Saul Grohs is a founding Partner of Location Advisory Services (LAS), a privately held firm in West Long Branch, N.J., specializing since 1992 in location consulting and site selection for corporate clients. LAS also provides guidance and advice for economic development organizations, including site certification projects and customized programs for smaller communities.
Prior to LAS, Mr. Grohs spent 20 years with the Fantus organization and was responsible for all project work in the New Jersey and Chicago offices. He was formerly a Principal of Fluor Daniel Consulting, a logistics consultant, and a manager of industrial engineering.
EXPANSION MANAGEMENT: How has the consultant industry changed in the last decade or two?
SAUL GROHS: Although the overall approach to selecting a location remains conceptually the same, there have been many significant changes in the location consulting industry. A number are related to technology. When I started as a location consultant, not only was there no Internet, but also no cell phones or fax machines and extremely limited usage of computers.
Consultants now have easier access to far better data sources and can handle the search process more efficiently. Second, the projects we work on are much more varied, going beyond what in the past was just “find me the best location”. We now also deal with focused questions like, “How big can we be in a given labor market and what is the optimum location network of plants and/or warehouses to serve our customer base?”
| Consultants now have easier access to far better data sources and can handle the search process more efficiently. Second, the projects we work on are much more varied, going beyond what in the past was just “find me the best location”. We now also deal with focused questions like, “How big can we be in a given labor market and what is the optimum location network of plants and/or warehouses to serve our customer base?” |
Lastly, the players have changed dramatically. Realtors, engineering and construction firms, large general consultants, accounting firms (despite having to split off their consulting operations), and incentives negotiators all purport to do traditional location “site selection” in addition to their own specialties.
EM: What do companies look for when they enlist the services of a consultant?
SG: They want a firm that can demonstrate expertise in doing similar assignments and an assigned consultant that has directly applicable experience. For the most part, they also are seeking to keep their identity confidential during the project and to limit the burden of work on their in-house staff.
EM: Can you speak to the time factor and how that has shrunk in the past several years? What role has the Internet played in that issue?
SG: Many clients want results much more quickly, some because they need them and some because they can get them. The shortened time frames for location selection projects are driven in part by clients waiting too long to address their needs due to inadequate planning, changing economic conditions, or unexpected business events. Since technology is known to be available and consultants have done many similar assignments, clients expect a rather quick turn around. Sometimes this is feasible, but in some cases they are getting less value than if they allowed the consultant sufficient time to fully address all relevant issues in sufficient depth. The Internet has contributed to clients’ perceptions that answers can be provided almost instantaneously and has helped fuel their demands for shorter project timeframes.
EM: Has the Internet made your job easier or harder?
SG: Some of both. By helping to shorten deadlines, it has made project scheduling harder and our work more difficult. It has also led the uninitiated to believe that consultants rely mainly on ED Web sites to screen and select candidate locations for a client project. This is not the case, as Web sites come into play only after a screening process has reduced the potential candidates to a manageable number. We then typically seek information from communities to supplement that which was found in-house or in on-line databases.
While Web sites should make it easier for us to obtain this information, in fact, it is often the opposite. Many community Web sites are poorly constructed and carry inadequate and outdated information. ED representatives sometimes will take the easy way out when responding to requests for information by referring us to their Web site, making our job harder. On the plus side, the Internet provides an excellent way of transmitting data between ED groups and consultants, and between our clients and us. In most instances, it has eliminated the need for us to print and bind multiple copies of reports, which are now transmitted electronically.
EM: Are there any trends that you see with regard to where the companies that you deal with are siting their operations?
SG: One trend is related to the economy and labor availability. When most labor markets were extremely tight in the late ‘90s, there was a distinct movement to consider smaller, less accessible communities that had available labor. As the economy declined and layoffs proliferated, labor became far less of a concern to corporate site seekers. Convinced that labor could be readily hired at any location, siting trended to going wherever the most suitable building or best real estate deal could be found. As unemployment decreases and a good work force becomes harder to find, the trend will return to “best fit” locations.
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