Elabor8 accelerates growth with international consulting division
Australian consulting firm Elabor8 has launched an international consulting division, with the aim of building a footprint in Asia Pacific, Europe and the Americas.
Founded in 2009 in Melbourne, Elabor8 is a consulting firm specialised in a range of business and digital services, including performance improvement, customer and product excellence, agile ways of working and digital transformation – backed by a training and coaching service line.
Having achieved rapid domestic growth over the past years (Elabor8 was listed in the AFR Fast 100 list six years in a row), the firm is now seeking to replicate its success beyond Australia’s borders.
“Since our inception, we’ve been helping some of Australia’s most familiar brands and organisations adopt new ways of working so they can become more responsive to market, customer and competitive changes,” said Elabor8 founder Paul Velonis.
“Over the past years, we’ve already worked with several clients internationally. The movement to distributed and remote working during the pandemic accelerated our foreign portfolio, as we began to receive an increasing number of inbound sales enquiries from progressive organisations overseas for whom remote contexts have opened up the potential to work with new partners doing interesting things.”
“Our stories about transformation were being noticed by organisations worldwide, as was our strong track record in remote working,” added Kim Ballestrin, who has been appointed as the leader of the new Global Consulting division.
In 2021, Elabor8 started working with clients in the United Kingdom, Germany, Netherlands, Czech Republic, Hong Kong and New Zealand, with many of those now continuing their work with the 100-strong firm. Ballestrin: “This has given us the confidence to formalise a Global Consulting division to support these clients and begin to build up our permanent workforce in each of the regions.”
Working with a client in New Zealand, Elabor8 was asked to lead a major operating model redesign, as part of a broader transformation geared at implementing new and more digital ways of working. Meanwhile, in Europe, a start-up in Germany brought in the consultancy to help with the design and setup of value stream management, supported by the implementation of the Flomatika solution.
For Velonis, the foray into international markets and the experiences gained at foreign groups will help Elabor8 “broaden its horizons”, which will benefit its service delivery locally down the line. “We are very excited about the opportunities that will come through international expansion.”
Ballestrin brings over 20 years of diverse business and technology experience to the role. An experienced technologist, having worked in roles from IT business analyst through to technology delivery, Ballestrin specialises in the delivery of complex change, lean implementations, and the adoption of the SAFe and Cynefin methodologies, among others.
“It was very important to have someone internally lead this new division to ensure that we are bringing Elabor8 approaches, culture and principles globally. Kim has the perfect blend of management and consulting experience to lead the division, and she is already very well-known and respected globally which is an added bonus. The division couldn’t be in better hands,” concluded Velonis.
