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Businesses always thrive for effective operations to increase their revenue generation whilst keeping expenses low. But did you ever notice that some organizations stay ahead of revenue demands, but most firms struggle to stay up to date in this competitive market? This happens due to a lack of proper Business Consulting. Selecting the right business consultant allows a firm to grow and increase its potential limit.
Business Consulting is a profession which helps organizations streamline operations in specific business areas. These areas can be marketing management, supply chain management, sales, information technology, finance, human resource, operations, engineering, digital transformation, security, and many such areas. Professionals engaged in this trade help businesses overcome challenges, improve revenue, thus ensuring growth and improving overall business performance and efficiency. These experts analyze businesses and create solutions while facilitating enterprises meet their goals. They act as mentors for investments, R&D, upskilling, organizational change. Consultants come up with recruitment strategies, growth, stability and enhanced resource utilization plans and roadmaps.
You may wonder how a Consultant goes about doing their job in Business Consulting. There are several stages to it. Business Consulting thus is a very systematic and practical process:
The first step in Business Consulting is the discovery phase; the business consultant learns from the owner and employees about the client’s business. The discovery phase includes:
During this process, the business consultant also discovers the details of the organization’s mission and how the company functions.
Business Consulting requires identifying where the management needs to change the process, during the evaluation phase. The business consultant in this phase recognizes the organizational strengths and weaknesses of current and anticipated problems. It is the usual norm to pinpoint opportunities to grow the business, increase profits and enhance effectiveness, via an effective SWOT analysis and GAP analysis.
In addition to detecting various problems and opportunities, business consulting provides solutions to problems and the plans to leverage the strengths. For example, suppose an organization has a strong sales department but a feeble marketing department. So, this is a chance for the company to improve upon marketing resources and leverage the sales team. It’s a tightrope walk at times, but that is where the Consultants specialize. This is the essence of Business Consulting. During this phase, business consulting personnel and the employees need to maintain open and transparent communication.
Business consulting professionals with upper-management expertise can bring industry knowledge to your business, help you measure, lay down the correct big-picture roadmap, develop new opportunities, and enhance revenue. Business Consulting Services can help your business by:
Those in field specializing in operations can help businesses improve the quality of their daily processes. First, inventory of the current business model takes place and the gaps are noticed and the better model going forward come into shape. Then, consultants help to implement the better model and remove the gaps with the help of quality control and operations optimization for best results.
A financial consultant can show you the actual financial health of your business and improve it as needed. They help in investment decisions and aid you in finding the best way to handle assets and debts. Business Consulting in the financial domain offers financial planning, including implications of taxes, daily expenses, and creating customised retirement plans.
Consultants specializing in human resources can mentor the daily HR tasks such as recruiting and retaining new employees, performance management, managing payroll, administrative tasks etc. Their inputs on important functions are invaluable and help tremendously with hiring decisions and human resource requirement planning. Their expertise leads to creation of sound policies which were hitherto absent and thus can cause a complete turnaround in employee morale and productivity.
The Marketing segment of Business Consulting has the ability to help enterprises create brand awareness and augment the existing brand voice. Redefining customer relationship management strategies, overseeing a few marketing events they can lay the path forward for improved execution for the understudies, who are the company insiders in this case, is a literal godsend for the client company. So, whether your company needs a branding facelift or a product launch strategy, a marketing consultancy is an asset in developing your business’ reach.
Social media consultancy can help clients with strategies and best practices to grow audience, boost engagement, increase web traffic, reach targeted audiences and increase conversions from leads. The internet is where all the growth is happening today at the highest rate, so its the one place that needs the best guidance for maximum results.
IT consultancy can help companies adapt to new technology. Awareness of IT consultancy professionals about the emerging trends in the technology domain is superior to the in-house talent. Thus their input brings in a wave of digital transformation and profitability improvement.
Almost all businesses can benefit from the Business Consulting Services. A recent study found that the global consulting market is projected to be around $132 billion. The consulting market size in the USA alone has reached a value of 64.4 billion dollars. All this would not be possible if the efficiency of Business Consultancy was not contributing to the proposed cause.
Using Business Consultancy Services is advantageous in many ways. Let’s explore the advantages:
The core competencies of business consultants are their knowledge, expertise, experience, skillsets and subject matter authority. As these consultants work with various businesses, they have a much broader and deeper knowledge of business trends, industry challenges, and new technologies and processes, when compared to internal employees. According to a recent study, business consultancy is essential to promoting innovation within industries. In addition, they can design improvements of defective processes with a realistic goal, thus reducing process costs, risks and time lost from damage.
