aterifa.info

Successful implementation of management systems and compliance with ISO standards require the appointment of competent individuals to become environmental managers, quality managers, and occupational health and safety managers. Nevertheless, there are instances when an organisation requires the aid of independent business management consultants to better understand what the organisation needs to do to improve its performance. Insights from external sources are extremely valuable because there are issues that members within the organisation fail to recognise or prioritise but are in fact of critical importance to achieving success.

Regardless of the type of business management systems you are trying to set up and implement, you definitely need people to oversee those systems. You may appoint yourself, appoint one or several of your employees, or specifically hire business consultants. Business consultants provide specialist help and advice on ISO standards compliance and certification. They are experienced and skilled engineers, occupational health professionals, and business managers with relevant qualifications required for developing, implementing and enhancing management systems.

As with all cases of developing and implementing management systems, compliance is better than certification. Quite often, ISO certification isn’t really worth the cost, time, and paperwork. This is especially true to small and medium size businesses. However, you can’t deny the fact that a substantial number of customers demand ISO certification, pushing you to go through all the trouble of obtaining one. Thankfully, business consultants provide cost-effective and innovative, not to mention fast approaches in complying with ISO standards and obtaining ISO certification.

The standards have stringent requirements, making it extremely difficult for small businesses to even design and implement management systems on their own, worse try to apply for certification. The bureaucracy alone is already taxing enough for an enterprise with limited resources. Furthermore, continued compliance is necessary to keep the certification. Once certified, the work just doesn’t stop. You do need long – term assistance and advice on ISO standards compliance because your organisation needs to consistently implement and upgrade your management systems.

At the start, you may have no one to designate as management systems representative, so you opt to hire business consultants. To guarantee your continued compliance with the standards, it may be more practical to create an in-house management systems team after you’ve achieved certification. Thus, those consultants must effectively pass on the knowledge to your in-house team for consistency and continuity. This helps to provide your business with a short-cut towards gaining valuable knowledge and skills in ISO standards and other relevant information that is otherwise in-existent in your organisation. Moreover, the transferred knowledge brings you competitive advantage that’s lasting and effective.

In describing this dilemma, let’s get clear about some differences. Internal consultants have a variety of roles in different organizations, many of them in the managed change arena. To be consulting, there are some assumptions about consultative position and intervention stance. Schein lists three consultative positions: expert resource, doctor/client, and process consultant. All are valid roles to play for clients, but it is very important to understand which of these roles you play. Let’s say, for instance, that the organization is rolling out an initiative with a predetermined method and outcome. Your role is to provide the expertise of implementation to the system owners who now have the chore of following an initiative. The more the outcome is predetermined the more you fall into the realm of doctor/client or pair of hands.

Internal consultants live with a daily balancing act between being like the system and different from the system. To operate effectively in a consultative role, you must offer something different in terms of skills, abilities, and perspectives than what already exists widely in the client system. If you are operating redundantly, you are probably not operating effectively in a consultative role. Your role is to stretch the system. You can’t do that by being identical.

Determine a strategic focus

One of the most important items to an internal consultant is to understand how they intend to impact the client system. All consultants must be clear about why they are there and how they expect the client system to benefit from their presence. You need to be able to articulate it and live it out so that your clients totally understand your position and the role you are attempting to play.

Know your limits

Here is the time to be your own consultant/client and get very honest about your abilities. It often helps to get some outside feedback in these areas. What is important is for you to understand who you are and what you will or won’t do. Internals don’t often recognize the power of their ability to say no.

It is clarifying and empowering. Just know when and where you will say yes or no to different roles or types of work. In order to do that, determine the areas in which you can comfortably operate. You know what you’re good at. Make a list that matches with your strategic focus and the organization’s direction. After that, identify some stretch areas and make a plan to grow into these areas. This does a number of things. First, it keeps you in the learner’s perspective and makes it easier to relate to the change processes going on with your clients. Second, it helps you grow and generally be more interesting to your clients..

Become an expert in your field

Internals are rarely received with the same esteem as external experts. One of the reasons is exposure, the second is because they often don’t have the same sort of skills, training, and experience as others in the field. So, the simple solution is to spend time becoming the expert in your field that your clients will recognize. Read, attend conferences, and network. Write white papers about your findings. Present at conferences and professional associations. Build credentials in your field that your clients will recognize and respect.

