Y’vonne Ormond started 5P Consulting in 2016, after 20 years working on technology solutions for some of the largest companies in the world. She started a consulting company driven by values and customer experience, not industry-standard KPIs like utilization and billable hours. Y’vonne had another reason she wanted to start 5P. Two, actually: her kids.
“It was a pivotal moment in my life,” said Y’vonne Ormond, Founder and CEO of 5P Consulting. “I had decided to leave the corporate environment to create something bigger than just me,” she said. “I had children I wanted to have dinner with each night instead of being away at work or traveling.”
Y’vonne also wanted to let her employees work from anywhere so they too could be with their families more. At its center Y’vonne’s vision for 5P Consulting was holistic and purpose-driven.
The new business was founded with a focus on measurable return on investment for clients, and a stated mission to give back to the community. When it came time to name the business, Y’vonne asked, “What are the triggers that we focus on with our engagements?” The answer was the five “Ps:” people, process, products, profit and loss, and priorities.
Those principles guide the company's work today, as it helps client organizations improve productivity by building and improving upon business systems to leverage employee strengths and technology best practices. Most of 5P’s clients are enterprise-size companies, spread across various industries but bound by a shared desire to enact digital and process transformations on their business systems.
By focusing on client success, 5P is able to thrive in the huge and competitive management consulting industry. “We come in and understand what the current business problem and ongoing strategic need is first,” Y’vonne said. “We come up with actionable solutions to improve how they operate, and then we enable the solutions with technology.”
5P offers complete tech stack and roadmap evaluations, as well as implementation and integration of enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM) systems.
Another characteristic that differentiates 5P in the consulting world is that it doesn’t have a sales team. Each of 5P’s team members has a business and technical delivery background; the 5P consultant who meets the client during pre-sales conversations stays involved with the project from beginning to end. Y’vonne said this creates a culture of partnership with clients all the way through the customer lifecycle.
We provide transparency to our clients, so they never have to guess where their project is or where their money has been spent.
Y’vonne OrmondFounder & CEO, 5P Consulting
This approach to consulting has paid dividends for 5P’s clients and employees alike, but has required that the company find a new way of running its business.
Even though it’s a small business, the 5P team found itself dealing with information silos as the practice grew. Though quite familiar with CRM, 5P hadn’t invested in a system because Y’vonne couldn’t find a solution that fit her small team’s price point and needs.
Employees lived in their inboxes — as many small businesses and service organizations do — without any way to share real-time status updates on sales meetings, project progress, and client communications. They were bound by email and manual file sharing. This proved especially challenging when the team was focused on winning new clients, since there was little visibility into individual team members’ activities and progress.
Then, Salesforce launched Starter Suite, its first product built just for small businesses. It was just what 5P needed. Starter included the same functionality 5P consultants knew from client work using Sales Cloud and Service Cloud Enterprise Edition. Now they could use it internally.
I was ecstatic when Starter Suite launched. Here was the Salesforce we knew and loved, but built for small business needs.
Y’vonne OrmondFounder & CEO, 5P Consulting
With Starter Suite, 5P’s leadership team tracks all consulting engagements in a central location. Every member of the team shares notes on conversations with prospects and clients, and tools like Lightning for Gmail and Files Connect make it fast and easy to sync external docs to Salesforce, without having to switch apps or even screens.
With so much of its business handled over email, 5P also benefits from Salesforce Inbox, which uses Einstein Activity Capture to automatically log emails and meetings to their respective account records. 5P recently started integrating DocuSign as well, and plans to fold in project management tools, time tracking, and financials this year.
This has all led to measurable results: To date, 5P has realized a 50% overall time savings from Einstein Activity Capture alone.
A surprising bonus? Y’vonne is able to lead by example, showing the rest of 5P how many prospects she engages with on a daily basis. Visibility into her work encourages healthy competition among team members, which helps propel the business through slower months.
Having worked with many businesses over the years, and founded one other company before 5P Consulting, Y’vonne knows what it takes to found and grow a company. Her advice to prospective small business leaders? Don’t give up. “Not every activity in your business needs to have an outcome,” she said. “Just enjoy the process and appreciate that it's going to take a little bit of time.”
That said, anything a small business can do to save itself time is worth its weight in gold. For 5P Consulting, Starter Suite is the answer. Instead of writing emails and holding one-on-one meetings, Starter provides companywide visibility into client meetings, project status, and other vital business information.
“Starter Suite really cuts down how we manage our sales cycle. We're not spending a lot of time asking each other what's going on, because we can see it all in Starter,” Y’vonne said.
One of the most important traits you need to have when you're starting a business is perseverance.
Y’vonne OrmondFounder & CEO, 5P Consulting
