Words from our CEO – Annual report 2022

Another year has passed, and another leap has been taken on the journey of going from challenger to a benchmark in our industry. 2022 was pivotal for ARC Arise Consulting (ARC), proving the multi-brand concept in the Nordics, continuing with strong organic and acquired growth, delivering an enormous amount of value for our incredible clients, and branching out to The Netherlands.

We strongly believe in keeping cutting-edge competence and connected culture within each company allowing individuals to grow within their own company. At the same time, we invest in a common culture encourage talent to move between ARC companies, resulting in natural bridges, personal development, succession, and perhaps most importantly – seamless collaborations across ARC.

During 2022, we had over 130 clients whom we worked with together across ARC companies, making the majority of our total net revenue from joint ARC deliveries. While having 35% organic growth in 2022 and 77% legal growth is mind-blowing, my proudest achievement this last year is bringing together the best and most passionate individuals under one roof. With ARC, we’ve set out to challenge old truths and established mindsets— always with high integrity, a value-driven approach, and outside-the-box thinking.

With agile change infused in our DNA, we’re building a ground-breaking business with fantastic people at the heart of it. Let’s dig into a few specific milestones we achieved throughout 2022: To complement our value offering in Sweden and Norway, and to realize our ambition of expanding outside of the Nordics, we added 8 new family members to ARC throughout the year. In Sweden, we had the honor of welcoming BLCK Communication (communication and advertising agency), Curious Mind (copy and content agency), Kreationsbyrån (development and tech agency), and Mission Anew (sustainability and impact agency).

In Norway, we had the opportunity of complementing our already skilled data-driven digital sales consultancies with design, brand, and packaging competence with world-leading agencies Heydays (brand and design agency) and Goods (packaging and sustainability agency).

And as a critical milestone, we validated our concept of ARC outside of Scandinavia by having a strong presence in the Netherlands with an amazing starting point by having Fabrique (digital design agency) and Q42 (digital product development) join the band.

Next to this, and in response to the strong demand for sustainable practices from clients, employees, and society, we have continued to make key investments to integrate sustainability into our way of working. We have strengthened our value offering and competence by adding Mission Anew and Goods and delivered several projects with sustainability as a key component. We believe that digitalization and innovation are key to solving many sustainability issues, making ARC more relevant than ever.

In the last quarter of 2022, we saw some hesitance in the market regarding taking business decisions and making larger investments, which resulted in a small decline in the demand for our services. We believe this is directly connected to the macro-financial climate and need for cost control and not the real demand for our services.

Subsequently, it is my firm belief that we are now stronger than ever and very well-positioned to continue driving our clients’ growth agenda as well as our own journey toward establishing a new benchmark.

Today, we are 1200 dedicate and passionate employees with offices in Oslo, Gothenburg, Malmö, Stockholm, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and the Hague. We will keep our momentum and delivery capacity going into 2023 despite a somewhat hesitant market and our focus will be steered towards identifying and recruiting for key roles.

One defining moment from 2022 was during ARCON, our yearly conference, where we took almost 1000 of our employees to Visby, Gotland. Upon arrival, a sea of ARC-branded bicycles was waiting for us to kick off this amazing event where we can strengthen our common culture, share knowledge, and have some fun together.

Also, with ARCademy, our concept for onboarding sessions, courses, and training such as leadership training, knowledge exchange sessions, and programs — we boost productivity and self-improvement. We proudly ended the year with an eNPS score of 36.

All that said, I’m very proud of our talented employees, and our great clients — those just kicking off their journey with us as well as those who have been with us over time — a true testament to our culture, high-value deliveries, and winning model. I can’t wait to continue with our dynamic and reward- ing plans for growth as we become the benchmark of our industry by making our clients the benchmark of theirs.