Your guide on working with business consultants
A business consultant is a professional who will help guide your business into its best position by improving efficiency and overall operations. Using their expert business skills, a company consultancy can transform your business through maximising strategy and increasing profits. They can also resolve any outstanding problems and provide training or planning to further improve functionality, which is why they are so valuable for your business.
Why is business consultancy so valuable to your business?
There are a lot of businesses that face immense pressure and challenges. There are times when aspects of a company like Finance, Marketing or HR may need to be fixed due to various factors, which will affect morale and lower productivity and profits. As time passes, you may find the business isn’t running to the standard and quality you are hoping for, causing the company to function poorly. This is where a business consultant can step in and offer their expertise and knowledge to overcome and alleviate these pressures.
A consultant can offer business solutions to resolve the pains that run throughout your operations. They are highly valuable to you as they ensure that you operate at the highest level possible. In addition, as they work with many different businesses, they have a deeper insight into the industry’s trends, general business challenges and new technologies. So, you can put your full trust and confidence when hiring a business consultant.
What are the different types of business consultancy
Management
Suppose you feel like your business isn’t running how it should be, whether that be through operational challenges or maybe you’re struggling to achieve revenue targets. In that case, you may need a management consultant.
The purpose of a management consultant is to guide your next steps operationally through professional advice. Management consultancy will also help identify gaps within your company that you can capitalise on through implementing bespoke business solutions. By doing this, you can implement positive change in your business performance and potentially maximise profits.
Marketing
Marketing consultants are specialists in helping you understand your target market and how to reach them. They can also help figure out where your strategy may have fallen short in the past and ensure that you’re not only gaining new customers but in a commercially viable way.
These experts can advise and guide you on everything concerning your customers, from communicating to selecting the right message that should be created based on the target audience’s needs and wants.
Information Technology
The intelligent use of Information Technology is crucial to your business success; an IT consultant will help you optimise your IT processes and ensure that, as well as any hardware requirements, the systems you utilise are as streamlined and efficient as possible. IT Consultants can also advise on building new bespoke systems that fit your needs perfectly.
HR
If you’re struggling to find the right talent, or perhaps you’re finding it hard to implement the right culture within your organisation – Human Resource consultants can assist with this. Culture is critical, as it ensures the satisfaction of your employees as well as ensuring your workforce is as efficient as possible.
Through conducting research to locate problematic areas within your organisation, human resource consultants can provide advice and recommendations to solve the daily issues that can be going on.
Strategy Consultant
A strategy consultant tends to be at the top as one of the most specialised consultants; their expertise lie within identifying specific trends within markets and analysing competitors; from those findings, strategies and outcomes can be formed for your business to take on board through the production of action plans that they provide.
Strategy consultants will usually have excellent industry knowledge and will assess high-level business issues; by taking an overall look at specific problems that companies are facing, they can give advice on how they can or should approach them.
Operations consultant
Operation consultants will use their expertise and knowledge to improve the overall operations of an organisation. These consultants are responsible for implementing change and supporting clients in enhancing the effectiveness and productivity of their operational structure. By conducting an audit on the overall state of operations, they can suggest ways to improve the value chain.
Reasons why you should hire a business consultant
Not only do business consultants provide expertise and knowledge, they also offer other benefits which will improve your business. A common misconception is that hiring a business consultant is going to be extremely expensive; however, the good news is that they are almost always cost-effective. You can pay for the services when you require them at the time, which in the long run, is more efficient than hiring a new full-time employee who could offer the same set of skills.
As well as business consultants being cost-effective, they can also increase your profits and decrease overall pain at the same time. So, if you feel that your business can be improved or you are struggling to find solutions, hiring a business consultant will ultimately assist you in reaching your goals.
Expertise
It may seem obvious, but the expertise that a business consultant brings to your business is definitely one of the most outstanding benefits. Due to consultants working with such a wide range of companies, they can offer the best advice to suit your current situation, as the chances are, they’ve come across it before. In addition, they can provide an extensive variety of knowledge on markets, industry challenges, trends within your industry, and new technologies.
Cost-effective
With a consultant, you only pay for the services you need when needed. Instead of hiring a full-time employee to offer their expertise or advice, you can hire a consultant who will cost you significantly less and will most likely provide more relatable and expert guidance.
With their high range of skills and years of experience, they can give you what you are looking for much sooner and at a better price.
Achieve business goals
Businesses can commonly speak to their employees and the whole team about achieving business goals, but these goals are typically only sometimes reached. There can be many reasons for this, such as poor management and needing more time.
Business consultants, like at GAIN LINE, are very good at laying the challenges out, forming the solutions and helping you to form step-by-step action plans for all team members involved. Not only does this take away the stress off your shoulders, but it allows those goals and objectives to be achieved.
Identify opportunities
Consultants with a broad range of expertise and advice can find more opportunities to improve your business throughout the consulting process and push for business growth. The more consultants learn and work with your company, the more they may notice other areas that need improvement that you haven’t seen.
Naturally, directors or managers will be very close to the business, so you may not see what is missing or what needs to be improved from your perspective. So when a consultant comes into this, they can see it with fresh eyes and offer unbiased advice and support for areas of improvement. Consultants aren’t emotionally invested in the business like you are, so they can head into the challenges with a clear mind.
Boost in efficiency
With consultants being able to take away the stress, time and money from those challenges and objectives that need to be resolved, efficiency can increase. Not only can they resolve those challenges at a faster rate than you could, they can also eliminate and remove those inefficiencies which can be slowing your team down by suggesting new methods of going about everyday tasks.
The cons of hiring a business consultant
Limited availability
With the popularity of business consultants, it’s prevalent that availability can be small. This can cause problems down the line if you require their assistance urgently. On top of this, business consultants provide you with strategies, so once they have given you their services, it’s down to you as a business to implement those strategies, with their services now being completed.
No guarantee
Although business consultants have a high success rate, there is no guarantee that they will provide you with precisely what you were hoping or expecting. To minimise the risk or for reassurance, you can always look at past work/reviews to ensure you are making the right decision.
Cost
One of the main disadvantages of hiring a business consultant is the cost. Regardless of why you need a business consultant’s services, it will come with a high cost, but there is a reason it’s so high, and that is because they are very good at what they do. For example, if you are running a low-budget project, a consultant should only be hired if you know they will improve profits. There is always going to be a high risk when hiring a business consultant.
FAQ
How do I know if I need a business consultant?
Suppose your business is facing challenges that can’t seem to be resolved through your own expertise and resources, such as problems within the company culture, slow growth or decline in revenue. In that case, a business consultant can guide you in the right direction and form strategies to resolve those challenges.
What results can I expect from working with a consultant?
This answer all depends on the business and the challenges that are being faced.
However, with a consultant in any situation, you can expect reliable advice and guidance through setting goals and creating strategies to help your business grow, and your team can come together to work towards solving those challenges.
What’s the difference between a business coach and a consultant?
Whilst both a business coach and consultant offer expertise and advice, their approach is different. A consultant primarily focuses on providing you with solutions for problems and challenges within the business, and a coach will focus on you, the leader and how you can improve your position within the company to create the business of your dreams essentially.
GAIN LINE
GAIN LINE isn’t your ordinary business consultancy, our experts guide you through a structured process to challenge you and keep you on track to make sure you come out of our process with tangible, practical actions that you and your team will buy into and have ownership of.
Our Sprint workshops take a deep dive into any business challenge within a protected and committed time-space.
If you want to overcome any business challenge in no more than two weeks, speak to our seasoned business consultancy experts on 0161 532 4449 or contact us here for a speedy response.