Kerkhoff Consulting was again awarded the title "Best of Consulting" by German business magazine Wirtschaftswoche. Once a year, the German weekly business news magazine votes for the best consultancies by evaluating the quality of consulting work with their clients. This year, the consultancy came in second in the contest.

"Three years in a row, our company received an important award for our quality in consulting", said Gerd Kerkhoff, Managing Director and founder of Kerkhoff Consulting. "We are meeting our claim as a quality leader."

In 2011, Kerkhoff Consulting had applied for the "Best of Consulting" award with a project at KACO new energy GmbH (KACO for short). KACO GmbH from Neckarsulm is a specialist for the production of photovoltaic inverters and has sales of more than € 300 million per year. The objective for the Kerkhoff consultants: The modelling of the whole supply chain in order to increase the product output. "Due to these measures, our sales increased by more than 50 percent", said Jens Wagner, Chief Procurement Officer (CPO) of KACO. "The project has been a complete success for us."

In its competition "Best of Consulting", the magazine Wirtschaftswoche elected Kerkhoff Consulting as leading consultancy for supply chain management.

On behalf of Wirtschaftswoche, the study "Best of Consulting" was carried out by Wissenschaftliche Gesellschaft für Management und Beratung (WGMB - Scientific Company for Management and Consulting). In three rounds Kerkhoff Consulting was able to win against 70 competitors.

In a first round, clients were interviewed in terms of their satisfaction, and a project was evaluated. In round two, a special advisory council consisting of professors from well-known schools of economics determined the three best consultancies in their respective category. Finally, the champion was selected by a jury consisting a.o. of Prof. Dr. Dietmar Fink (FH Bonn-Rhein-Sieg) and Roland Tichy, Editor-in-Chief of Wirtschaftswoche.

In 2009, Kerkhoff Consulting was elected "Hidden Champion des Beratungsmarktes" (Hidden Champion of the Consulting Market) and thus beats the top management consultancies McKinsey, Roland Berger and the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) in the disciplines of purchasing and procurement.

Benchmarking versus top consultancies was established in this study for which the companies could not apply themselves. The result: In the evaluation by German managing directors and board members, Kerkhoff Consulting ranks first – far ahead of BCG, McKinsey and Roland Berger.

The "Hidden Champions" study was performed for the third time in 2009 by Professor Dr. Dietmar Fink (FH Bonn Rhein-Sieg) and the Wissenschaftliche Gesellschaft für Management und Beratung (Scientific Society for Management and Consulting). A total of 249 board members, managing directors and top-level managers were interviewed for the study. Excerpts thereof were published in the 6/2009 issue of CAPITAL, a German business journal.