Consulting Services Delivered in Today’s Crazy World – Part 3 of 3
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A frequent question with potential clients recently is the ability to deliver value in a virtual environment. While we are providing targeted value for all our current clients virtually today, we will explore some of the most demanded services with the current economic environment in the last part of our 3-part series.
There are existing methods we use that make providing our services easily consumable and still provide huge value. We highlighted this with the first of several examples in part 1 where we covered Assessments and in part 2 with Cash Management and Forecasting types of projects. We show a few more relevant examples in this segment.
Transformation initiatives – where companies are taking advantage of the current business climate by revamping how they operate their businesses and position for large growth as the economy comes back online. These services are composed of linking the business strategy to organization change strategies, major initiative definition and prioritization and fanatic program management to drive to results. This is all supported by effective change management strategies that communicate to the existing team members that are buried in their caves around the city working remote.
These engagements are delivered via many methods previously discussed in Part 1 and they also draw on our Program and Project Management skills defined below. The engagements also require more face to face or video enabled calls especially for the Change Management techniques employed. In addition, there are typically layers of reporting/dashboards given the various audiences involved with these efforts. It is not uncommon to have 3-4 different reporting documents since these types of initiatives can have Board of Director involvement down to line manager involvement.
Some transformation initiatives are based on new business directions while some are based on the underlying technology required to enable massive change. Other transformation efforts involve Mergers and Acquisitions that require integration of company culture and organizations. Needless to say, the more complex these get, the more difficult it is to handle everything using only remote techniques.
Program and project management services – usually underpinning most of our efforts discussed above and in Part 1 is a heavy dose of program and project management services (what we are known for). This is sometimes not visible to the end client other than the final results. In most cases however, there are easily observed artifacts that can be developed and shared in a remote environment. Some examples include:
- Project charter documents – typically MS word documents with embedded diagrams and tables
- Project business cases – a combination of documents and spreadsheets
- Project Plans – can be developed with various project management software tools based on client preferences
- Risk management logs – typically MS Excel based
- Project/Program status dashboards – can be built from various reporting tools and depends on client preferences
- Status reports – standard report templates modified for client specific needs
- Issue management logs – typically MS Excel based though in some cases can be enabled by a trouble ticketing software
As we covered in our first segment, all of this is enabled by tools and work processes that have been put in place and perfected years ago. Each of our consultants operates in world of ‘have laptop, will travel’ and is accustomed to working remotely or at the client site. The common denominator is that our team is focused on the goals of the project regardless of how the work is delivered day to day. Our reputation is built on successful delivery of projects and a high level of trust with our clients. We take that trust extremely seriously.
This demonstrates with examples how our consulting projects can be delivered in today’s changing business environment and we have many more success stories beyond these. Please don’t just ask us though, ask our many clients for their views on the work our team does, how we do it and the business results we help to drive.
– Jim Wadella, Managing Member
