Consultants - When and When not to use them

Consultants are a resource available to all businesses and can be deployed on almost any task. I've personally had many positive experiences with a range of consultancies and the scale of the industry is testament to their value. However, sit down with a group of leaders and you won't fail to hear of negative experiences and complaints on costs... the view from further down the org chart is typically even more dire.

Being asked to make tough decisions will always put consultants in the crosshairs but leaders using them incorrectly is also a big driver of the discontent among many leaders and staff.

When not to use consultants:

- To perform basic analyses to support projects (use your internal staff to compile numbers, you're paying for expertise)

- To tell people they are being made redundant (it creates a sense of fear for future use of consultants and portrays company leadership as weak)

- On back to back to back projects (Consultants need to up-sell and you should embrace their proposals but your staff will quickly tire of seeing priority given to external highly paid staff at the expense of internal proposals and expetrise)



When to use consultants:

- Interview your team to capture current state and assumptions (They'll ask questions and get answers you'll struggle to)

- Evaluate your strategy (Senior Managers and Partners have a breadth of experience and lessons to share and are incredibly valuable sounding boards - be careful of fresh MBA grads)

- Delivering technical solutions (If you are introducing new technologies or processes that you don't understand, have a consultant pilot it in your company and assist in hiring of a full time role to sustain the implementation)


Understand what your organisation is missing, and pay for that:

The common theme across all the points above is driving towards engaging senior experienced consultants and minimizing billable hours. Many of the projects which have caused the most angst across leadership teams involve large numbers of analysts billing expensive hours. Negotiate for your staff to fill these roles to reduce costs and internalise some best-practice approach from the consultants into your staff and wider team.