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Clarkston Consulting

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At a Glance

Uppers

“The people and culture, firm integrity which starts with leadership, fairness in pay and DEI, and the clear roadmap to carve out your own career path.”

“Clarkston has an outstanding culture and stewards. That starts at the top and is clearly shown by all firm leadership.”

“The people here are down to earth, committed and keep perspective.”

“Smart people, interesting projects, and a challenging/receptive work environment where I feel I have stake and say in my career development.”

Downers

“Everyone working remotely is a blessing and a challenge. I appreciate the commitment to working from home and minimizing travel for most, but not all.”

“Working in consulting can produce a higher stress environment by its nature. While the firm does its best to balance work life, each client is different and work can vary.”

“Not as much client travel and office experience, but this is across the board.”

“Siloed information. We could do better about letting people know about up and coming opportunities or trainings, but this is just difficult in a virtual environment for any firm.”

About Clarkston Consulting

Clarkston Consulting is a business and technology consulting firm serving the consumer products, retail, and life sciences markets. Besides its headquarters in Durham, N.C., the firm has offices in a handful of other U.S. cities. Clarkston Consulting was founded in 1991 to build a consulting firm focused on two things: delivering brilliant client service and being an employer of choice. 

Clarkston Consulting has focused on the consumer products, retail, and life sciences industries for over 30 years. Reflecting this targeted approach, the firm has never pursued aggressive expansion, instead applying energy to the careful cultivation of its client base. The results have borne this decision out: Clarkston's 24-year average client satisfaction rate is 97 percent (as measured by annual surveys conducted by Client Opinions). And the firm has recently added more strategic and operational consulting services to complement its implementation expertise. 

Serving up success 

Some of the firm's consumer products clients are Estée Lauder, Reynolds Consumer, Pernod Ricard, Church & Dwight, Mondelez, Mars, and Breakthru Beverage Group. Services to such clients range from strategy and innovation consulting to sales and marketing, supply chain, project and program management, and system implementations. 

In an engagement with Pladis Global, a premier chocolate and confectionary company, Clarkston Consulting was the representative to the North American business for the pilot implementation of the industry's first-ever instance of SAP Public Cloud, providing expertise in change management, project management and data. Clarkston Consulting also provided data and analytics consulting to a global beauty manufacturer and retailer to help the client develop algorithms, reports, alerts, and dashboards to improve point-of-sale transactions. Lastly, Clarkston is a leader in trade promotion management expertise and has helped a variety of consumer goods companies improve processes and implement trade promotion solutions. 

Prescribing solutions 

Within the life sciences, Clarkston works with pharmaceutical companies, diagnostics manufacturers, biotech companies, and other makers of health care products. Major clients include Pfizer, Moderna, Takeda, Gilead, United Therapeutics, Alnylam, and more; delivering services for such clients include quality and enterprise systems strategy and implementation, business transformation and technology roadmaps, M&A integration and advice, operational efficiency management, and pre-commercialization roadmaps (including ERP). 

Alnylam is a biotechnology company focused on the discovery, development, and commercialization of new therapies for genetically defined diseases. Alnylam hired Clarkston Consulting to help them with their pre-commercial readiness. Clarkston was the SAP implementation partner for Alnylam and also provided support on serialization, global safety database, Veeva eQMS implementation and Clarkston provided support for IT and commercial operations as part of their pre-commercial readiness work. 

Retail consulting

Clarkston partners with retail companies to effectively meet their most pressing industry challenges. We serve our clients through a broad suite of consulting services, including data and analytics, digital and technology, program and project management, management and strategy, innovation, mergers and acquisitions, people and change, DE&I, point-of-sale, order management, SAP, business process, the below core service areas, and more. Clarkston supports leading companies like Skechers, Reebok, Hudson by Avolta, Key Food Grocery Co-operative, and many others.

Getting the word out 

The firm participates in thought leadership in the industry through research studies, white papers, and its Clarkston Insights publications, collections of case studies, strategies, and trend-tracking pieces, which it posts on the company website. Some recent topics include the unsustainable trajectory of trade spending, strategies for leading global serialization programs, and the ROI of human capital management. Clarkston also dispatches firm partners and consultants as guest speakers for seminars and conferences around the country.

Morale makers 

Similar to its commitment to clients, the firm makes efforts to keep employee relations healthy and strong. It distributes an annual Triple-A (Ask, Act and Adopt) Employee Satisfaction Survey, which employees can take anonymously online. Clarkston also offers ample training opportunities, ranging from external classes, e-learning and lunch 'n learns, to formal and on-the-job training. Clarkston Academy and Clarkston Bootcamp are extensive training programs for new hires that are recent college graduates or that have a few years of work experience. Between 80 and 120 hours per year are available to employees for use on purely self-developmental pursuits-in addition to tuition reimbursement.

Why Work Here

Our culture and people are our biggest strength. At Clarkston, we utilize a team approach, leveraging our collective expertise and industry knowledge to solve our clients’ business challenges.

Our clients

Clarkston Consulting

2655 Meridian Parkway
Durham, NC 27713
Phone: (800) 652-4274

Firm Stats

Employer Type: Private
CEO: Tom Finegan
President: Mike Hackett
Chief Financial Officer: Faith Kosobucki
2025 Employees (All Locations): 400

Major Office Locations

National
Global

Major Departments & Practices

  • Consumer Products, Life Sciences, and Retail
  • Strategy & Innovation
  • Sales & Marketing
  • Supply Chain
  • Quality & Regulatory
  • Operational Excellence
  • Organizational Health
  • SAP Advisory and Implementation
  • Technology Advisory and Implementation
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Data & Analytics
  • Managed Services
  • Project and Program Management