[#BusinessManagement]
Selecting Consultants is like Selecting Talents: [Please Share an Example] 202304040001
Hi. This is Emily from Taiwan,
finance and accounting work background, the author of Whatsyouridea1996 blog.
This article is
under the category of：Somehting aboutBusiness Management, #Policy Design Studio,KPI,
e-#Process,#ERP, I See It This Way
Thank you for your
interest.
Content of this
article comes from my own work experience, please be invited to share yours by
comment down below. All professional consulting firms are welcome to share your workprofession and consulting service experience via my [ Experts Say ] chapter andget the opportunity to advertise for free and related special offerings (Pleaseclick to view the pop-up page).
In the companies I
worked for, we hired external business management consultants to help us in some
improvement works ( written policies implementation, service quality management,
computer system work flow implementation and update, reinforcing internal
controls and overall management etc.), after I joined the companies, the
companies have signed the service contracts with selected consulting firms or
service providers, and, in those work experience with them, this idea came to
my mind, “I
also hope could be a consultant someday; at least, I will build up an article
to share what’s happening now”, in this description, I believe you’ve
already known what happened in the environment I worked for! 😄
Regarding my
related work experience, including a consultant work in a big 4, after I made
up my mind about above decision, I also worked as a contract business management
consultant (work objectives and situation included: (1)The clients didn’t know what to improve, however,
they know they must do some business improvement, (2)policies development/documentation/work
standardization,(3)ERP implementation, (4)internal control and internal
auditing, (5)CFO enhancement plan. Are you curious about (1) and (5)?! I’m
curious, too, especially the (5), I gave it the project name due to its
consulting scope; in the beginning, they said it is to assist the company to do
“policy development” , however, after project started, I realized it was to
solve the problem between President and CFO, there was a big gap between these
two persons opinion though they have been co-working for years and the gap has
just happened and it became bigger and bigger, they needed someone to provide
independent opinion for their co-working solution…; if you hope could know the
whole story, please follow me here, or, go to the upper right hand
side Contact Emily and input “I
hope could know the story of CFO enhancement plan” into the column. Thank you!
Selecting Consultants
is like Selecting Talents, Do You Agree?!
- Selecting
consultants (firms) is like selecting talents, do you agree?!
- In selecting, what
kinds of questions we need to ask are more appropriate and no need to pay for
answers?!
- Is it always a
right thing to find a well-known consulting service firm?! It depends, some are
high service quality, and some are not necessarily the same. This article
resulted from my work experience in 3 different companies coincidentally
working with the same well-known consulting firm, its 3 different teams, and that
uncomfortable work experience inspired me to build up this sharing for you. Is
it good or bad?!
- We need to be
mentally prepared? Why?!
- You can choose Emily(me), and I’m serious, and I’m kidding sometimes; however, please consider below 7 items<= I’m serious. 😊
When your company is selecting external consultants
for business advice, please be advised to include
below items in your consideration; please comment if you have other kind of
opinion. Thank you!
1. 「Please Share an Example」: Today, we hear
this in conversation often. Talents hunting and job seeking consultants would
advise us to ask [Please share an example] in a work interview, however, this
also applies for selecting business consultants. The purpose is to ask for
their sharing work practice, the demand side can know the consultants’ work
experience, logics and resource from their sharing and understand its
experience is suitable to the company need or not. Consultants who have much
more work experience and resources may charge higher service rate, however,
less work experience with strong logic mindset consultants may work well with
senior employees as work partners and bring better work result but they need
longer service period. In this situation, please consider below 2. before
selecting your own options.
2. Try to solve
problems by yourself before considering to procure external consulting service: The purpose is to gather and define
problems and know the limit of internal work capability and manpower,
and, all the information gathered can be those interview questions when
selecting consultants ( as the request for proposal =RFP(note1)). Please be reminded that not only questions
raised by managerial level but also by work staffs in junior level need to be
considered because those would involve in [work execution] issues, and these
may cause the company to modify or give up the original work objectives.
