GAVDI International

We prefer principles over procedures

Take the old-fashioned consultancy. Add specialization, closeness and independence – and you get the GAVDI principles. Some call it strategy – others call it value-driven management. We focus more on living the principles than preaching them.

The feedback from our customers and partners is clear. They prefer to work with GAVDI because we are skilled, customer-oriented, committed, flexible and fun. Actually, that is the same feedback we get from our employees. We sincerely believe that our company principles are the reasons for this consistent feedback.

Our principles are:

Specialization
Closeness
Long-term commitment
Independence & Integrity

Please explore the principles in detail below.

Specialization	Having read other parts of this website there should be no doubts that specialization is a key principle. Specifically, SAP HCM Consulting is our choice of specialization. For our customers specialization means access to Best Practices which are skills, experience, knowledge and insight “packaged” to fit our customers’ needs. But it also means the ability to apply Best Practices with the flexibility demanded by the customer’s situation. For our consultants, specialization means membership in the “Special Forces” of SAP HCM. This membership allows constant development and growth. A consultant is on a life-long development path within his field – and a decisive success factor is leveraging resources in immediate and secondary spheres of influence. Specialization is a strong guideline in our internal business model and go-to-market activities. No time is wasted on long, internal discussions about markets, target groups, services, etc. This approach gives GAVDI an agility to supply timely response to immediate demands.
Closeness	“Decisions are best made by people with real insight to the problem and are determined to live with the consequences.” This succinctly characterizes the GAVDI Closeness Principle. GAVDI decisions are made by people who are close to the customer, employees and partners. For our customers this means that all decisions concerning service delivery are made as close to them as possible. Our project managers and local management do not require permission from centralized, corporate headquarters. This provides agility, speed and flexibility in our processes. Internally we use the closeness principle in a number of ways. Any decision concerning our employees is made by the local management. Our consultants are individuals and are treated as individually. GAVDI is designed in country units to support a flat, organizational structure and promote close, employee working relationships.
Long-term Commitment	Where the old-fashioned consultancies go in, makes the change and then leave - GAVDI endeavors for a long-term relationship with the customer. This has a clear implication on the way we perform our services. The defined services model for SAP HCM is one clear example. It also has a clear implication on our commercial approach to our customers. The approach encourages establishing a long-term relationship compared to mere project-based relationships. To provide long-term relationships with our customers long-term relationships with our consultants is necessary. This drives our ownership model. GAVDI offers co-ownership to our management partners and key consultants. The business model behind GAVDI is a long-term commitment. GAVDI is not influenced by financial analyses and exit-models as seen in many businesses based on private equity capital. And GAVDI is not driven by a short-term focus on quarterly reports for the stock exchange. GAVDI is a long-term venture created to serve our customers and employees – not to be a commercial object for third parties without a real insight in our business.
Independence & Integrity	Being a specialist, GAVDI is faced with the challenges of true collaborative business. We work directly with end-customers but we also deliver our services through a number of partners. And in the SAP marketplace a partner may one day be in a competitive role and the next in a cooperative role. GAVDI does business in the marketplace with the principle of “sequential monogamy”. This is why our independence means so much to us - we want to be able to enter into cooperation with any given relevant partner. This is also where “integrity” comes in. GAVDI takes pride in honouring our business partnerships in the best possible way. We always act in an open and loyal manner towards our business partners during a given agreement and project. But once the cooperation comes to an end GAVDI wants to be able to enter into new joint ventures and not constrained by prior common undertakings.