Do you remember when you graduated from college? I’m guessing if we try really hard, we can remember all the way back then. Like you, I was filled with excitement and had so many questions after I graduated, ranging from what my first projects would entail to how soon I might be able to be promoted. While everything was new, naturally, all of us were filled beyond capacity with questions about nearly every aspect of that first “real” job.

However, sadly, over time, for many of us, this natural curiosity dissipates. In fact, within many organizations we are encouraged to “shut up and do our job” versus slowing activity down to ask clarifying questions.  This is unfortunate since that exact sense of wonder is exactly what so many organizations need to innovate, reinvent, remain relevant to customer and employees, and just stay ahead of the competition.

Over years of consulting and being involved in a number of diverse industries, I believe one of the best tools we have as business leaders, organizational change leaders and business analysts is asking a well-crafted question (and of course carefully listening to the response). Based on the response given, or the response you do NOT get, both verbally and non-verbally, this well-crafted question is one of the most valuable tools you have at your disposal and should be used on a daily basis.

At TSI, we’ve crafted a handful of questions that we use both internally and with our clients.  While some of these may seem basic, these questions have yielded insightful, poignant responses time and time again.  And based on this information, we’ve made remarkable progress in refining our clients’ strategic direction and even more so, in implementing key changes that make a difference for these organizations.

Here are 7 questions that we use with regularity. Some of these are intended for discussion with small groups and others are more appropriate for individuals. Regardless of the audience, feel free to leverage these for your own transformation needs and ask these questions with regularity, ranging from daily to monthly:

1. What specific organizational goals related to growth, quality, customer service, efficiency and profitability do you have that shape the context of how the organization, or parts of it, should improve?
2. What specific targets or metrics do you have for each of these goals?
3. What is your personal “brand” and what evidence do you provide that makes your brand apparent to those around you? How is this brand working for you?
4. What threats exist that you must address to be competitive and grow in the manner you are expecting?
5. What area in your organization operates in largely the same way as it has for the past 5 years or more? Does that hold it or other areas back?
6. What do your customers say your organization’s key overall strengths are? Relative to any differences in price, how “bullet proof” are your key customer relationships?  How differentiated is your product or offering?  How about your business model overall?
7. What is going well at your organization that you can possibly replicate in other areas?

On a different level, another tool that organizations find useful when they need to take a step back and see the forest through the trees is the Business Model Canvas. The Business Model Canvas was proposed by Alexander Osterwalder based on his book: Business Model Ontology. Here is a link where you can create one for your organization.

This way of thinking, leveraging well thought out questions, has served TSI well over the years. Hopefully these questions will elicit valuable responses for you as well. Feel free to send us your favorite to tsi@transforming.com or post a comment.

The post 7 Questions to Keep your Organization Relevant appeared first on Transforming Solutions Inc..

1. Ask Yourself “Why Do I Need a Consultant?’

There are many reasons why an organization might invite a consultant to join their team. Before assessing which consultant is right for your culture, be sure to understand your why.

1. Resources: your current team does not have the internal resources
2. Skills: your current team does not have the skills needed to complete the task
3. Objective or “Best Practices” Perspective: your current team wants the expertise of another individual, as well as an unbiased point-of-view
4. Political/Facilitator Reasons: the task at-hand does not fall cleanly into the boundaries of a single organization

2. Develop Goals and an Understanding of Intended Value to Your Organization

Ask yourself “how will my organization benefit from me hiring a consultant?” Defining set goals and intended outcomes of hiring a consultant will help you understand what kind of consultant you want to hire, as well as how you intend for them to fit in your company. When considering these goals, you will want to assess the financial benefits or consequences of hiring this individual as well.

3. Get Approval to Hire a Consultant

Finding a great, qualified consultant is like finding a good doctor or loyal employee: it is time-consuming and hard work! Instead of spending time and resources on hiring the right consultant, only to not get approval to hire someone, be sure you have tentative approval (or complete approval) to bring on a consultant. Along with this, be sure to define the consultant selection process.

4. Define Deliverables, Dates, and Expected Involvement for Both the Consultant and Organization

When bringing a consultant on to your team, it is crucial that you develop shared expectations. In addition, developing a schedule that accounts for both holidays and other demands will help to assure ample time to stay on track with your project. This also helps to keep both your organization, as well as the consultant, focused on time management.

