Business and Management Consulting

Forknell Consulting provides business and management consulting to privately held and private equity-backed companies. We work across AI transformation, sales and marketing, product development and management, partnerships and corporate alliances, operations, P&L management, and mergers and acquisitions.

Every engagement is led by a senior executive with direct experience running these functions inside a growing company.

We work with established businesses across many industries. The common threads are scale and execution: enough revenue and headcount that decisions carry real consequences, and enough complexity that the leadership team cannot personally cover every function.

We work with owners, boards, CEOs, private equity sponsors, and portfolio company management teams.

The person you meet is the person doing the work.

Large firms sell you a partner and staff the engagement with consultants earlier in their careers. That model works at scale, but it can leave clients managing the very team they hired the firm to provide.

We take on a small number of engagements at a time and run each one directly. When specialist expertise is needed, we bring in people we know and manage them ourselves rather than handing you a team to supervise.

We do both, although execution is where many engagements ultimately land.

We can take ownership of a function and run it, deliver a defined project with a clear finish line, or serve as ongoing counsel while your team executes.

What we work to avoid is the outcome where a recommendation is delivered, and nothing actually changes. This is one of the most common ways consulting engagements fail.

There are three ways:

1. Embedded - We take ownership of a function or initiative and run it.
2. Project - Scope and the finish line are defined in advance, such as a post-merger integration or pricing rebuild.
3. Advisory - Your team owns execution while we provide judgment and guidance along the way.

Engagements start with a conversation about the opportunity and the situation. The right structure usually becomes clear quickly.

A few situations come up repeatedly:

• You have just closed an acquisition, and the integration needs someone accountable for it.
• A function has outgrown the person currently leading it.
• Growth has slowed, and the reason is not visible from inside the business.
• The board or sponsor wants a plan executed rather than presented.
• You are preparing for a sale, and the operation needs to hold up under a buyer's review.

It means changing how work gets done, not just buying AI tools.

Successful AI transformation starts with people and the problems worth solving. From there, we determine what should be built or changed, whether that is an AI agent, a tool, or a process, and redesign the human workflow around it until the new way of working becomes standard.

The first 100 days set the tone for everything that follows.

The work typically includes deciding which systems and processes survive from each side, combining teams and clarifying ownership, protecting customer relationships while internal attention turns inward, and establishing the reporting the new owner needs.

A common failure is treating integration as an administrative exercise and losing the operating momentum that made the business worth buying.

Yes. We are based in Fargo, North Dakota, but work with clients worldwide.

Engagements use a mix of on-site and remote work, with travel scheduled around what the situation requires. Some engagements need a consistent presence; others are run largely through periodic online meetings.

We start with a candid and transparent conversation.

Reach out using the form on this page, and we will follow up with options to meet and talk. The first discussion is about understanding your situation and determining whether Forknell Consulting is the right fit.

If we are not the right fit, we will tell you