BrazilHorváth & Partners celebrates 15 years of business in Romania
Management consulting firm Horváth & Partners is celebrating 15 years of activity in the Romanian market.
Horváth & Partners is an independent, international management consultancy with over 1,000 employees. Founded in 1981 and headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany, the firm has offices at locations in Germany, Austria, Hungary, Switzerland, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Adding to its strong continental presence, in late 2005, Horváth & Partners launched a presence in Romania. Since then, the company has offered clients in the country consulting services to both small and medium-sized projects, from values between €50,000 to in excess of €3 million.
Speaking on the firm’s milestone anniversary in Romania, country general manager Kurt Weber said, “These 15 years of activity on the local market have been an extraordinary journey for us. Although the decision to open the local office was closely linked to Petrom’s post-merger integration project, another reason was the country’s very good position in the region.”
Building from this strong platform, Horváth & Partners’ Romanian locale was able to carry out local and regional projects in a wide range of specialties such as: redesigning the business model and supporting organisational transformation in the upstream sector of the oil and gas industry, process management, and human resources management, among others. All in all, this saw the firm take on over 300 projects over the last 15 years, worth around €64 million.
The outlook
Looking ahead, Horváth & Partners will be looking to tap into three key trends it expects to materialise in the next two years. These are accelerating the digital transformation, including the continued spike in online sales channels and emphasis on improved customer experience in commerce; businesses focusing more on increasing innovation capacity; and growing focus on sustainability strategies and technologies, especially in the energy, transport, agricultural and industrial sectors.
Relating to that, Weber has recently commented that Romania needs to tap into the power of the European Union’s funding, and aligning its strategy to the Green Deal member states are currently pushing for. When Horváth & Partners arrived in Romania, the country was on the cusp of joining the EU – something Weber said offered “the country’s business landscape a new window of opportunity and significant development potential,” and according to him, now is the time to use that opportunity to its fullest.
“I believe that Romania must declare top priority to the full absorption of European funds available, as well as their use in areas that create long-term competitiveness,” Weber explained. “Priorities include digitalisation and renewable energy, including emerging technologies, mainly hydrogen, which should drive competitive electricity prices in about a decade and be able to provide both energy security and a major boost to the local economy.”
“It is not only the task of the authorities to draw up such a program, but also companies, including private ones, the whole business environment, which is directly interested in clarifying and finding the most appropriate answers to current challenges.”
The role of green energy was placed at the heart of the Green Deal agreement in 2020, focused on developing a competitive and sustainable economy in the new economic context affected by the pandemic. Its main targets, by 2030, are to increase energy efficiency by 33%, increase the share of renewable energy resources by 32% and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55%.
In recent years, Romania has recorded one of the highest electricity prices in the European Union on the wholesale market, having in 2018 the fourth highest price, after Cyprus, Greece and Spain – something the move to sustainability could play a key role in changing.
