Many organizations struggle with the decision to hire a consulting firm to provide strategic guidance. Traditionally, strategic direction has been the domain of chief officers and vice presidents, and tactical consulting might be the area that is outsourced. So, why hire a strategic consulting firm? There are seven simple reasons.
1. Cost savings
The investment in a strategy consultant is an important decision and by doing so, you will save time and money versus doing it yourself. You do not have to recruit and hire highly skilled resources. Instead, they are on demand and can scale the solution to meet your budget. In addition, by engaging strategy consultants, you will add time back to day-to-day operations, rather than adding new projects that typically require reprioritizing your team’s job responsibilities.
2. Objectivity
Strategy consultants will contribute dynamic new approaches to your solutions by:
- Offering an outside perspective. Staff members can sometimes be wrapped up with emotion or company politics.
- Providing a fresh set of eyes. Sometimes you are just too close to the issues to see a solution.
- Delivering an understanding of how other clients have approached similar problems. This enables you to reorganize common attributes of effective solutions, applying lessons learned in applicable situations.
- Bringing unbiased, creative solutions to the table. Sometimes, these solutions have been considered by parts of the organization, but a strategy consultant brings a credibility that can push a good idea across the finish line.
- Being invested in the outcome, not in the past problems. They have a clear view of their own role in your company, how to set the right goals and milestones for progress and the specific results that will equate to a successful outcome on your project.
3. Deep expertise
With most strategy consultants having many years of experience in their fields, they bring added value in already having insights and experience in initiatives that are new and frightening to many others. They understand risks and mitigation practices and are able to bring stability and consistency during chaotic times. They bring specialized, market-leading skill sets as well as knowledge of market-leading technology. These skill sets are often not found in-house, and an experienced consultant can build your solution and train your existing staff. Consultants provide consistent, replicable results by using process-oriented and method-driven delivery practices. In fact, they are often the authors of the most successful and productive delivery methods.
4. Agility and speed
Consultants can engage immediately because their skills are already built. There is no ramp-up for training, documentation, process creation, method authoring, planning or staffing plans. They are focused on the project with no distractions; they know what they are there to do, and are not caught up in the minutia of day to day operations. Most strategy consultants follow agile business processes, which means they are able to navigate complexity with speed and clarity. Agile thinking eliminates unneeded processes and artificial boundaries to fuel a culture of collaboration, helping to focus on what matters most to clients.
5. Defined and proven methods and processes
Strategy consultants demonstrate competence and justify the cost of their services by achieving certifications such as Marketing Automation certification and PMI certification. They demonstrate to their clients that they use established methods and processes that have been refined and honed over the course of hundreds of engagements.
6. Key partnerships
Strategy consulting firms partner with all market-leading software and services providers, often partner with more than one. Further, resellers, partners, and channel partners have dedicated resources within tech companies making problem resolution faster and easier.
7. Market leadership and leading edge
Strategy consultants have the ability to choose market leaders to provide solutions for situations, environments and needs that are unique to each client. Most are not only aware of industry trends, but are often the ones setting them.
If your organization is struggling with a stagnant issue, if forward momentum has been disrupted by a lack of internal resources or disagreement and discord internally, if you don’t have time to train up your own staff and create your own intellectual capital, or if you don’t have the ability to forge deep relationships with industry-leading tech companies, then a strategy consulting firm should be a serious consideration.
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