Consulting Know-hows !!

By S.Suren

• To be a good consultant only technical skills will not do, presentation and people management skills are vital. It’s also good to keep these skills polished since research show that there is a growing demand for consultants with good soft skills rather than just technical skills. 

• Users need to be educated about the benefits of an ERP solution mainly that an ERP is not necessarily going to reduce their work by a large margin but is going to help them organize and structure business processes.

• A business application is not designed to cater to user inefficiencies. Do not expect the system to validate and check each and every transaction the user enters into the system. Golden rule in any business application that processes data – “Junk IN, Junk OUT”

• A good consultant should be willing to teach and educate the users on the system functionalities, no matter how many times the user asks. Remember a consultant’s role involves that of a trainer and in some cases maybe even a mentor.

• “Do not jump the gun” – this phrase comes in handy to bring back the enthusiastic project team inline into the present scope of the project than let them into beginning to customize a solution to fit the user needs even before considering the possibilities.

• “Shotgun for a mosquito” – I came across this when used by one customer. Who in his opinion understood the solution proposed to be something of a larger scale than that needed to solve the issue at hand. I’m sure this if used humorously will guarantee some laughs.

• “Reinvent the wheel” – It’s always ok to use something that has already been done to cater to a requirement, than wanting to do something from scratch just to keep yourself busy and for the sake of doing something in the presence of the client. Some people call it as not being innovative, well my answer to that is, “if we all looked to reinvent the wheel, we all would still be rolling round shaped stones,so to speak literally ".

• Not all issues reported by users are user issues; some are the trainer’s issue who taught them. So when you get to train someone make sure you say them exactly the way it is, and if you do not know something its always advisable to keep that area for later (after you have mastered it) than just explain something remotely close to the area which could confuse the user.

• “Freeze the base” – It only common that during the beginning of the project the projects teams are all enthusiastic about the project and beginning envisioning project deliveries that are way beyond the initial project scope. There is no one to be blamed here since this is common thing at the start of the project, only as the project is going forward do the team members involved begin to identify the deliveries that need to be delivered and can be done given the time and budget of the project. This is where it is very important at the very beginning itself to not get carried away with the project team and make sure that the basic functionality base of the project deliverables is concentrated on first.

• “Scope Seep“– This is a new term out there. It was coined by Alan Weiss. It refers to situation when the consultants puts himself in a position where he wants to prove something which he need not, thereby in the process beginning to provide more than what was asked for and unconsciously leading to the scope broadening (known as Scope Creep). A good consultant will stick to what is most important to the clients and make sure that that is followed and implemented perfectly. 

Hope you found this information useful !!

Have a nice day !!

suren@erparena.com