Natalie King Vice President & COO RSA Consulting Group
How has demand for your services shifted over the last year? Our clients hire us as consultants to solve a problem. We read the tea leaves, analyze the landscape, and develop strategies in order to achieve these goals. This past year brought a lot of changes, and while we are still problemsolvers, our scope of practice has evolved. We became advisers and counselors to our clients on not just public policy concerns, but also the human element of their business. Our top priority is ensuring that our clients are successful and can prosper without compromising the safety of their employees. Last year, we spent a lot of time guiding our clients through executive orders, operational changes and response strategies. Which legislative or regulatory changes have impacted your business? As a small business, my team was able to adapt and transition into remote working fairly easily, and we returned back to the office when it was deemed safe and appropriate. We appreciate that not everyone’s shift was as smooth as ours. Our client roster includes over 60 organizations, ranging from schools to large sports venues and hospitals. Each of them faced a unique challenge and there were no roadmaps or blueprints to follow. At the start of the pandemic, we spent a lot of time working through the definitions of essential and nonessential to ensure that they were classified appropriately, and then we developed individualized strategies. We represent community health centers, both at the statewide association level and locally in Tampa Bay. They are a great example that demonstrates how to absorb all the changes rapidly, respond, figure it out on the fly and be a partner to the community. They overcame the logistical challenges of offering testing and vaccines, and as a nonprofit had to find solutions to fund this. What is most exciting is that they have been recognized for the investment that they made, and what they were capable of doing: providing a safety net for our underserved communities. 50
| Invest: Tampa Bay 2021 | PROFESSIONAL SERVICES
Tampa’s most prominent sectors include defense, healthcare, manufacturing and logistics, financial services and information technology.
( ) invested in their digital strategy, were able to make this move even more efficiently, something which is reflected on their balance sheets. Other emerging innovations include the automation of menial accounting tasks, the use of blockchain technology as a new type of accounting ledger, and fully transferring to a cloud-based system, which allows for a more rapid analysis of data. One example is Unbehagen Advisors, which implemented a secure client portal prior to COVID. “it has been a game changer from a standpoint of catering to our clients all over the United States,” said Todd Unbehagen, the firm’s president and CEO. “It provided us the ability to reach out to them virtually and securely. We were able to implement processes and procedures immediately for our clients’ benefit, because we already had them in place, even with an increased volume of new client interactions. We needed to have it
