A case for consultants?

Are you planning on using a consultant to help in the implementation of a technology project? Be warned: effective, reliable IT systems do not happen overnight, and building a trusted relationship with your consultant will not be easy.

It is a growing problem – according to a US survey conducted by analyst Forrester Research, 48 per cent of chief information officers (CIOs) are unhappy with the service provided by consultants.

Such disappointment surprises few people in the IT industry, says Clive Longbottom, service director at analyst Quocirca.

‘People are almost never happy with their consultants,’ he says. ‘There has always been a perception that consultants overcharge, underdeliver, and can make a bad situation even worse.’

It is tempting to believe that all consultants are one step away from being career criminals, but in reality there are bad seeds in any profession. And it is important to recognise that disappointment is not an inevitable consequence of working with consultants: up to 51 per cent of Forrester’s respondents said they expected to increase spending on professional services during 2006.

Since completing its SAP rollout in 2005, the Scottish Agricultural College has been using its experiences to help other education institutions across the UK with similar implementations.

IT managers from the college have worked with universities at Newcastle, Leeds, and Warwick on SAP projects. Managers also collaborate regularly with colleagues through the Higher Education Resource User Group and the Public Sector User Group.

So how do you find the good consultants? The first step is selecting a short list of between eight and 10 potential suppliers with the right competencies to solve your particular business problem, says Christine Adams, a research vice president with analyst Gartner.

‘You need to know if you want actionable advice, strategic market knowledge or a specific task completed, because few consultants will cover all bases,’ she says.

The right supplier should be able to demonstrate a good knowledge of both your industry and your particular business issue; there is, for example, little point in hiring a consultant for their knowledge of the utilities market if they have never worked on a security project. Short-listed candidates should have proven technical expertise, preferably in organisations comparable with your own.

In an increasingly crowded market, it is also worth checking that your chosen consultant can offer truly expert, independent advice. Some consulting firms are really hardware firms with a token consulting business, while others may lack the resources to manage large projects.

Adams says organisations need to know if consulting is the core business of their chosen supplier, and how it keeps people trained in business and technology issues. ‘Ask if they have research and development, think tanks, or other things that keep their people on the leading edge,’ he says.

Having selected a supplier, the next step is to agree a project definition. Poor definition is the single most common reason for consulting relationships going wrong, says Andrew Parker, a vice president with Forrester Research.

‘Most businesses are extremely poor at telling consultants exactly what they need,’ he says. ‘It is only at the end of the project you realise that the reason you’re not satisfied is that you were unclear about what you expected.’

Defining a project might sound straightforward, but it is easy to miss out vital information that the consultant needs to do his job effectively, says Dana Stiffler, a research analyst with AMR.

To ensure that you are adequately defining the terms of engagement, Stiffler recommends spending time at the outset creating a document that defines project drivers and owners, scope, capabilities and policy.

Defining drivers and owners entails asking who is responsible for the problem and its resolution. You must also consider what the primary business drivers and desired outcomes are. Once you have defined these, look in more detail at how the engagement will be carried out. How many divisions, processes and people will be affected, and over what period of time? What is the budget?

Finally, Stiffler advises clients to look at how a consulting engagement fits into the wider technology strategy.

How does legacy technology affect this project, and who is responsible for supporting those systems? Will a service provider manage them, or is it better to own everything?

Once your consultant is on-site, the biggest mistake you can make is to leave them alone to get on with the job, says Quocirca’s Longbottom.

‘Don’t just walk them into the office, tell everyone “Here’s John”, and walk away,’ he says.

‘Help them to set up meetings, make them aware of all the resources they are able to access, and get them up and running – otherwise you end up paying them to reinvent the wheel.’

During a project, Longbottom advises setting up regular review points and ad hoc meetings at least once a week. Although it might be difficult to find the time to do this, it is important.

‘Everyone has a job to do, and it is not easy finding an hour every week to sit down with the consultant,’ he says.

‘But if you don’t find the time you could easily find out, five months into a six-month project, that the consultant feels he needs another six months to complete the work.’

Even with the best consultant in the world, IT projects will often go over time or over budget for other reasons.

The important thing is to learn from mistakes and apply those lessons to future projects.

£225m bill for IT consultants

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