September 25, 2007
Project Leadership Associates Acquires Fourth Floor Consulting — Expands strategic services to encompass broad range of IT and business consulting
http://www.projectleadership.net/news_events.aspx?id=25
Chicago, IL – September 25, 2007
Chicago-based Project Leadership Associates (PLA), a leading provider of business and technology services to mid-market corporations, today announced the acquisition of Fourth Floor Consulting (Fourth Floor), a Chicago business consulting firm serving Global 1000 and large middle-market companies in the areas of strategy, planning, and merger and acquisition integration. With the acquisition, PLA and Fourth Floor, who primarily serve clients within the legal, financial, manufacturing, and healthcare sectors, will be able to provide mid-market companies a truly comprehensive offering spanning IT and technology services coupled with execution-focused business and strategy consulting.
PLA and Fourth Floor, both with nine year track records of providing excellence in client service, will immediately leverage each other’s core business competencies to enhance the collective value provided to clients.
“The addition of Fourth Floor to the PLA portfolio enables us to expand our capabilities to encompass business strategy and execution focused on solving our clients’ business challenges,” said Daniel Porcaro, PLA’s President and CEO. “Fourth Floor has worked with companies on business planning and execution challenges while PLA has primarily focused on the technology consulting piece of the puzzle – this combination closes the loop and provides a truly comprehensive technology and business consulting offering.”
PLA has enjoyed steady growth over the past nine years due to a focus on the development of leading technology best practices and comprehensive professional services, as well as the cultivation of strategic partner and alliance programs (with notable partners such as Microsoft, Interwoven, Citrix, EMC and many others), and the addition of top tier consulting professionals with a vast understanding of legal industry business requirements and challenges.
“Fourth Floor has always provided its clients an execution-focused approach to solving business and management issues. We are thrilled to be able to integrate this philosophy into PLA’s business and information technology consulting expertise to offer our collective clients the ability to use technology better to achieve strategic goals and objectives” said Robert Zagotta, former Fourth Floor CEO.
With offices in Chicago and Dallas, Fourth Floor was founded in 1998 with a commitment to help bridge the gap between strategy and results. Fourth Floor has also worked with notable publicly traded companies on merger & acquisition integration activities. “From the time we met PLA more than four years ago, it was obvious that both firms share the same passion for adding value to clients. Together, I am sure we will now be able to deliver even more for clients” added Don Robinson, Founding Partner of Fourth Floor. Effective immediately, Fourth Floor Consulting’s co-founders Robert Zagotta and Don Robinson will be integrated into PLA’s executive management team as practice group leaders within the newly formed business strategy group.
Fourth Floor adds several core business consulting capabilities, expanding the PLA services mix:
- IT and business-focused consulting: Law firms of all sizes and complexities are faced with the challenges of running their firms like a business. With that, come the difficulties of developing business strategies, operations and execution. Fourth Floor’s offerings are well-suited to help many existing PLA legal industry clients navigate and address opportunities in the fast-changing legal environment.
- Strategy Execution: Fourth Floor’s strategy execution services enable companies to re-think how they develop strategies and how they communicate, execute and measure progress toward achievement of such strategies. Rather than planning to activities, Fourth Floor plans to results and open strategy to the entire organization to ensure 100% alignment.
- Post Merger Integration: Well-done M&A activities are reliant upon a flawless integration and execution strategy. Fourth Floors specializes in working with M&A candidates to properly define business goals and develop sound integration and execution plans.