Preface
The Dilemma
The consulting field is facing a dilemma. It is one of the most attractive occupations in the professional jobs category. Internal consultants have high levels of engagement and acceptance in their companies. External consultants have the pleasure of seeing the value-add of their services in all types of organizations. However, according to a recent benchmarking survey, internals don't think they have enough training in key areas. Also, externals are often viewed as outsiders, and their projects seem poorly implemented due to a lack of ownership transfer to their clients. It does not have to be this way. This mutual frustration is sometimes associated with consulting not delivering the promised value. This is easily corrected. This book addresses the issue of maximizing the value of the consulting investment, which is achieved in four major ways. First, this book ensures that consulting is initiated, managed, and delivered with value in mind always—early, often, and as part of the follow-up. Second, it focuses on managing the consulting investment, ensuring that consulting is an efficient process and delivers high ROI. Third, this book shows you how to monitor and report the success of consulting as an entire function, or as an entire organization for external consulting. Finally, it shows you how to deliver value in a project, showing how any consulting project can be measured all the way through to the impact and the financial ROI. This relentless focus on value is the major advantage of this book.
The Foundation
This publication represents a follow-on work to Dr. Trotter's previous book, Internal Consulting Excellence,1 which provided an overview of the research and learnings from his collaboration with the Association of Internal Management Consultants (AIMC). One of the key learnings during his affiliation with this network of internal consulting leaders around the world was the importance of clearly demonstrating their value to the enterprise. This led to discussions with Dr. Jack Phillips and Dr. Patti Phillips of the ROI Institute on incorporating their comprehensive methodology into a jointly authored book focusing on enhancing the value of internal consulting through the development and deployment of a comprehensive performance measurement system.
For two decades the ROI Institute has provided consulting services, now in over 60 countries through 41 partners. In addition, the ROI Institute teaches consultants, both external and internal, methods of delivering business value and measuring success. As part of this, they have built their own consulting network with the ROI Institute and have developed several publications to support consulting, including a best seller from McGraw-Hill, How to Build a Successful Consulting Practice.2
William Trotter brings many years of consulting experience, primarily focused on internal consulting. Bill is the managing director of the Association of Internal Management Consultants. He brings a wealth of experience on how to make consulting successful, effective, and efficient. Through AIMC, Bill works with internal consultants (and numerous external consultants with whom they partner) all over the world to help them become more effective at what they do. This new book combines the best thinking of the ROI Institute and AIMC.
This book is not about how to start a consulting business, market consulting services, or address the legal issues of consulting—many other books do that already. This book is about delivering value from consulting and maximizing the value for the client. But delivering value is more than just measuring the outcomes and ROI, it is about organizing your consulting practice internally and/or externally to deliver value. Projects should begin with the end in mind with clear business connections. Individuals involved in the project must focus on business contribution throughout the process. And yes, at the end, there should be a clear connection between consulting and a business contribution up to and including the financial ROI.
The Flow
The book starts off with early chapters describing the opportunity for consulting, how the field has evolved, how it has grown, some of the key challenges, and issues. This clearly shows the importance of consulting as an integral and permanent part of organizational landscapes. Next, the book begins the journey of maximizing the value, by focusing on how the value is delivered throughout the process—from the beginning of the project to the end. The book explores how the function of consulting and the external consulting practice is managed with value in mind, with value expressed as efficient, effective, and even the financial ROI. The book then moves into capturing the value of the entire function, representing the macro view of the consulting process. This shows how to report results to senior executives, so they can see collectively how well consulting is working, the value it is adding to the organization, and how it connects to critical issues and business outcomes. Finally, a major part of the book shows how to measure the impact and ROI of consulting projects. Using the ROI methodology, the most used and documented evaluation system in the world, this book takes those who are ready step-by-step through the process and shows how to make it work, how to produce the results, and use the results. Finally, this book caps off with a chapter focusing on how to report results to the proper audience and use that data to drive improvement in the future.
For those providing consulting services within their company or public sector organization and external consultants who want to work effectively with clients, this book provides highly practical insights into how to maximize the value of their work and capitalize on future opportunities. All of the material provided here is based on proven best practices from both internal and external consulting organizations.