How can consultants help leaders get buy-in in difficult environments?
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Module 5 Overview
Topics
- Change Management
- Cultural Change
- Crisis Management
Learning Outcomes
By the end of this week, students will be able to:
- Evaluate the process of developing, establishing, and marketing consulting services; the functions of consulting; and consulting practices and techniques.
- Examine key factors and concepts related to consulting engagements, and assess and integrate the interrelationships.
- Evaluate and present assessment of issues and organizational challenges from the perspective of a consultant.
- Assess and align individual strengths, weaknesses, knowledge, skills, aptitude, and goals with consulting opportunities and the processes and interventions involved in the consulting domain.
Read & Review
- Weiss (2011): Chapter 12
- Week 5 PowerPoint
- Week 5 Lecture Notes
Module 5 Lecture Notes
Managing Your Services
- Key Findings
- Business climate growth: Consulting firms in North America and Europe are bullish for the future revenue is up 41%.
- Focus on the customer: Firms need to gain deeper visibility and the capacity to manage the lifecycle of the customer, project, and employee.
- Customer lifetime value is seen as the most important KPI by 41% of firms managing technology.
- Consulting firms are moving from a build-your-own approach to state-of-the-art cloud solutions
- 73% of firms are moving to the cloud.
- How to Prepare for Growth
- Act now.
- Use detailed analytics.
- Leverage skills and match client and prospect needs.
- Understand metrics / business drivers and capitalize on them.
- To maximize profits, the consulting business model requires constant diligence through proactive management of a long list of key metrics including:
- Utilization
- Project profitability
- Realization
- Build a metrics-driven business.
- Give management access to real-time information, and support the ongoing decision process.
- Key Business Drivers
- Operations (project and employee lifecycle)
- Business visibility – Making better business decisions
- Finding new opportunities (new clients and new service offerings)
- Focusing on the customer lifecycle
- Lifecycle Approach
- The three lifecycle processes of customers, projects, and employees are the core of a successful consulting business.
- Each must be managed with trusted operating metrics as well as a workflow that fits across the complete lifecycles.
- Prospect to customer (and ongoing client), project proposal to completion, and employee hire to retire
- Firms need to gain deeper visibility and the capability to manage each lifecycle for firm success.
- Increase Visibility
- Make better business decisions – Modernizing IT systems can provide business visibility into the key operating metrics tied to the customer-project-employee lifecycle.
- Get IT systems that “fit” your business – There are deeply verticalized/specialized systems available “off the shelf” that are more effective and efficient than building your own systems.
- Simply put, they “fit” your business better, they are maintained and updated by an expert, and they free up your resources to focus on critical business activities.
- Find New Growth Opportunities
- Find and grow the “right” business. – Build new offerings and find new opportunities needs.
- Establish a process that leverages operating and market data to support building the “right” services.
- Eliminate unprofitable offerings, and grow the business by expanding into existing clients and into adjacent offerings’ clients.
- Firms need a highly evolved new service introduction process with underlying IT systems to take advantage of growth opportunities.
- Get a complete and integrated lifecycle view of your business so you can make “better” business decisions.
- Gain deeper visibility and the capability to manage the lifecycle of the project.
- Maximize the value of clients through systems that provide a lifecycle view of the client and key client metrics.
- Are In-House Systems Ineffective?
- Across the board, many firms continue to develop and manage IT systems, even though the financial and business advantage of buying systems is an accepted approach and has many advantages.
- This trend was first observed in a previous global survey of consulting firms 2 years ago and continues to be commonplace.
- In-house developed systems are often ineffective, difficult to manage and upgrade, and in general, not built using current technology.
- Developing and maintaining your own IT systems takes business resources away from business-critical activities.
- Best Consulting Firms Use Industry-Specific Systems
- A surprising number of firms (potentially over 80%) do not have industry-specialized financial and project systems in place.
- This is despite the demonstrated advantage that they can deliver over generic financial management and customer management systems.
- Despite the critical nature of resources in a consulting business, most firms do not have HCM and talent-management systems.
- Firms do not have the systems to manage the customer-project-employee lifecycle.
- Cloud Is the Future
- 73% of consulting firms are moving to the cloud.
- The cloud provides many firms an obvious route to app modernization that helps firms move scarce resources into business-critical areas while solving business visibility challenges with new, modern IT systems.
- This also helps to address firms’ priorities by providing ways to more effectively manage the customer, project, and employee lifecycles.
- Network and Client Server Architecture
- Network
- Client-server architecture
- The Future for HR Professionals
- The future for careers in HR seems brighter than ever.
- Firms need to seek balance between attracting, motivating, and retaining the very best talent and keeping costs as low as possible.
- Finding such a balance requires HR leaders who have a deep knowledge of the business combined with knowledge of HR issues, tools, processes, and technology.