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Navigating Change & Challenge: Lasting Lessons from 2021 and What’s Coming in 2022

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At the beginning of 2021, the world was pushing on from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, attempting to return to a state of normalcy while balancing unpredictable challenges. Now, looking forward to 2022, we’re preparing for exponential growth and progress ahead, as well as anticipating the need for organizations to be adaptable with more changes on the horizon.

As 2021 comes to a close, we want to outline the major trends we witnessed in 2021 and how we plan to learn from them, as well as our organization’s major successes and how we plan to preserve that momentum as we enter a new year. 

Thriving in a New Market

The market trends we witnessed in 2021 were universal and felt by companies in every industry. Many of the prominent topics in global news directly applied to DLC’s business – supply chain issues, shifts in the labor force, and financial trends including further automation and transformation, private equity prominence, and mergers and acquisitions. DLC has grown and learned through our broadened exposure to current issues and our proven ability to tackle our clients’ real-world problems in this new environment. 

The shift to remote work has been a major change for all organizations. DLC has been able to turn this change into an advantage as we have seen that remote work has had a positive impact on outcomes and results for our clients. In 2021 we have seen the benefits of being more location flexible because we’re able to find the best consultant for the specific project – outside of geographic bounds. 

We have also seen increasing adoption and effective deployment of collaboration and efficiency-focused technologies. Technology such as automation and electronic data interchange (EDI) are some of our greatest assets when working in a remote environment, and we plan to continue to focus on development and adoption in this area. 

In 2022, we expect to see many remote clients shifting back to partial or fully onsite work, and we are prepared to make that shift as our clients’ needs change.  

Promising Growth for Consulting

Another prominent trend we witnessed this year was the increased number of working Americans who resigned from their roles – either in hopes to find a higher-paying and more flexible position or to leave the labor force altogether. In many instances, we were able to help our clients by providing staff and leadership stability in an uncertain talent environment. 

DLC grew more than we anticipated in 2021 and our sales cycle shortened to keep up with the urgent and dynamic demand from our clients. Despite an increase in demand, we remained committed to keeping the bar high with the quality of our services. DLC is a credential-focused, high-quality consulting firm, and we didn’t let 2021’s growth opportunity distract us from our quality promise. 

Our business model is uniquely positioned to greatly benefit organizations who are seeking expertise in seasoned finance and accounting professionals – our employees are CPAs with Big Four experience or MBAs from top business schools with finance and accounting experience at Fortune 1000 companies. 

Our consultants are also permanent DLC employees, which means a greater quality guarantee and more long-lasting partnerships to our clients. We analyze our clients’ needs and distill them into required tasks and skillets, then deploy consultants whose training, skills, and experience best match the project. DLC is uniquely positioned to serve clients well in the current dynamic and challenging talent environment. 

Predictions for 2022

We see these trends continuing into 2022 and, in some cases, accelerating. With many companies aiming to reopen offices after the New Year, we’re anticipating some level of disruption as employees readjust to working in a full-time or hybrid office environment.  

2022 will be a very active time for transactions. More acquisitions are expected to occur in the next year, so a key area of focus will be operational scaling – making sure organizations that are growing fast can keep up with themselves. Many of our clients will be working on supply chain optimization to shake off some of the issues caused by backlogs over the past year.  

2022 is already shaping up to be a productive and project-filled year. Need help with where to start? Reach out to DLC today to jumpstart your financial, accounting and managerial plans. 

About the Authors

Marcia Ayala

Marcia joined DLC in 2006 and now serves as Managing Director for the Chicago market, where she is responsible for new business development, talent acquisition, talent retention and the overall operations of DLC’s Chicago office. She’d previously served as Client Account Director, where her responsibilities included consulting as well as sourcing, managing, and leading client engagements. She has over 20 years of finance and accounting experience working with both Fortune 500 and privately held businesses concentrated in healthcare and pharmaceuticals, consumer and industrial products, education, insurance, and financial services. Marcia is a CPA and a Project Management Professional (PMP). Her consulting focus has centered on acquisition integration, due diligence support, purchase accounting, carve-outs, and divestitures, shared services, FP&A, business unit reporting, and project management.

Marcia joined DLC in 2006 and now serves as Managing Director for the Chicago market, where she is responsible for new business development, talent acquisition, talent retention and the overall operations of DLC’s Chicago office. She’d previously served as Client Account Director, where her responsibilities included consulting as well as sourcing, managing, and leading client engagements. She has over 20 years of finance and accounting experience working with both Fortune 500 and privately held businesses concentrated in healthcare and pharmaceuticals, consumer and industrial products, education, insurance, and financial services. Marcia is a CPA and a Project Management Professional (PMP). Her consulting focus has centered on acquisition integration, due diligence support, purchase accounting, carve-outs, and divestitures, shared services, FP&A, business unit reporting, and project management.

Dak Gilinsky

Dak Gilinsky

Dak Gilinsky joined DLC in January 2018 as Managing Director for the Los Angeles market. In this role he oversees the Los Angeles DLC Sales team and is responsible for account management, business development, talent acquisition and retention for the consultant bench and internal roles, as well as overall management of market performance. Dak applies a broad knowledge of various industries and functions developed during his 9+ years in professional services, including management consulting, finance and accounting, and legal. He knows the LA market intimately, and has served many of the market’s top companies.

Previously, Dak helped to launch the Los Angeles office of Axiom, a leading provider of legal services. He then spent two years in management consulting, serving F-100 technology clients. In 2013, he was tasked with launching the Business Talent Group’s West Coast consulting practice. During his time with BTG Dak established relationships with corporate development, strategy, and operations groups at 50+ Fortune 1000 clients along the West Coast, driving rapid growth with high client satisfaction. Dak is a SoCal native, a lover of all things outdoors and a frequent traveler. He received his BA/BS from UC Berkeley (with honors) and pursued additional accounting and finance education at UCLA.

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Marcia joined DLC in 2006 and now serves as Managing Director for the Chicago market, where she is responsible for new business development, talent acquisition, talent retention, and the overall operations of DLC’s Chicago office. She’d previously served as Client Account Director, where her responsibilities included consulting as well as sourcing, managing, and leading client engagements. She has over 20 years of finance and accounting experience working with both Fortune 500 and privately held businesses concentrated in healthcare and pharmaceuticals, consumer and industrial products, education, insurance, and financial services. Marcia is a CPA and a Project Management Professional (PMP). Her consulting focus has centered on acquisition integration, due diligence support, purchase accounting, carve-outs, and divestitures, shared services, FP&A, business unit reporting, and project management. Prior to joining DLC, Marcia was the Chief Accounting Officer for a GTCR portfolio company where she led the finance and accounting integration related to the purchase of 11 businesses. Marcia began her career in audit at Arthur Andersen and also held finance positions at Kraft Foods and Harley-Davidson Financial Services. She received her Masters of Business Administration in Finance from the University of Chicago – Booth School of Business, her Masters of Science in Accountancy from DePaul University, and her Bachelors degree from DePauw University.