The Business Process Consulting Radar

Leaders at firms of all sizes continue to face ever-increasing demands from customers, employees, partners, regulators, and other stakeholders. Increasingly, they must align resources and new technology across functions and along critical business processes to compete. This high-churn environment has also created great demand for business process consultants, who vary widely in the type and scope of their advice. Business process leaders must conduct research and analysis of their firm's needs against consultants' capabilities in order to choose the right partner for their process improvement efforts.

What to look in for while choosing a consultant?

1. Is he/she a practitioner? Has he lived the life of an implementor, so that he understand the practical nuances of the engagement.
2. Is he/she carrying credentials endorsed by the authority?
3. What does his clientele say about him?
4. What is his/her methodology and where is your space in the methodology?
5. And Finally how are you Measuring your Change?

CIOs have been searching for ways to measure, improve, and communicate the business value of IT for years without a lot of success. Many have implemented PMOs, hired certified project managers, and begun CMMI or Six Sigma initiatives, all designed to improve their project management and project execution capabilities.

But bringing IT projects in on time and on budget and delivering all of the specified functionality hasn't necessarily led to business value and improved business outcomes. The reason is that it isn't simply a matter of implementing technology, but using the technology as a means to enable business and/or organizational change. The technology is providing a capability, but if that capability is not used or not used effectively, it will not produce anything of value. Business value is only obtained when IT projects are done within the context of IT-enabled business change programs.