Noel Austin Ltd

Noel Austin Ltd is a management consulting firm based in Wantage, Oxfordshire in the UK. We are the UK licensees of the OPUS Process, a consulting methodology originally developed in Sweden and now used throughout western Europe, the US and Australasia. The OPUS Process has been in use in the UK since 1991, and has been used in demanding projects with many high street names and industry leaders around the world.

Our Mission
To work with our clients' stakeholders - customers, suppliers, staff, intermediaries, shareholders, the community - on assignments that enable our clients to improve business performance by improving the quality of service received by those stakeholders.

Company Profile
Noel Austin Ltd is a small company with a series of relationships with key suppliers and associates. Our methodology is well defined and consists of a series of tightly targeted interventions; all the work is carried out by experienced consultants which enables us to deliver large company performance with small company overheads. Since the methodology was first employed over 2,500 assignments have been carried out across the world.
All of the research work in our assignments is carried out in accordance with the standards laid down by the Market Research Society, and we carry out a post-project quality review after each assignment. Our objective is that every client will be delighted with what we have done for him or her and will agree to be used as a referee for future clients.

A full OPUS project consists of several stages:
Project initiation meeting This is attended by the OPUS Team (a project steering group) In which the project terms of reference are finalised and the project timetable set

• Problem identification
The OPUS consultant sets up and runs one or more discussion workshops with the objective of finding out what problems trouble members of the target population. The OPUS Team reviews the resulting problems and eliminates those that cannot be solved.

• Problem prioritisation
A survey, consisting of the OPUS Box, is distributed to a larger sample of the target population. They return this to the OPUS consultant, who analyses it and feeds the results back to the OPUS Team, which decides which of the high ranked problems to solve.

• Solution generation
The OPUS Team sets up a small number of work groups, each of which addresses a small number of the high ranked problems from the OPUS Box survey. The work groups use creative and analytical processes to design and select solutions for implementation.

• Implementation
The OPUS Team commissions work groups, which may be the same as those in the solution generation phase, to finalise project plans based on the solutions, to secure approval of these from the relevant decision making body and to implement the solutions. The OPUS consultant continues to facilitate this process and to provide administrative and project support, as appropriate.