Navid Ahdieh, managing director at North Highland, and Andrew Billings, associate VP & supply chain leader at North Highland, commented on the firm’s recent acquisition of LogistiPoint Consulting in an interview with Consulting Magazine.
North Highland, an Atlanta-based management consulting firm, last month acquired LogistiPoint, a Brentwood, Tennessee-based supply chain consultancy focusing on retail and consumer goods clients. LogistiPoint was founded in 2009 and has a team of ten professionals. The boutique firm has advised on logistics and supply chain execution projects for clients such as Dickies, Barnes & Noble, and Burberry, .
The acquisition, for which terms were not disclosed, was North Highland’s first since its purchase of ACME Business Consulting in 2015. The deal will accelerate North Highland’s offerings in the supply chain space, particularly for retail clients, according to Ahdieh.
North Highland had a previous history of collaboration with LogistiPoint – working on 12 joint engagements across five different clients in the past two years.
The acquisition comes as supply chains and the retail industry have been hammered by the Covid-19 pandemic – testing supply chain resiliency and the business models of brick-and-mortar retailers. Billings told Consulting Magazine that the firm has experienced an uptick in demand from many retail and CPG clients, as the nature of moving products has changed drastically in the last six months. “So it actually has opened the window for us to deliver some very large meaningful, impactful engagements to our clients,” Billings explained.
LogistiPoint’s addition will also help North Highland deliver an end-to-end supply chain offering at a time when clients want to simplify how they engage with firms. Ahdieh says North Highland can support clients in areas ranging from strategic planning to implementation and execution of process changes and technology.
The LogistiPoint team will be situated in North Highland’s strategy practice, specifically in the area of operational transformation. Though the team will initially work on existing retail clients, the firm has plans to expand their work to other industries. “We know that, for example, the transportation industry is very much in need of support from supply chain excellence, so we are building out our strategic plans right now to extend into other industries,” Ahdieh said.
North Highland is an employee-owned firm with more than 1,400 consultants across the US, Europe, and Asia. The consulting firm is a member of Cordence Worldwide, a global network of consultancies with more than 5,000 consultants and 65+ offices worldwide.