Advicetap Blog

Today’s guest post was written by Aarni Heiskanen of AE Partners in Helsinki Metropolitan Area, Finland. Aarni is a seasoned management consultant and today he shares with you a tip that if you take action on can become very profitable to your business.

You have the SWOT analysis, the Boston matrix and many more tools freely available at your disposal. Why would you want to develop consulting tools of your own?

The reason why my colleagues and I have developed new consulting tools has been straightforward. We have discovered – or gradually developed – a new consulting approach for client projects. The cause has most often been a client’s need or problem that has made us adopt a novel approach. Once the project has been completed we have analysed the developed tool to see if it could be applicable elsewhere.

A tool, in our case, is a process or way of structuring, analysing, and presenting information. It does not have to be “new to the world” but “new to the client or industry”.

How it all Started
Back in the 1990s I was involved in a project, which assessed the business value of IT in the construction industry. During the project we needed a simple method for measuring the maturity level of IT implementation and its business benefits. We created a framework called an IT Value Barometer. It was basically a set of 12 self-assessment sheets and three graphical representations of the data gained.

After the project we fine-tuned the method and published it as specially printed assessment cards.

After a while we received several consulting commissions that began with the IT Value Barometer assessment and then led to more extensive consulting projects. We used the method with manufacturing, media, and public sector clients. We also produced a simple Excel tool and even an online benchmarking database application based on the IT Value Barometer.

What was new about the Barometer was that it was targeted at the non-expert. It was a communication tool for bridging the views of business managers with those of information management professionals.

With that knowledge we’ve since developed tools for e.g. project risk assessment, idea campaigns, and project portfolio management. They all started with real client needs in a consulting project.

The Benefits
The main benefits of developing consulting tools are:

• They differentiate your business
• They increase your productivity through systematisation
• They offer a way to develop your skills and processes
• They help in marketing communication by making intangible concepts visible
• The tools can be sold to clients or other consultants and help diversify your revenue streams

The Cost of Development
The investment needed to develop a consulting tool varies. Some development takes place in client projects. In other cases you’ll have to invest your own time in the development process.

The technical solution could be a spreadsheet, a set of slides, printed material, a box of Lego blocks with instructions, Web 2.0 applications, etc.

I would recommend that if you plan to turn your tool into ”real” software, that you make it a Web 2.0 application. In some cases you do not even need programmers. There are e.g. some clever online databases and spreadsheets that you can adapt to your needs without any programming. The use of social media services for consulting is also a possibility.

The benefits of having your tool online are obvious. Theoretically, you can “go global” immediately and you can gradually develop a whole “family” of tools that way.

The Payback
The price of using a consulting tool can be either included in your project fee, or you can specify separate payment for its use. We have sold licenses for some of our Excel tools to clients, who have wanted to use them after the completion of a project for other purposes, while some tools have been sold online as downloadable documents.

If you have an online service that the client is going to use for months or years monthly payments are also an option, which is an arrangement we use for one of our services.

So far our consulting tools have brought new clients to our door and ensured new projects from the existing ones. Their indirect financial effect has been more important than their direct effect. This is probably because we have not seen the tools as independent products but rather as ways of delivering consulting services.

Sometimes the tools offer “a shortcut” to the client. What is certain is that they have promoted our brand and created new methods of consulting.