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Vitaly Shershidsky was born in the south of the Russia and grown up in an industrial city district of Volgograd. In 1994 after accomplishing the private school “Lyceum Nr.1”, Vitaly had successfully passed the entrance exams for two faculty of Volgograd State University – mathematics and economics – and chose to study economics and management in order to find out the root courses of the USSR collapse.
Already during his study at the university, Shershidsky began to apply the acquired knowledge by starting a couple local businesses from the scratch. Among the others, he had successfully launched and managed a food manufacturing (noodle products), a repair of chemical plant facilities, a taxi service.
In 2002 Shershidsky, fully obsessed with the idea of management consulting, moved to Moscow to participate in a project to integrate two holding companies as an internal consultant. With a background both as a consultant and an entrepreneur, including raising venture capital, business development and optimization, as well as possessing an excellent academic record, Shershidsky has quickly become one of the leading Russian experts in the management consulting field.
During his first years in management consulting, Shershidsky focused on operations, working in leading Russian enterprises and took part in the reform of RAO “Unified Energy System of Russia” as a consultant at a consulting firm. He was engaged in optimization and design of business processes, developed KPIs for their control and used a process approach to fine-tune various management systems, such as planning and budgeting, procurement, production, development of new products, marketing, sales, etc., as well as contributed to implementations of various information systems.
Over the years, the focus of his efforts gradually drifted towards strategic management, as this allowed for a more fundamental approach to the improvement of a business. For a long time Shershidsky worked as a senior manager at the affiliate of “Balanced Scorecard Collaborative” in the CIS countries – the company that created the modern methodology of strategy execution. His operational experience allowed him to link the strategy to the clients’ daily activities efficiently, ensuring strategic alignment of the clients’ business. Over time, he began developing strategies that could be executed. In 2007 Shershidsky started to tipping international business, delivering his first project entirely in English, which outcomes impacted the decisions of many international investors globally
At the beginning of 2009, in the midst of the eventually reaching Russia and CIS financial crisis, Shershidsky founded “Acumen Partners Management Consulting”, which was focused primarily on mid-sized business. Innovative approaches and multifaceted experience allowed him to provide services in the full spectrum of management consulting, starting from strategic goals, gradually moving to the daily tasks of each employee, optimally adjusting the activities of the entire company. One of the innovative approaches created by Shershidsky at the company is “Strategy Execution Outsourcing” (see in “Projects Examples“) as a service.
Since 2013, Shershidsky is a partner of the European consulting company “allocate International” as well and represents its business in the CIS and Eastern Europe. He has been working internationally, providing expertise and project outcomes for leading global enterprises, corporations and financial institutions. His main focus is to develop the business of large enterprises, to find ways for their mutually beneficial cooperation. In practical terms, it is the organization of interaction between companies in different countries, with different cultures and approaches to doing business, assistance in finding a common language and creating conditions for the realization of their mutual interests.
In the course of the years, Shershidsky has been participating scores of consulting projects, acting both on a client-side (in-house) and as a traditional consultant. Many projects had quite an impact on businesses and even on industries. The organizational scale of the projects is vast as well: from a solo brief assignment to solve a unique task with author’s proprietary methodology to complex, complicated project structures with up to 35 team members. He led small project teams, held a position deputy head of an organizational department in a large corporation (18000 FTE) as well as was in charge of a management consulting department of a diversified consulting firm. Among the companies that benefited from his deliveries are such well-known ones as SvjazInvest, RAO UES, Standard&Poors, EBRD, etc.
Shershidsky studied operational management with the best professors of the State University in Volgograd, and discussed the nuances of strategy finding and its execution with Harvard’s professors near Boston. The consulting background helped him to establish a strong link between various management methods and practical, integrated solutions for both local and international businesses. Numerous methods, both from the global best practices and self-developed and field-proved, allow him to perform precise diagnostics of problems and offer the most effective and efficient solutions for almost any complex issue a modern business may face.
His research includes various areas, e.g. FMCG manufacturing process framework, performance management for a private equity firm, banking strategies in BRIC countries, fundraising strategies for private equity, value-added chains of IT hardware manufacturing, energy and utilities process framework, as well as an assessment of a strategic management level, and so on and so forth.
He currently gives professional advice to a variety of diverse people – managers and shareholders from established industry-leaders, founders of mid-sized business, as well as entrepreneurial startups. As an entrepreneur by spirit with corporate experience, Shershidsky understands the business’ needs very well. His analytical skills help to structure problems and drill down an issue to discover its roots.
Speaks natively Russian and fluent English as well as good enough German, Shershidsky is talented to find common language with different stakeholders by hearing their concerns, looking for an elegant solution, which could both to tackle all involved interests and to benefit a business in questions. What makes him stand out of the management consulting caste – are pragmatism and workability of his advices and deliverables.
When he is not completely involved in complex projects, most of his time he spends travelling, presenting seminars and workshops across the Russia, CIS and sometimes abroad.
In his spare time he runs, swims, skis, plays chess and Go, takes photographs as well collects jazz and blues records. He neither is a fan of a particular football team, nor fully understand the offside rule.