What Can a Consultant Do For Your Business? Part VI
Published: 03/22/2010 by Yehuda Zimmerman
Helping Improve Products and Services
In large organizations, each team usually focuses on their own sphere of responsibility and influence. Rarely is anyone in the organization whose position requires him to focus on the product or service in a holistic manner. The following examples, using very different industries, illustrate this point:
Production Factory - In a factory, the workers on the floor are intent on performing their tasks correctly. They do not see beyond their station in the assembly line. The foremen are intent on increasing the production levels of the workers on the floor. The quality managers ensure that the final product meets specifications. The designers are focused on design without regard to production costs. The marketing people are trying to make the product look good. The salespeople are trying to get people (or organizations) to purchase the product. Managers are ensuring that the teams under them are producing efficiently. The finance people are working on ensuring that the product is profitable to the company. No one is really focused on the product as a whole.
Application Software Firm - In a large application software firm, each team of programmers is focused on its part of the system, the GUI people on the user interface, the backend people on performance, the quality team on ensuring that the application behaves as designed etc. Even the system architects are not looking at the entire system from the user's vantage - instead they are trying to ensure that the application will do what the customer demands of it. Often, it is only the documentation team that focuses on the entire system - and they are usually ignored.
A consultant can provide a customer's viewpoint of the product or service his client has to offer. He can provide an invaluable service by telling his client about the features he would like to see in the client's products and/or services and how those features should be implemented from the user's perspective.
In Conclusion
Good consultants have much to offer organizations, both large and small, and can assist their clients to lower costs, raise revenue, improve their products and services, and make sound business decisions. To be efficacious, consultants must, however, recognize the methods and qualities that make them a valuable resource. I hope that this article has gone some way in laying out these methods and qualities.
The other articles in this series address the other aspects listed in Part I of this series.
