A consultant is a person who takes your money, harasses your employees and tirelessly seeks the best way to continue to promote consulting contracts.
-"Consultants will hold endless meetings to test their various assumptions and hypotheses."
-"The consultant will think that any assumptions that are inconsistent with the pre-determined proposal are not in line with the principle of economy and will not be taken seriously." ..... and these two years, the situation seems to be different. Small consulting companies are everywhere, and friends around me keep talking about opening consulting companies. The business of internationally renowned consulting companies such as McKinsey, BCG and KPMG is booming in China. Whether it is the reorganization of organizations, the application of systems, the training of employees, the change of operational processes, the integration of new companies or the launch of new products (services), many enterprises will hire consultants to provide help and support in all aspects. Even the Huangpu District Government has spent a lot of money consulting McKinsey & Company on the renovation of Nanjing Road Commercial Street. Everyone is keen to ask consultants to provide external views and opinions, hoping that they can provide corresponding solutions. Unfortunately, the greater the hope, the greater the disappointment, because the products and services provided by consultants can not achieve the expected results, which makes enterprises and consultants very depressed about the results of consulting projects.
Obviously, the increasing cost of consulting services and customers' growing dissatisfaction with the success and quality of consulting projects make the evaluation of consulting activities face great pressure. More and more people demand that the effect of consulting projects can be reflected in the form of return on investment (ROI). However, when many consultants try to find an effective ROI evaluation process, they often find lengthy formulas, complex equations and cumbersome models. All these make the whole program unnecessary trouble and confusion. This also made many consultants finally give up their efforts.
Fortunately, "Consulting Performance Evaluation-Tracking the Results and Bottom Line of Consulting Projects" (Shanghai Far East Publishing House) was published. This is the first book introduced in China to discuss how to establish the ROI evaluation process of consulting intervention. In the book, the author summarizes the experience of nearly 20 years, puts forward a successful ROI evaluation process, and simplifies this process with a logical and reasonable method. These procedures are simple and easy to understand, and will not take up too much consultation time, nor will they endlessly consume time because of implementation problems. It can not only enable consultants to meet the challenges calmly, but also meet the evaluation needs of customers and reflect all kinds of information accurately and effectively.
Firstly, the author constructs a framework with five evaluation levels. The first level is response and satisfaction, which evaluates the response of consulting participants to consulting activities and the satisfaction of stakeholders to the project and implementation plan. The second level is learning, which evaluates the changes of knowledge, skills and attitudes related to consulting activities. The third layer is the application and implementation, which evaluates the specific changes in the work. The fourth level is business impact, which evaluates the impact of consulting activities. The fifth level is the return on investment, which usually compares the monetary income brought by consulting activities with the cost of consulting activities in percentage.
On the basis of this framework, the author puts forward six measurement indexes. These indicators are supported by the examples of the world's top companies, including quantitative data and qualitative data collected in different time periods, which can be collected in the process of consulting intervention. By combining these indicators, we can examine the success of the consulting project from a balanced perspective.