‘Depression’, wrote Thorstein Veblen shortly after the end
of the Great Depression of 1873–96, ‘is primarily a malady of the affections of
the business men. That is the seat of the difficulty. The stagnation of
industry and the hardship suffered by the workmen and other classes are of the
nature of symptoms and secondary effects. In such “Depressing” times economists,
Government and Business class come together to help the market come out of this
phase. There are job cuts, uncertainty, stock market falling downwards. Its
like war and there is blood bath in the market and everyone is a loser. In
these hard times do you feel organization at macroscopic level, need to hire
consultants. Lets analyse together.
Consultation is not an easy job and for organizations, Outsourcing
a project definitely carries number of potential risks. Hence we can say that
control and risk mitigation are key concerns attached with outsourcing of a
project from client perspective. The next step to outsourcing will be to
introduce sound contract. Your legal advisor or legal department will clearly
play a major role in preparing solid contract.
The first step after signing the contract for consultant is to get the requirement
correct which itself is the most challenging job. Requirement is divided into 3
categories. 1. Business requirements 2. User requirements 3. Functional
requirements. Business requirements represent the high level objectives of the organization.
One can record business requirements in a product and scope document.
Functional requirement document should clearly define the
expected outcome/result of outsourcing. The non functional requirements include
standards, regulations, quality attribute goals, performance objectives,
business rules, and external interface requirements.
In any technical consulting project typical stakeholders
include
1.
Users
2.
Customers
3.
Alpha/Beta/Pilot testers
4.
Regulators
5.
Developers
Once the requirements have been defined, the question arises
as to how to meet them. There will be many meetings with all the stakeholders
and a project plan which includes list of activities will be defined after the
necessary approvals of the client. A project manager will be deployed who will
be mediator between domains of the user and his core team. In addition to these
human resource requirements, important system requirements often derive from
other devices or systems in the environment, which require some services of the
system or act to constrain the system.From all the above activities we can conclude that nothing
can beat human brain. A good resource either outsourced or have been developed
internally can define the future of the organization. A good consultant will
always be in demand because in consultancy word of mouth along with PR skills
are the key reasons to get the next assignment. Also many small medium enterprises
fail to understand the importance of consultant as they think they know all or
feel it’s expensive to hire external consultant.
Consultants are like best paid
guides who can tell whether the organization’s processes are good or bad
without getting biased hence any point of time its important for organization to
hire good consultant who can study the processes or help organization to grow
to next level. If you analyse the reason of failure of any consulting project,
it is attributed to personal characteristics of the consultant and client (e.g.
lack of skills), technical incompetence (e.g. ineffective project management),
bad consultant –client relationship and/or social political aspects of the
client organization like hidden agendas, not ready to change. If one works on
these issues, it is possible to make consultancy project successful.
Many research organisation feel that every organization should hire consultants.
Its very important for any organization whether doing well or not to have third
opinion. For organizations which are successful doesn't necessarily need to
implement all the suggestions given by consultants. They can keep it for their
reference and can monitor the growth and can use it in hard times. For other
category of organizations, not successful one - can implement the suggestions
and can see the result, because for them it will be do or die.
So guys go for it… Ask consultant’s help, let them grow your
organization to next level and create win win situation for all. When you
budget your finances, it’s important for you to keep small budget for
consulting as well. You don’t need to hire functional expertise as consultant,
you can approach your father’s best friend, your best friend or anyone whom you
trust and as leader, you feel that this person can be the best guide.
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