Focused on development, not on growth, our strategy enabled us to grow stronger in our strategic areas and to invest our forces in developing new market niches and products in the areas of CSR and sustainability.
62%of our income relates to strategic areas (+8)
10%of our income relates to new clients (-2)
We are doing business in very challenging times, which are marked by constant change. As in previous years, in 2018 especially our strategy focused on growing stronger in our selected strategic niches of consulting, rather than marking growth in fee income. The year brought us significant changes in our team, but also partially in client portfolio in Croatia. Following some years, our cooperation has ended with two mid-size clients and due to the realization of a large project, our fee income was decreased with another large client. The decrease of the fee income on the group level made a difference on our overall revenue performance, but we managed to keep our profitability at a desired level.
Two key figures are particularly important to us: on the one hand, we monitor our income in strategic business areas and, on the other, the proportion of new clients in total sales. We cannot be satisfied by the general outcome, but having in mind the challenges we have faced, the stability was achieved. Fee income in the strategic areas grew to 62 percent in the entire portfolio, which is an increase by 8 percent, while the growth in CSR services marked 9 percent. A further shift of consulting services in our strategic areas of corporate consulting, CSR, sustainability consulting, risk management and similar, is expected to be continued in subsequent years. Our efforts invested in market development in 2018 should bring positive results in 2019.
In the years to come, we want to focus even more on the core competences mentioned in order to achieve a higher level of economic productivity and at the same time support our clients in their further development and transformation.
As one of the indicators for our progress we use the Croatian CSR Index: In the last year, we achieved the highest score of all small companies regarding “Company focus on economic sustainability” with a maximum of 100 points. You can find the complete results of the index in chapter Foster CSR Competence.
Our efforts in strengthening market position in 2018 yielded several actions:
Accents in 2019 in this segment will be on our values excellence, reliability and contribution and will encompass:
