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“The Great Unknown” Called Consulting

[TREND, September 20th 2007]

  
Everyone has probably heard a few jokes about consultants. Some are longer than others, but the message is always the same. For example: A man in a hurry asks a consultant passing by the time. He looks at his watch and replies “Half past seven”. Why do so many people question the true benefit of consultants? Are consultants really useful? What is the essence of this “great unknown” for many people?

 

We talked to Juraj Lott, senior manager of the leading consulting and IT company Centire, s.r.o., with over 13 years of experience in the field of business consulting, outsourcing, Euro-consulting and information technology.      

  

To answer your question in the introduction, personally I divide the results of consulting projects into two groups: projects targeted in priority at the real use in practice of the results by the client, and then projects whose conclusions are to a great extent general or too difficult to put into place or else not understood at all by the client himself. For our projects, we mainly try to make sure our conclusions are from the point of view of our client really flat out along the whole range and the associations are understood and accepted, because in this case they can also be put into practice and our client really does decide to implement them. I am convinced that people who have a negative opinion of consulting have gained this opinion based on bad experiences with projects whose results were unusable in practice and then ended up being pushed to the back of desk drawers.

   

From my point of view, the key to a successful cooperation which is really of benefit to the client is mutual trust, high quality professional communication, a high level of specialisation and reliability. To a large extent, consulting is about trust. In the case of a new client, this means persuading him with specialist arguments and references that we are able to bring something tangible which can really help – building trust. At the end of a successful project, the trust naturally deepens; the longer we work together, the more our mutual trust is built on its own particular experiences. Without mutual trust, consulting cannot take place. As consultants, we penetrate into the depths of business, into the very essence of what vitally influences the given organisation, we find out very sensitive information about the given organisation. Without a deep level of knowledge of the client, no advice can be given; without trust, we could not have access to the information and our advice would remain superficial and without real added value.

 

  • A view from outside is always of benefit.

People often don’t realise at all that certain associations can be found behind everything. And this is one of the very levels that consulting brings with it: a certain view detached from the specific problem or situation which cannot be found unless someone thinks in terms of associations based on previous experience. As consultants, we can have an independent view; we are not burdened by associations which are often useless but which in-house people always take into account when making decisions. We have a clear head, unburdened by the past of the given organisation. We ask questions about things which have often been in place for years but no-one has asked for many years: Why is it so? Why is it done in this way? What is the reason behind it? The answer is often: because that’s how it’s always been done. Can it be done any other way? Often, a better solution can be found: looking at the situation from a completely different angle. We have experience; we have our own analyses, best practice in many sectors. Development advances at a very quick pace, much can be learnt from the experience of others; much can also be learnt from the mistakes of others, it’s just a question of recognising them.

 

Many of our clients are successful companies managed by successful management people. They often solve big projects with their in-house capacities and these push the company forward to an significant extent. However, even this type of company can use up at one point all its in-house ideas and yet need to continue solving the problem. I can give one client, a financial institution as an example. It carried out a long-term internal project for lowering costs, which went very well for two years and brought with it important savings. It was carried out by a team of truly experience in-house people and done in a very professional manner. They succeeded in implementing fundamental changes in the management system, centralising the majority of auxiliary processes, bringing a large proportion of direct contact with clients to a call centre and many other large-scale measures. After two years of managing this successful project, they then chose our company to identify the potential for further savings in operational costs to an amount of several 100 million crowns during six months of very intensive cooperation. This is what we call a challenge; it was a tough nut to crack, but the result presented itself as exceeding the defined savings target and the subsequent satisfaction of the client with the measures proposed. It was an excellent synergy between the experience of the client’s in-house employees and the experience of an external consulting company.

 

 

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