Case: When I was doing
new business planning project R in a company I worked for, if we succeed, we
will be the No. 1 in the industry who provides that service to customers,
however, when going to detail of our work operation, we found that, there were problems
in computer system flow catching up with the new business service flow, if we do
their work alignment, we must do system reorganization or buy a new system and
the estimated cost was around ten million New Taiwan Dollars; finally, our company
gave up project R because of the uncertainty of new business income.
note1: Request For Proposal, it
is to describe what you need. I suggest you to describe them by items 1,
2,3..and just like you are communicating with someone orally, the more
detailed the better, all the consulting service providers would have the same
understanding about what you are saying after reading it, and they will also ask
questions.
3.
[Will our company
get the capability to solve OOO problems after your consulting service period?!]
+ [How you will do your service?!]：This question will
help you to get service by real experienced consulting firms or individual
consultants, this is to ensure you not only will get the answer you want but
also obtain the precious way to making decision; however, to select a
consulting firm which has a well-known brand is not always a right choice. Do you believe this idea?!
Sometimes, when consultants give advice for
solutions and the idea may seem new and interesting, however, at that moment,
the company doesn’t know how to assign its appropriate work owner for that
solution, that is work role and
responsibility issues ; in my work experience, there was an answer given
by our service provider, a global well-known brand consulting firm, their Human
Resource and Business Management consultants both answered: [ It depends on
your company rule.] , we asked again:[ If it depends on our company rule, what
service you are providing for us?!] The
consultant answered: [It is not in our service scope.] No wonder, the document
template they provided as service is my own work result in a company I
previously working for; they copied others’ work to earn money, and
coincidently met the original creator, Emily me…, I reported to our Managing
Director, however, I also advised we need to pay them related consulting fees
because our work contract with them is not balanced but no one found it in the
beginning, we can reject, however, the amount and time we need to invest later about
the fight is higher than what we will get after all.
I share this case for your reference and
consideration.
4. 「Please let us know whether the template you provided is your own work
result?」: This would help
you to know the consultant you are talking to is doing knowledge [transferring]
service (copy others’), or, they possess real consulting work capability. It is
like above 3., consultants won’t say they [directly] use others’ work result to
provide to you because all the individual original creators in companies( just
like me) would change jobs, thus, there are not many people know what the truth
is; usually, the consultants would answer:[ It is our client’s work result
under our support and service.] At this moment, I suggest you ask further
questions to have their sharing about that specific client’s work situation and
their work progress at that moment they built up the documents but not to reveal
their work industry, products and company name. All the experienced consultants would like to share and interact with
you about their successful work experience to earn your attention and get your
case; those who don’t like to share may possibly just copy others’ work and
have not really transform it as their own knowledge, or, have less intention to
win your case, and what else for not willing to share?! Non-disclosure-agreement
(NDA)?! When they provided you those documents, there are no NDA issues, right?!
5.
[What is the most
difficult thing in this situation? Why?!]: This is to
understand consultants’ after service work experience or their work practice
experience.
6.
Mentally prepared
is required, because, the findings or advice by consultants may be in opposite
direction than policies the company has just announced or made: I would like to
directly share a case for this: Company A would like
to review their overtime pay cost and manpower issues, finally, they wanted to
do work process reengineering and systemizing…etc. there were more than one
projects and they hired external consultants to support their projects work
success; in the progress of their decision making, the company didn’t notice
the frequency and volume of employees’ complaints about overtime work hours and
management situation is not decreasing according to their decision, or, the
employees don’t think positively
about all change related works. Consultants found something in common during
their interviewing employees works: Generally, senior employees or mid -level
managers think their top -level managers are lack of management work experience
and the decision they have made seems superficial and brought less expected
work result and they have no way to report this situation because the major
employees complaint contact window, HR department and HR Head, their internal
work service was not recognized and being considered as the most complaint
winner, the sour strawberry champion in the company.
On the other hand,
the company has just announced their young talents with high education
background top managers’ policy. What you will do if you are in the top
management level of this company?! What kind of business consultant service you
would like to have for this situation?!
7. 「May I know is it
possible your consulting work profession be replaced by AI?!」: I created this article on 2023/04/04, at this moment, artificial
intelligent ChatGPT is a hot topic in the world; to ask consultants candidates
or consulting firms this kind of question is not only to test their catching up
with hot topics but to understand their opinion of being replacement and their
work profession, this is useful for your consulting service and tool’s
selecting decision making; opinion varies by people, everyone has different
idea about new technology, and so does the understanding and explanation. I suggest
you also building up your own opinion for your own judgement for your best
choice and the decision making.
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