There is a considerable amount of savings if a company hires Business Consulting Services to complete a project or task. Compared to an in-house full-time employment, such a support is required to be paid only for the services rendered and not a dollar more. There is no fixed overhead. Rather the expense is performance based throughout. Such consultancy brings with it the expertise and experience to point out the wasteful expenditure a company is incurring on a particular process/project. Cutting down those extra dollars means huge savings sometimes, to the tune of millions of dollars even. For more information on this, do read our detailed article.
Business consultants share an independent and fair perspective of the client’s business. Their decisions are always unbiased and objective. The focus is on the goal agreed with their client, without any judgemental distractions. As a result, business consulting services can provide insights and implement solution-centric thinking.
Consultant’s experience matters a lot. For example, a process consultant can immediately identify variations, saving time. A business need not loose time in established processes, when things can be done faster, with the same efficiency level contained in the same output.
Business consultants are not emotionally attached to the business. They can quickly identify and address challenges, whether implementing new technology or completing a merger/acquisition. The consultant’s detachment is critical to the process, especially where problems are more challenging to discuss.
Business Consulting does not offer a standard solution to all. It wins the battle by providing a customized solution for the problem that a business faces. The uniqueness in circumstances of the problem faced by a business needs a nuanced response. This is where it stands victorious thus giving maximum ROI.
Strategic planning provided by Business Consulting Services is of paramount importance for any new venture. The guidance emanating from such planning is full of wisdom, acquired through years of practical experience. Most start-ups do not have a concrete roadmap and a start-up consultant can put in place a strategic plan and create a roadmap for a new business. It is like giving a stick to a blind man to help him walk, it is that critical.
Market research is like oxygen for any consultant worth their salt. It is of paramount importance so that the plan that is chalked out is relevant, and based on facts and figures. Business consultants analyse market trends and market dynamics and will advise you accordingly. The value that is brought to the table due to market research by Business Consulting Service providers is invaluable to say the least.
We have a whole article telling you more about the advantages of hiring the services of a business consultant.
Business experts have several tools at hand to analyse company performance. Here are some frameworks that consultants use when rendering competent business consulting services.
Benchmarking is comparing company metrics to the metrics of your industry competitors. The usual benchmarking metrics include revenue and production costs. Other important ones are employee turnover, and process cycle time.
It measures data beyond financial metrics to help companies keep enduring strategic goals and find trouble before it appears in the financial statements. Conventional components can include revenues, earnings, market share, quality, employee morale, and customer satisfaction metrics.
Business consultants use Porter’s five forces to gauge barriers to entry and find opportunities to execute industry analysis. It is used as an input to a strategic plan. Besides, they also use SWOT analysis to find the strengths and weakness.
This matrix developed by McKinsey & Company in the 1970s help businesses measures the relative merits of various opportunities. Business opportunities are categorized as high, medium, or low within the two axes of the matrix and business consultants take advantage of the guidance emanating from this data.
This matrix, developed by Boston Consulting Group, is a tool that consultants generally use to measure the relative strength of a product line up within the client’s portfolio.
Besides the above tools, business constants take the help of various CRM software, project management tools, time tracking tools, cloud automation software to assess various aspects of your business. For example, time tracking tools record work hours and let you categorize time for different projects. Likewise, cloud automation software aids business consultants to manage sales, projects, time-tracking, and much more in one place.
As per a note by Donald D Bergh and Patrick Gibbons on 28the March 2011 titled The Stock Market Reaction to the Hiring of Management Consultants: A Signalling Theory Approach that we came across on 19th April 2022 at https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6486.2010.00957.x, which has been published on behalf of the Journal of Management Studies. It clearly says that the Companies that hired the services of Business Consulting Services experienced a higher increase in their profitability, compared to the ones who didn’t hire Consultants.
A consultant enhances the value of a business enormously by assisting it in making the correct strategies. As part of systematic business consulting services, consultants work for multiple firms dealing with different problems; their suggestions hold solid grounds for any organization, making them high performers and creative thinkers. As per a report, over 55,037 business consultants are employed in the USA alone. Now this number would not be so high if the returns from their services weren’t genuine. Do take a few minutes to read up on our detailed article on the benefits arising out of employing Business Consultants.
Services that we provide are available to both new and established businesses. At Innovation Junction, we understand that efficiency is the driver of business growth. At this point, there is an increase in workload, and there is a need for a consultant in every business worth their salt. This need also arises if the specialty of product or services provided by the company does not match the new requirement. The best and the cheapest way then is to get the job done through outsourcing it to a consultant.
For example: A company provides services in accountancy and the increasing number of employees in the organization is now not easy to manage in MS-Excel, which is the current method in use. In this example, the company has two options:
Here we come into the picture. We provide the best and the expert solutions like HRMS software, biometrics, or any other IT solution, best suited for a company’s specific needs. We have proprietary software that is designed out of our experience. But if the already available option does not fit the need, we separately analyze and design a tailor-made software to meet the requirement.
