One on One with DLC's Tom Sweeney

Every day, finance and accounting professionals consider careers in consulting but often have second thoughts when confronted with the reality of long hours and extensive travel. One highly successful alternative model is DLC, a finance and accounting professional services firm. The firm currently employs about 150 people across offices in California, Chicago and Dallas and has a five-year plan to more than triple the size of the business. To learn more, Consulting's One on One sat down with DLC's CEO Tom Sweeney.

Consulting: What's unique about DLC?Sweeney: We only hire Big 4 CPAs and/or Top 25 MBAs with hands-on functional experience in Fortune 1000 companies. Any number of firms offer assistance with a similar menu of services [financial planning and analysis, financial accounting and reporting, financial systems implementation, etc.], but it's the intersection of our unique employment model and our unique operating model that drives our value proposition. In contrast to our model, the consulting arms of Big 4 hire people right out of business school or the assurance practice whom, often, lack industry experience. All of our practitioners have extensive experience executing work in the complex environments of the Fortune 1000.

Consulting: There are staffing firms that offer industry veterans to help run a finance or accounting group on an interim basis. How does DLC differ from those firms?Sweeney: Generally, those firms only pay their employees when they are billable. DLC consultants are salaried employees and are paid whether they are on a project or not. Among several other elements of the model, our consultants also have one year employment agreements and are compensated for hours billed in excess of 40 per week. These benefits, in addition to our local deployment model, provide our clients with increased consultant focus and commitment to delivering satisfying project results.