Be methodologically consistent

Here’s one of the places of deep differentiation that you will find with the experts in the field. There are many different models and beliefs about human systems and the ways in which you intervene in them. Get out your toolkit and really learn what’s behind your exercises, methods, and interventions. Both you and the participants in your events will feel the disconnect between exercises build on conflicting models of behavior. It is a seemingly small thing, but the payoff can be huge. As a small example, following a participative problem solving exercise with an autocratic implementation will cause more problems that if both were either participative or autocratic, or you simple reversed the situation to autocratic problem solving following by participative implementations.

Follow a model

There are a number of these currently available in the literature, most of which are built to follow the discovery learning cycle. Find one that you like, believe in, and follow it. Your work will move to new levels of effectiveness. You begin to learn the ins and outs as well as begin to get creative through your experience. You might even experience a level of branding associated with it. Also, when it stops working, find another!

Contract! Contract! Contract!

Internals do not always think of contracting in the same perspective as externals. It is, though, equally important. In the opening scenario, a good contract with the leadership team would have been the necessary requirement to provide a solid footing for the consultant and to discuss the mumblings of the disgruntled participants. A social contract is absolutely essential to handle the role shifting that many internals experience as well as the crossing of levels within their own organization.

Be Genuine

The issue of presence is as important to the internal as the external. It is well worth your time to spend some time thinking about how you present yourself. Think about it as branding. You work on your mental abilities, work on your emotional and spiritual elements as well. There are many ways to do this. Get a coach, join a growth group, or sign up for courses that offer deep personal development. After all, the thing you are really offering your clients is your self. Be clear about it, own it, and share it.

Businesses operate in situations that are affected by lots of factors like micro- and macro-economic ones. An example of micro economic factors or forces affecting your business or company are those which directly act upon the firm or the industry. This is when you try to act by seeking and allocating your internal resources to device an efficient strategy as a solution, but the most common error would be if there isn’t any resource when the firm itself runs and operates with only optimal resources. On this circumstance, management consultants already pitch in to do their job or line of expertise and resources. And, these resources that they have depend on the type of industry they are holding to and its function. Those of which who are expert in the field of supply chain management of different industries are called Purchasing Consultants.

Another factor that affects a business or company’s operation is the macro-economic forces caused majorly by myriad forces. Examples of these are unforeseen or unexpected natural disruptions and calamities and, political stability. This causes either partial or total paralysis to businesses and companies because they only have a little or no control at all on the situation. This is truly evident when there are oil price hikes due to wars in certain parts of the globe. Businesses have no control at all under this circumstance.

So, it is very necessary that businesses and companies should have purchasing reports prior to operations because most of the management consultants having expertise in the field of operations point out on the problems related to purchasing. Purchasing consultants have evolved from their plain and simple purchasing function to a more tactical and strategic line of work. This is very important to be integrated on the business operations because firms need to know the automation level and the available systems in the market.

Globalization and competition made the purchasing function change to a more strategic role: from cutting costs to managing resources, from confrontational reaction to a more collaborative one. This made strategies more needed to engage the resources, evaluate them based on the new and better criteria, and help businesses and companies device much more efficient strategies and techniques to go global.

Manufacturing businesses, firms and/or companies spend more than 50% of their operating budget on materials and parts. However most of the purchasing consultants focus and target on manufacturing corporations. For example, the automobile industry who has tons of suppliers for parts and materials and, modulated supplying showed great improvement for cost reduction and supplier involvement in producing and developing new materials. They even provide consultancy in managing contracts and e-commerce techniques and strategies.

The cost of consulting prohibits the small and moderately big enterprises and companies to hire their own purchasing consultants. You can actually post these problems in online sites that purchasing consultant firms look at. Then they will give the appropriate and right solution to this and, eliminate those abusing their power just to keep the gains and profits to themselves.

Franchise consultants have expert knowledge on franchise practices, principles and philosophy. They specialize in growing and advancing small and medium sized businesses and can formulate professional and sound business strategies and goals. They are highly familiar with sales systems, management information systems, audit programs, training manuals, operations manuals, franchise marketing and every other aspect of running a franchise business. For these reasons, it would be smart to have a franchise consultant with you before you sign any contracts.

