Working with Consultants
A Consultant can help bring your business up to speed and give it a competitive edge. However, getting the most out of your specialist advisor requires a little bit of planning
At some time in your role as IT Manager, you are likely to reach a point at which the technology you’re dealing with doesn’t come into your areas of specialisation. Perhaps you want to implement a system which is so critical to the company that implementing it without expert advice is commercially risky or it would take up far too much of your time. There’s only one solution when this happens and that is to get a consultant in.
Getting help from consultants can be a fast way of finding the solutions you need. Consultants are the experts in their field, they can fast track you through a process you’re unfamiliar with and they can help you to troubleshoot areas that fall outside your skill sets.
They can also offer practical insight and can show you how to give your company that competitive edge. However, if you have not properlyprepared for their arrival, hiring in a consultant can turn into a fast way to waste money and time.
Effective, reliable IT systems do not happen overnight and building a trusted relationship with your consultant is not always easy. According to a survey in the US by Forrester Research, 48 percent of Chief Information Officers (CIOs) are unhappy with the service provided by consultants. To ensure that you get the most out of the consultants you hire, it is always good to do a little homework before you bring them in.
Defining the task
Firstly, identify what needs doing. You can then set a timeframe and a budget for the consultancy.
Establish your objectives and goals. They should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time limited – SMART.
You should clearly define the tasks being tackled. If you do not, you risk not solving the problem and incurring heavy charges along the way. Your consultants may stay longer than planned and costs can spiral. You should also create a brief. This will help you to choose and manage your consultants. This brief should include details of your organisation, its purpose, values, what it does, its size and structure. The brief should also describe the need or problem that has led you to consider using external consultants, what you want the consultancy to achieve, when you want the work to start and when you expect or require it to finish.
The costs of the consultancy can be defined in two ways. The brief could detail what you are prepared to pay to solve the problem and may be used to ask the consultants what they can do within the budget. Another approach is to detail your requirement in the brief and then ask the consultants to describe how they would find a solution and what it would cost.
Managing the relationship
Once your consultant is on-site, the biggest mistake you can make is to leave them alone to get on with the job in hand.
Whatever you do don’t just bring them into the office and declare to everyone ‘Here’s the IT doctor who’ll solve all our problems’ and wa k away. Help them to set up meetings, make them aware of all the resources they have access to. Spend time with them to get them up and running –otherwise they may end up spending too much time getting started. Your active involvement is crucial to the success of the consultancy. You can create a good relationship with your consultant if you communicate frequently throughout all phases of the project and you are open and honest with each other.
Establish a process for managing your relationship and monitoring progress in a project work plan, which should be set out in writing. Before the consultant starts, it is sensible to have a meeting to discuss the contract and the work plan.
In the work plan, determine:
- How often you need to meet to review progress and who the consultant reports to
- What tasks the consultant will undertake and what tasks will be undertaken by you or members of your staff to fulfil the aims of the project
- The different stages of the work, the results or deliverables of each stage and how success will be measured
- The scope for change according to review discussions
- How concerns or differences of opinion will be dealt with, including termination of the agreement
- The basic ground rules – for example, confidentiality on the consultant’s part, an agreement to raise concerns as soon as they occur and who is responsible for any risks arising from the project
In most cases it is best if the consultant reports to one person, either yourself or another nominated person. Holding regular meetings enables you to monitor progress, discuss any problems that occur and devise possible solutions.
You also need to get your expert in during the working day when other staff are in the office, and ideally when the system is functioning (or not).
Patrick Colbeck, one of Equanet’s Cisco Network Operators, remembers one enlightened IT Director asking: “Can you come and look at our network and tell us why its running slow, and can you do it on a weekend when its nice and quiet?”
Before you bring consultants in, there’s one last thing for you to consider. Good consultants are not necessarily the ones that provide you with all the latest high-tech gadgets on the market, nor are they necessarily the ones with the best technical credentials. When it comes to making the right choices to improve the efficiency of your technology or workflow processes, only a person who understands your business and its goals can help you make the correct decisions.
Even with the best consultant in the world, IT projects will often go over time or over budget. One of the reasons cited by Colbeck for this is because the company is not prepared to take the advice given. “I was once paid to look at someone’s network for several days to find out why application response was so slow. My findings were that the network was fine and not stressed at all. When I presented my findings to the IT director, he became irate as he was convinced he needed a network upgrade and was hoping my report would back this up.”
Therefore, it is essential to listen and be prepared, because consultancy is a useful and profitable experience.
