Operational strategy consulting takes a start-to-finish approach to evaluating your current business model and ensuring it's sustainable for the future. That means reducing variance, interdependencies and handoffs between departments to create an operational base that can scale as you grow.
Depending on your engagement scope, an experienced operations consultant can zoom in to make detailed decisions (like naming conventions in project management or time tracking tools) and also zoom out to understand how those decisions impact other data across the agency.
Process Evaluation
Getting an accurate picture of how your business runs is essential. The right consultant can help you document your processes, making them easier to maintain and more effective as your agency grows.
Process evaluation is a broad term that can involve boosting underlying systems, ways of working or organisational structures. It can also include tackling specific functions such as sales, supply chain, finance or research and development.
From a functional perspective, the biggest areas of improvement for organisations are usually cost reduction, efficiency and effectiveness. The big operations consulting firms like McKinsey, Bain and BCG are all renowned for their expertise in this area. However, a smaller firm can bring value to your company as well by focusing on a broader scope of improvements rather than narrowly defined projects. A small firm can also be a more affordable option for your business, helping you reduce operational costs and increase profit margins. The key to a successful consultancy project is to get buy-in from your team and leadership.
Process Enhancement
Once a consultant has a firm grasp of how a business operates and the reasons behind its internal procedures, he or she can begin offering advice on ways to enhance certain operational functions. This is often one of the most difficult portions of the process, as the client may resist some or all of the ideas presented by the consultant.
Ultimately, the goal is to produce an efficient and effective model that can scale with the agency or company as it grows. This requires clean data that is compiled in a way that can be used for planning purposes.
The best operations consulting firms are capable of looking at a business model with fresh eyes. They know what to look for and can provide the "horsepower" needed to accelerate improvement efforts. They also know how to effectively communicate with team members and management at all levels of the organization. This is critical as communication plays a large role in a successful implementation of any process changes.
Process Implementation
Operations consulting is a leafy offshoot of management consulting that differs from strategy in its intensive focus on a client's operations at specific points along their value chain. Like other types Process Improvement of consulting, it helps clients achieve more effective internal processes by delivering advisory and support services that improve the target operating model, functional business processes, management systems and culture.
Unlike most business consultants, who tend to go home after a PowerPoint presentation, an operational consultant stays around to help implement the improvements they've made. This often involves training team members and assigning a project or team leader to manage the new process.
It also involves setting up monitoring systems for the new processes, which can be passive or active. The goal is to create a sustainable operating model that can handle growth without introducing new inefficiencies. The right consulting partner can help you establish a system that can support your organization for years to come.
Process Monitoring
Having the ability to monitor your processes continuously helps you stay on top of changes. You can spot bottlenecks and take action before they become a crisis.
The key is to set SMART goals for each process. These must align with your business goals and customer requirements. Vague objectives, such as "support order processing during busy periods," will not be enough to measure and implement effective process monitoring. You'll need to set a more specific goal such as, "automate the approval process for purchase requests that comply with the policy and are under the limit."
In many cases, an agency's ops consulting will focus on a holistic view of how its systems ladder up into reporting - ultimately resulting in clean data that allows for informed decisions that help an organization grow and scale. These are the kinds of projects that require rolling up your sleeves and getting your hands dirty alongside an implementation consultant, not the advisory or boardroom types.
