Managing intangible assets

"Boosting profitability by attracting and retaining the right clients – and employees."

It is often said that it takes two to Tango. In the case of a service-driven company, it’s the chemistry between customers and people that makes the music. In Celemi Tango™, six knowledge-intensive firms enter into stiff competition as they try to win clients and recruit key personnel in a rapidly changing marketplace.

The overriding challenge is to develop both the intangible and tangible assets of the company and to secure the long-term profitability.

“Convert personal skills into company-owned tools and processes.”

Each firm is small and stable at start, but the market is growing quickly. Success is dependent on the management team’s ability to develop an agile, yet consistent firm. Teams need to:

  • Build a solid corporate culture.
  • Attract the right type of employees, grow their competence, and keep them.
  • Win the desired type of clients, and earn their loyalty.
  • Utilize resources wisely by monitoring the balance sheet and KPIs.
  • Harvest people-owned competence into companyowned tools and processes.
  • Stop competitors from stealing your key employees and clients.
  • Generate cash flow and profit.

Who benefits?

Celemi Tango™ is designed for employees at all levels within organizations that do business based on the competence of their personnel. Some applications include:

  • To introduce, monitor or measure the intangible assets of a company.
  • To create dialogue and a common frame of reference between the “administrators” and the “experts”.
  • To build skills among supervisors and HR teams on strategic recruitment, development and retention of key personnel.
  • To identify key business drivers and gauge their relative importance on short- and long-term success.
  • To frame an organization’s business strategy and define preferred types of clients. 
  • To teach students at business schools and corporate universities about the strategy, assets and competencies of a knowledge organization.

Key results

People learn how to:

  • Measure and market their company’s overall intangible value.
  • Target customers more effectively.
  • Manage the mix of clients and people to improve long-term chemistry, productivity and profit.
  • Find the balance between effective short-term goals and successful long-term planning.
  • Assess how an employee’s job and development path fits into the overall corporate strategy.

Key concepts

  • Market share
  • Capacity utilization
  • Growth of tangible and intangible assets
  • Profitability
  • Brand image and reputation
  • Competence development
  • Growth potential of people
  • Recruitment and retention
  • Team chemistry
  • Improvements in tools & processes
  • Research & development

What clients say

“On average it takes 5-6 years of hard work to win a client over, but by using the insights and understanding we gained from Celemi TangoTM, we can develop new business relationships much faster – an important edge in keeping up with today’s rapid pace of change.”
– Manager, Swedbank
“[During the seminar] I spent all night stressing and worrying about how I could keep my simulated staff from being headhunted – then I realized I had never spent five minutes worrying about my real people. I’m going home and writing a retention plan.”
– Participant, Club Corp
“We found that we could identify and manage the highly critical success factors in a knowledge company and actually quantify the results of our decisions. Celemi TangoTM is a great learning laboratory that had a very positive impact on our business management.”
– Worldwide General Manager, Hewlett Packard

Quickfacts for Celemi Tango™

Material
Board-based business simulation.
Participants
Six competing teams, 18-24 participants in total. Multiple seminars can be held simultaneously.
Participants
Employees in service or knowledge companies.
Time required
1,5-2 days, corresponding to 7 years of operation.
Facilitator
Facilitators certified by Celemi.
Languages
This business simulation is available in Danish, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese (Latin America), Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish (Europe + Latin America) and Swedish.