5. Define Billing & Payment Terms 

When defining billing and payment terms, there are a few crucial questions to ask:

• Is the project fixed fee or within a range with a “not to exceed” clause?
• If it is time & materials, what budget was set?
• What “materials” are included/excluded from the project?
• Is travel time included/excluded?
• Will there be milestone-based payouts? If so, what is the schedule?

All of these topics need to be discussed, clarified, and agreed upon. Taking the time to have a conversation and determine what is right for both your organization and the consultant will be a ‘win/win’ for both of you!

6.  Get a Second (or Third) Opinion if Needed

As you develop a trusting relationship with your consultant, be judicious about when you put projects out for a competitive bid. You need to realize that, for small projects, it takes time to develop a detailed estimate and approach. If developing a detailed proposal is the case for ALL projects – even if the dollar amount is low – be warned that you may be absorbing that cost in higher than normal rates on future projects to cover the increased overhead.

7. Make Sure that YOU and Your Consultant are Aligned

Sometimes I use a metaphor of personal trainer or a financial planner when I talk about how we management, OCM and technology consultants should work. Assume you just set a goal to run a marathon and are seeking a fitness trainer to help you. You ask around and you get referred someone everyone likes – “Big Jake”, who specializes in getting people ready for CrossFit competitions.

Obviously that is different than getting you ready to run your marathon. So even though Big Jake is knowledgeable and likeable, he won’t be a fit for YOUR needs. Consider your organization’s culture and both the knowledge and style that your consultant needs to make to make change stick.

Closing Thoughts

Finding the right consultant is more difficult than it seems. With these seven steps, you can be sure that you are asking the right questions when it comes to who you’re hiring, as well as why you need their talents.

For more information please email Dan Feely, Managing Partner, or call him at 847-705-0960 ext 202.

If emailing or contact forms are more your style, contact us here!

The post 7 Things to Consider Before Hiring a Consultant – Selecting the Right Consultant appeared first on Transforming Solutions Inc..

Written by: Alan Baxter

There have been countless articles written about Big Data.  In fact, I don’t believe a day has gone by where I haven’t seen someone’s perspective on Big Data and how it’s going to “change the world” as we know it today.  But do you ever feel like this emphasis on Big Data is like walking into a movie in the middle, being heightened by its climax, yet lacking a true foundational understanding of the plot?

The purpose of this, is to do exactly that.  I’m going to break down the fundamentals Big Data analytics into an article you can read in under 3 minutes.

Simply put, information is the foundation for how decisions are made in today’s business.  As a matter of fact, it has been the foundation for how decisions have been made for years.  However, in the past it was only the elite organizations that could get on the forefront of their data and use it to drive the business.   In 2016, it’s a whole new ballgame; from a technology trend standpoint, there is nothing bigger than Big Data.

In fact, with the highly anticipated migration to the IoT (Internet of Things), the advancement of data collection and data manipulation tools, and the influx of self-service BI software, we are continually becoming more and more advanced in our analytical capabilities.  Readily available technology solutions have provided the means to turn millions of lines of unstructured data into real, business driven results quicker and more accurately than ever before.  Today’s most successful business at all sizes are learning to master their Big Data capabilities.  Big Data driven businesses can be intrusive in industries like hospitality, where Airbnb ($30B) is worth about 30 percent more than the world’s biggest hotel company, Hilton.  How does your business address Big Data?

Through proven methodology and highly experienced consultants, TSI covers the spectrum, helping organizations uncover analytics solutions using the fundamental combination of:

1. Prescriptive: Prescriptive analytics is one of the most powerful analytics methods.  Yet, according to Gartner only 3% of businesses use this method
   (while 13% of businesses use predictive analytics).  Prescriptive analytics reveals suggestions/recommendations based on collected data, indicating what actions should be    For example, Manufacturing Company XYZ has been experiencing monthly fluctuations in its bottom-line and suspects it has to do with raw material price volatility from various vendors.  Prescriptive analytics will help the company identify raw materials with the highest volatility and provide various suggestions/recommendations; e.g., the most cost effective month to buy, best vendors to use with least price volatility, etc.

2. Predictive: More common that prescriptive, predictive analytics provides analysis (or forecasts) of likely scenarios of what might happen based on historical data.  For example, predictive analytics can be used with CRM data throughout the lead to sale-execution process of an organization. This analysis provides the ability to predict the probability of a lead turning into a sales order based on a vast array of data points captured in the CRM.