To understand it best, let us understand the below-mentioned 3 main goals that we have in mind while taking up any project:
Now let’s dive deeper into the services which we provide to our customers which are best-in-class when compared with our competitors:
One of the key reasons why the world’s best businesses continue to reach new heights is the effective use of technology. This is where IT consultants come in. We analyze a company’s challenges, give efficient solutions, and thereby push things forward. We, as consultants, are skilled specialists in a certain subject and are frequently employed by firms to bring our vast experience to your door.
Generally, the expenses incurred in IT solutions are Operational Expenditure (Op-Ex). OP-Ex is the expenditure that occurs regularly and is accounted for by including it into the profit and loss account at the end of the accounting period. They don’t have any significant percentage such as Cap-Ex (the long-term investments). In the IT domain the ratio of op-ex to cap-ex is normally as high as 9:1. We solve the problem of op-ex (nonstop and regular expenditure) by negotiating with vendors, rationalizing technology, and automating processes.
This reduces operational costs, and the money saved can be invested in the business as cap-ex (one-time, non-recurring expense). This is accomplished by developing a Business Strategy based on a competitive IT strategy, i.e., the business is driven by the optimized IT framework and strategy developed by us to produce optimum output while requiring the least amount of Op-Ex. This IT framework is created by proper analysis by our team to identify IT issues and requests. This stretches the Dollar invested to the maximum.
Refer to the following points to learn more about the types of work that we, as IT consultants, often provide to businesses:
Mergers and acquisitions are business tactics that have gained prominence among industries and corporate houses in this period of fierce competition and increased commercial rivalry. Mergers and acquisitions, or M&A, are the purchasing, selling, or combining of corporate entities. It allows firms to expand, thrive, and ensure that the newly formed organization is more influential with enhanced efficiency and productivity. The goal of a merger is to increase the value of the entity after the merger.
Merger and acquisition advisory firms like us support and give crucial assistance and experience to organizations who seek to purchase, sell, or completely restructure their businesses. We operate similar to personal financial advisors and are game-changers if you allow us to successfully execute a deal on behalf of your company, we give assurance of that.
The process of selling or reorganizing a business is time-consuming and needs the assistance of specialists. This is where an M&A Advisory Firm comes in, and you can even take us as your “Business Coach” who can guide your company towards a successful corporate transaction. We play an important role in this era of mergers and acquisitions (or takeovers) since we can devise a workable strategy and give our customers tailor-made solutions that ease the mergers and acquisitions procedure.
We oversee Merger and Acquisitions and complete TSAs (Transition, Services, and Agreements). Some of the work that we do under M&A are:
Contract negotiation is the process of arriving at an agreement. This is related to a set of legally binding terms and conditions (we’ll focus on negotiations between two businesses here). When two organizations sit down to bargain, they both target the best results for themselves. At the same they want to minimize financial and legal risk.
This is a separate concept from M&A in terms of compliance as M&A only looks at the merger of the firms. When negotiating contracts with vendors, you may choose to pay on a monthly rather than annual basis. It could also be or vice versa. Payments, like many other challenges, do not have a ‘right’ answer, but rather have alternatives one of which may make the most sense for your business. In business, we negotiate contracts to ensure that our agreements position your organization for long-term success.
Negotiating the contract improperly can lead to many challenges. Which are as follows:
We can eradicate all the above-mentioned challenges. We provide the best solution to you by taking into consideration the requirement of both parties. Eventually this makes the contract profitable for our client. At the same time we make sure that the above-mentioned challenges do not disturb the course of action in future dealings.
If you are looking for an IT solution to improve contract negotiation is to use tools created expressly for it. We have such tools, especially for ‘contract negotiation with counterparties’, as well as ‘contract cooperation with internal stakeholders’. Technology has lately caught up to the difficulty of contract negotiation, and we are at the forefront of it.
Business consulting is the key to take your business several notches up. Consultants with their distinctive experiences help businesses address and overcome challenges in reaching company goals. Nevertheless, finding a competent business consulting service provider is tricky. So, it is always crucial to hire a business consultant with relevant skills and where innovation meets purpose. Innovationjn.com, with its expertise and knowledge, will give you a unique perspective and view challenges from a practical standpoint. Not only this, but we will also provide you with the knowledge needed to run your organization smoothly. Our consultants understand that every business has its challenges and we serve clients to eradicate them. Thus, the value we bring to the business is incomparable. We have been in the consulting business long enough to know what to do and how to do it.
Call us today if you are looking forward to meeting an excellent unbeatable team of professionals. We can deliver under any given global situation.