Latest Reports

Building Audience Trust: The Winning Strategy for Successful Speakers
Synergy CEO provides time-honored trust-building strategies to a packed audience of emerging and established speakers, coaches, and entrepreneurs on August 27, 2009. Link to audio replay.

Keys To The Golden Door - 10 Steps to Success For Women and Minorities in Business
Researchers from the Atlanta business consultancy, The Hackett Group, surveyed 50 companies with median revenues of $7 billion and a median procurement spend of $3 billion (Wall Street Journal, August 2006). They found that firms that 'focus heavily on supplier diversity' generate a 133 percent greater return on procurement investments than the typical business. In these economic times, those numbers can not be ignored.

Breakthrough - Double Your Brand Equity in an Uncertain Economy - Part I
In a faltering economy, Brand Trust is the most powerful tool corporations, nonprofit organizations, and even individuals, posses. To establish a trusted brand means more than to present pretty logos and fancy slogans. Your brand foundation should be one that is authentic; built on the integrity of your products and services, and recognized for the passion and value you and your organization bestows upon the world.

How to Build a Strong Brand in a Weak Economy
Let's get the bad news over with: To say that the U.S. economy is facing the most challenging economic time since the Great Depression is not an overstatement. Last week, employers shed almost 600,000 jobs. Today, 11.6 million Americans are out of work. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate has officially risen to 7.6%.

Minority Business of the Year
Synergy International wins Minority Business of the Year from the Northern Ohio Minority Business Council in 2005!

Latest News

Cleveland’s New I-90 Innerbelt Bridge: ODOT Makes History With Estimated $67.5 Million in Subcontracting Opportunities for Northeast Ohio Disadvantaged Businesses

July 20, 2010

The Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) is providing opportunities to disadvantaged businesses in Northeast Ohio for nearly $67.5 million in construction, supplies, trucking and professional services contracts. The work is for the new I-90 Innerbelt Bridge project. These business opportunities reflect a Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE) participation goal of 15 percent of the estimated $450 million design-build project. In an extraordinary move, ODOT has set the aspirational DBE participation goal to $90 million, or 20 percent of the project.

Synergy CEO Recognized as One of NAWBO's Top 10 Women Business Owners in Northeast Ohio

May 10, 2010

Dr. Rachel Talton has been named a recipient of one of the Top 10 Women Business Owners of Northeast Ohio awards by the Cleveland chapter of the National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO).

Synergy Senior Consultant Highlight: Dr. Beth Fitz Gibbon

May 4, 2010

Dr. Beth Fitz Gibbon, a Senior Consultant with Synergy, is a practitioner in strategy, research, marketing, new business and new product development. She has consulted with and held senior management positions at Fortune 500 corporations, small and medium enterprises, and non-profits. Fitz Gibbon earned her doctorate in Business Management at Case Western Reserve University, where her research focused on the strategic outsourcing of innovation and its implications for long term competitiveness. She holds an MBA in International Marketing from Emory University and a BA in English and Psychology from Rutgers University.

Social Media: Swimming in new Marketing Waters

May 4, 2010

Social media has forever changed the way businesses market goods and services. The use of blogs, LinkedIn, Twitter, video-sharing sites, Facebook, and other social networking tools is growing exponentially, with interested parties both contributing and voraciously consuming content.

With Trust as the Foundation, Here are Six Steps to Effective Collaboration

March 3, 2010

TRUST is the critical component many organizations miss when designing corporate strategy. It's one of those things we think we understand - yet we continually take it for granted. Toyota's recent woes are an important case study in the significance of building, driving, and maintaining trust in order to maintain profits. Collaborative engagement is one of the many positive deliverables gained from building trusted stakeholder relationships. One of our partners in TRUST, Christine Zust, found this piece today. Although the authors use a limited definition of trust (herein defined as "integrity," not the scientific definition of trust: i.e. competence, benevolence AND integrity), we hope you find article and the study valuable!