3. Diagnostic: Diagnostic analytics involves looking at past performance (data sets) and determining what happened and why.  Deliverables usually consist of metrics presented in a dashboard fashion.  For example, Retail Company ABC released a large internet marketing campaign last month that increased sales by 20% from the previous month.  The company can use diagnostic analytics to present the campaigns success factors by analyzing data points; e.g., # of clicks, time on the page, # of shares, etc.

4. Descriptive: Descriptive analytics is most commonly used to provide real-time analysis based on real-time data. For example, major hotel chains use descriptive analytics to understand a particular sites guest room availability in real-time.

It’s time to take action and get ahead of the curve when it comes to Big Data and Data Analytics.  TSI can help with the following:

1. Assess where your organization truly is and see what immediate improvements might be close at hand
2. Define your short and long term data analytics needs (and define what business case is associated with this)
3. Suggest and implement data analytics solutions that will move you from a descriptive to a prescriptive organization.

As per all of our engagements, TSI’s knowledgeable and personable consultants will not only collaboratively define what actions need to take place, but they’ll help your organization understand “Why?” while guiding you through the finish line.   Please  contact TSI to get started on your project or to brainstorm ideas with one of TSI’s experienced consultants.

The post Get Ahead of the Curve with Big Data appeared first on Transforming Solutions Inc..

7 Questions to Keep your Organization Relevant

Graduation is in the air – hopefully you can feel it too.  I’m guessing if we try really hard, we can remember all the way back to when we graduated.  Like you, I was filled with excitement and had so many questions after I graduated, ranging from what my first projects would entail to how soon I might be able to be promoted.  While everything was new, naturally, all of us were filled beyond capacity with questions about nearly every aspect of that first “real” job.

However, sadly, over time, for many of us, this natural curiosity dissipates.  In fact, within many organizations we are encouraged to “shut up and do our job” versus slowing activity down to ask clarifying questions.  This is unfortunate since that exact sense of wonder is exactly what so many organizations need to innovate, reinvent, remain relevant to customer and employees, and just stay ahead of the competition.

Over years of consulting and being involved in a number of diverse industries, I believe one of the best tools we have as business leaders, organizational change leaders and business analysts is the asking a well-crafted question (and of course carefully listening to the response).  Based on the response given, or the response you do NOT get, both verbally and non-verbally, this well-crafted question is one of the most valuable tools you have at your disposal, and should be used on a daily basis.

At TSI, we’ve crafted a handful of questions that we use both internally and with our clients.  While some of these may seem basic, these questions have yielded insightful, poignant responses time and time again.  And based on this information, we’ve made remarkable progress in refining our clients’ strategic direction and even more so, in implementing key changes that make a difference for these organizations.

Here are 7 questions that we use with regularity. Some of these are intended for discussion with small groups and others are more appropriate for individuals.  Regardless of the audience, feel free to leverage these for your own transformation needs and ask these questions with regularity, ranging from daily to monthly:

1. What specific organizational goals related to growth, quality, customer service, efficiency and profitability do you have that shape the context of how the organization, or parts of it, should improve?
2. What specific targets or metrics do you have for each of these goals?
3. What is your personal “brand” and what evidence do you provide that makes your brand apparent to those around you? How is this brand working for you?
4. What threats exist that you must address to be competitive and grow in the manner you are expecting?
5. What area in your organization operates in largely the same way as it has for the past 5 years or more? Does that hold it or other areas back?
6. What do your customers say your organization’s key overall strengths are? Relative to any differences in price, how “bullet proof” are your key customer relationships?  How differentiated is your product or offering?  How about your business model overall?
7. What is going well at your organization that you can possibly replicate in other areas?

On a different level, another tool that organizations find useful when they need to take a step back and see the forest through the trees is the Business Model Canvas.  The Business Model Canvas was proposed by Alexander Osterwalder based on his book: Business Model Ontology.    Here is a link where you can create one for your organization.

This way of thinking, leveraging well thought out questions, has served TSI well over the years.  Hopefully these questions will elicit valuable responses for you as well.  Feel free to send us your favorite to: tsi@transforming.com or post a comment.

The post 7 Questions to Keep your Organization Relevant appeared first on Transforming Solutions Inc..