,
• for Labor and Industry,
• for insurance company, and
• for the Court.
As a rule, it took for him not less than 20-30 minutes for preparing one letter or a memo.
At that time he had only 5 clients.
In each company, there were more than 10 fresh cases with recently injured employees and around 30 old cases.
In each given moment the number of letters and the content of letters depended on several factors/ variations.
What strategy do you recommend to Steve?
Comment on at least one of your peers’ posts. Feel free to comment on as many posts as you like.
Steve runs a pretty unique business where he has already cut almost all extra costs like having an office or hiring employees, so essentially he is already using a cost leadership strategy to run his business aside from raising prices for his services. I believe that the best strategy for Steve to use at the moment would be a differentiation strategy in order to relieve some of his bottleneck problems. With the differentiation strategy, Steve can tap into other markets other than the construction market in order to deal with other types of memos and letters that do not involve the court or lawyers. Steve can also raise his prices to increase revenue so he does not have to manage as many clients at the same time, therefore, reducing his bottleneck.
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Steve Sussman is a case study.
Prepare three suggestions for Steve Sussman.
Sussman Consulting, LLC, has been in business for more than nine years, offering a comprehensive, cost-effective suite of services that assist employers in lowering their Workers’ Compensation Industrial Insurance premiums and obtaining additional premium refunds from the state of Washington (see: http://www.pciwc.com/).
Sussman Consulting is one of the few firms in the market that can provide all of the services required while acting as an Employer’s Advocate for the cost containment of contentious Workers’ Compensation claims benefits issues.
Sussman Consulting consists of a team of certified experts, including Board Certified Occupational Medical Physicians, Attorneys at Law, Vocational Rehabilitation Counselors, and Private Investigators.
In 2005 he served 5-6 clients and was not sure that he could serve more than
