Getting the most out of your consulting investment!
By Patricia L. Bennett, FBCI

This question may sound very strange coming from a company that offers consulting services, but no one is satisfied if expectations are not carefully managed and executed by both the client and the consultant.

Here are some tips to follow when hiring a consultant.

Determining a skill set

Hiring a consultant to manage or work on a project is not the same as hiring a full time employee. When you are hiring a full time employee you are—or should be—looking for a wide range of skills and experiences that you think will cover the projects you want this individual to work on for the next 3 to 5 years with a minimum amount of training.

When hiring a consultant, you are looking for someone with specific skills to match one specific project. Unless there is a methodology or system specific to your organization, no training should be required.

By first developing a project description for this specific work effort, you can focus on the exact experience and skills that you will need for this particular project.

How does this save your organization both time and money? People who are experts in everything are very expensive. By narrowing the skill sets you need, you can avoid hiring an overqualified consultant.

For example, project managers are expensive. If the job requires lots of data entry, ask yourself the following questions. Do I really need a project manager? Is a project administrator sufficient? Do I need a combination of both?

Besides helping you select the best consultant for your needs, having a detailed project description will help you to both control costs and manage the project. A good project description will have the following information:

• Overview of work
• Scope
• Staffing and reporting relationships for entire project
• Which position you are looking to fill
• Measurable deliverables with identification of signoff authorities
• Schedule which includes predefined sign-off points
• Budget
• Anticipated Roadblocks

How does this save your organization both time and money?

Having this information helps:

• To select the correct people to work on the project
• To eliminate "scope creep," which can negatively impact both the schedule and budget for this project
• To ensure a faster startup for the project.

If you are going to require someone to be onsite 40 hours per week, you will often have no choice but to go the usually more expensive route of an hourly salary.

However, if you develop a well thought out project description and do not require the consultant to be on site full time, most consultants will work on a fixed price contract.

Fixed price also means fixed schedules, so you are more likely to get your project completed on time and within budget.

How does this save your organization both time and money?

Hourly-salary contracts can encourage both sides to be a little slack about controlling "scope creep" and will almost always cost you more than you had anticipated.

A fixed-price contract, on the other hand, encourages both sides to more closely manage the project and almost always costs less than an hourly-salary contract.

You first need to determine which is more important for this project: products or process. If you are hiring someone for process, then you need that person onsite everyday to interact with your staff, customers and/or systems. It also means that you will retain strict daily/weekly management of that person’s progress.

However, if you are hiring someone to produce a product, you are measuring his or her success based on well-defined measurable deliverables, not the number of hours he or she was in the office.

How does this save your organization both time and money?

By not requiring the consultant to be on site full time it will allow the consultant to use his or her time more effectively and will reduce the overall cost of a project. Trips to the office will be more effective and travel expenses will be reduced.

You will probably not have to provide full time office space or equipment. You may still have to allow them access to your systems based on the needs of the project.

All consulting agreements should have a definite start and stop date. Most projects should last no more than 6 months. If there is a need for more effort, then in most cases it would be wise to break the project down into two or more separate contracts. Many projects can be logically grouped into several sub-projects. It will not take much effort to determine which of these subprojects could be combined into discrete contracts.

How does this save your organization both time and money?

Having separate contracts often makes it easier for management to approve what you want to do, since the budget and deliverables can be more accurately managed.

Doing this will also limit your risk if, for some reason, you are not satisfied with the results that you are getting. You are then free to re-negotiate the next phase/contract, hire another consultant or even perhaps complete the work in-house.

The bottom line is take the time to plan before you hire any consultant. Work with the consultant to develop well-defined measurable deliverables. Don’t pay for exclusivity unless your project really calls for that type of commitment.

Taking the time to plan properly up front will ensure that you not only get the products or services you need, but that you will get them at a reasonable cost.

Patricia L. Bennett, FBCI

Patricia ("Pat") Bennett brings to the management table more than 14 years specializing in corporate business continuity planning with an additional 17 years of information technology experience. Ms. Bennett’s credentials include the management of one of the most extensive business recovery operations in U.S. corporate history. She is a Fellow of the Business Continuity Institute (FBCI), an international certification agency for contingency planners. The Patricia Bennett Group, Inc. coaches and consultants have many years of management and Business Continuity and Security experience across different industries and technical disciplines. E-mail them at: pbennett@bennettgrp.com. Website: www.bennettgrp.com. Telephone: 856-635-9770 Fax: 856-635-9766 PO Box 26, Mt. Ephraim, NJ USA 08059-0026