Franchise consultants are in such high demand because the franchising industry has become so common and widespread. Each year, industries are applying franchising growth strategies. Franchising has been prevalent amongst the food service and retail businesses, but is showing significant growth within many other industries, including the information technology, water purification, health care, education and steel fabrication industries. Bringing an experienced franchise consultant in on your business discussions and decisions can help you in all stages of your franchise’s growth. One of the most important decisions you’ll make as a business owner is choosing to hire a franchise consultant.

It can be a daunting task trying to decide what might be the ideal franchise opportunity for you because of the overwhelming array of choices and industries. Franchise consultants can help you narrow your focus and assist you in making the right decision and pick a business that suits your personality and strength. A franchise consultant will analyze all options and offer a fresh perspective on them. They can determine whether your investment into a certain business would be a lucrative and successful expansion of the franchisor.

Financial consultants can help you formulate a strategy toward the expansion of your business and help you obtain the perfect opportunities for your company. Your franchising goals will be what the consultant will be what the consultant is striving to reach. If you want your franchise to expand and flourish, a franchise consultant will work tirelessly to help you achieve your dreams. The whole idea behind franchising is to introduce a product into an area that has demand for it. Franchise consultants can make sure your product is offered and marketed in the perfect spot and will apply expert and proven business practices and strategy.

You need to be financially stable and sound if you are considering the purchase of a franchise. Hiring a franchise consultant can provide some security in that you know the consultant has your best interests at heart and will work hard for your business’s success. The consultant will be an independent business advisor who can give you a fair and honest assessment on what type franchise will be profitable and can represent you when negotiating with the franchisor. Hiring an expert franchise consultant can give your business the edge it needs for success.

Consultant Marketing is a style of marketing that works in any business. It doesn’t matter what field you are in. The business owner uses Consultant Marketing to promote their personal expertise in their chosen business. This is done by establishing YOU the business owner as an authority in the type of business you are in.

With Consultant Marketing, the sale is secondary. People always prefer to purchase from an expert assuming other factors are equal.

When you use Consultant Marketing by promoting yourself as an authority in your field, you gain name recognition. Your customer is familiar with YOUR expertise and as a result buys products from you.

So many small businesses today do not understand this concept. They continue to try to build brand recognition with the name they have chosen for their business. They spent many hours choosing the name of their business and they think the business name is what draws customers. WRONG!

YOU are the draw to your small business! Occasionally I see this put into practice with tremendous results. Here is a recent example:

A small restaurant in my town serves good ethnic food. Those that know about it eat there regularly. The BUSINESS is known for its excellent food, but not by enough people. Despite spending a small fortune on the advice of a marketing consultant, they lost the business due to low sales and had to sell it.

The entrepreneur that bought it used the concept of Consultant Marketing to promote the restaurant. He promptly put a sign with a picture of himself on an easel in the entryway and one on the window of the restaurant.

The sign said something to the effect of “Now Featuring Chef Bali Baronetta and His Signature Dishes”. This was followed by a new website that offered recipes of his dishes, a video of him cooking, and list of special dishes he was preparing for the coming month. He also offered some ethnic cooking classes, special food-tasting events, and articles he had written on how to best prepare certain foods.

The restaurant’s business took off like a rocket! They were packed the last time I was in there and were continuing to promote the chef who was also one of the owners. The waiters and waitresses all spoke about his specialties to the guests.

So what was different?

The chef promoted HIS SKILLS in the role of a consultant preparing this particular ethnic food. He acted like the expert that he was. If you wanted to know how a dish should be prepared, he was the CONSULTANT that people looked to. By promoting himself as a consultant and marketing himself, the restaurant’s food gained instant credibility. The restaurant’s chef has been interviewed by the paper; they have created press releases, and posted these at the restaurant, online, and in print advertisements.

Here is a question. Is the food any better than it was before?

Not really. Some dishes taste the exact same and some variety was added.

What changed was the PERCEPTION of the food quality and restaurant.

By using Consultant Marketing instead of a “marketing consultant” they creatively drove their business upward with over three times the previous sales! Best of all, they are bringing in new customers at a rapid rate.

Remember…you are the expert; you are the Consultant in your business. Market your skills and the business sales will follow!