Features and Benefits of
Management Consultant's Approach to Proving Operational Integrity,
Effectiveness and Efficiency
Objective
Aspect
Strengths
Weaknesses
Management
consultants tend view their objectives to be the optimisation
of the organisations processes and operations. This often
approached by comparing subjective assessments to "theoretical"
best practices taught in universities but rarely evident
in the real world.
Offers ability to evidence due diligence. Third party to
shoulder responsibility in the event the audit fails to
find issues that later appears.
Can identify operational efficiency gains not previous
considered.
Very difficult to challenge outcome.
Often a conflict between objectives of the organisation
and management consultants who would prefer to change operations
(as this generates more income for them).
Cacogenic nature of management consultants. Highly intrusive
to normal business operations.
Approach
Aspect
Strengths
Weaknesses
Most management consultants
conduct such audits or reviews based on manual observation
of employee activity and a review (often manual) of a sample
of the records held.
Will
identify some high-level procedural in-efficiencies.
When based on Sampling:
Can lead to very misleading output that could result in
poor assumptions being made.
As A Result Of Subjective Analysis:
Difficult to challenge or prove value of subjective assessments,
thus difficult to determine accuracy and value
Duration
Aspect
Strengths
Weaknesses
Dependent on the scale
of organisation and depth of the review/audit, this might
take between two and six months involving between three
and ten consultants. Due to the nature of the approach this
work is often very intrusive and disruptive to the running
of the organisation during the audit phase.
No
perceived benefit
Long delays before benefit's are realise, and this often
dilutes the value of the benefits due to opportunity loss.
Massive Cost Implications
Output
Aspect
Strengths
Weaknesses
This approach often results in a lengthy report, often
designed to be so verbose that it is never fully read
and if read is full of "padding" or ambiguous, baffling
"techno-speak" that is often impossible to challenge.
Usually
lots of material to give to someone challenging the recommendations,
which they are equally as unlikely to read or understand.
Difficult to prove whether or not value has been achieved.
Residual Asset
Aspect
Strengths
Weaknesses
The report is often the
only residual asset
Hard
copy of findings which, if used over time, should yield benefits
(assuming the management consultants work is accurate and
thorough).
Due to the often verbose nature of the reports many findings
are lost as a result of the reports not being fully read
or understood.
Resolving Problems Found
in Audits
Aspect
Strengths
Weaknesses
Most Management Consultants reports will end is a series
of high level recommendations as to what should be done
to improve the operations concerned, and this is usually
accompanied by a superbly presented proposal detailing
how the management consultancy will take away all the
problems solved, if of course, you are prepared to pay
more
Can
provide input to improvement process.
Likely cost associated with achieving improvements
Approach to Measuring/Monitoring
Operational Improvement
Aspect
Strengths
Weaknesses
Most management consultants
would merely propose to repeat the process in order to measure
or monitor improvements. Some might not even recommend this
so that the findings made in the first report are not disproved,
or made worse as a result of their work.
