Chapter 4 1

Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Ministry of Higher Education

Al-Imam Muhammad ibn Saud Islamic University College of Computer and Information Sciences

Chapter 4: The Consultancy Options

Core competence or expertise

• It is important to emphasize that the consultant is someone who is highly competent and has in-depth knowledge and experience that can be brought to the aid of an organization when it has a specific problem.

• It is therefore essential that you select the specific area in which you want to work and that you focus on being able to offer high quality advice and deliver real value for money when working in this arena.

Keeping your focus on your core competence or expertise is really quite essential for two main reasons.

• The first is that it is difficult enough to acquire and maintain a high level of expertise in one specific area.

• The second reason is that if you attempt to be expert in several areas your credibility may be impacted and you may well be seen as a low-level jack-of-all-trades.

As IT professionals sometimes have a reasonably wide range of skills it’s important to spend some time thinking about the area you will present yourself as expert in. It is important that you are quite confident that you can hold your own in this field.

Flexibility is key Many levels of consulting practices. •  Creative or lateral thinking assignments

•  Experiences-based assignments

•  Procedural assignments

•  Hands-on assignments

•  Responsibility assignments

Key areas of IT consulting opportunity Quality assurance Quality assurance is therefore an area in which there is a continual demand for good consulting services as there are still numerous organizations that need help in setting up effective quality assurance programmes.

Key areas of IT consulting opportunity Project management Extensive opportunities exist to take over projects which have lost their project manger, to teach projects managers and other members how to use software to help plan and control their work and also to understand and control their project risks. This is really a field that can offer good potential for any IT consultant with a new angle on how to improve project performance.

Key areas of IT consulting opportunity Data warehousing and mining The setting up of the application software for this type of work is not trivial. Furthermore there are extensive opportunities associated with helping clients interpret the results of data mining.

Key areas of IT consulting opportunity Market intelligence The area of market intelligence is a very neglected field, which is of considerable importance to any effective IT department.

Key areas of IT consulting opportunity Client–server applications Consulting services are especially needed in regard to the evaluation of where and how to use this architecture and what are the appropriate strategies for optimizing its use.

Key areas of IT consulting opportunity Customer relationship management (CRM) The field of customer relationship management is more than a little challenging for many organizations. This is due to a number of reasons not the least of which is that to effectively employ customer relationship management requires significant changes to the mind set of many if not most commercial organizations.

Key areas of IT consulting opportunity Data administration Any attempt to integrate disparate applications packages without giving appropriate attention to data administration is likely to fail.

Key areas of IT consulting opportunity m-Commerce (or mobile commerce) The rapid acceptance of e-commerce and e-business suggested that the next step in the evolutionary chain of IT developments which allows business to be conducted both remotely and also on the move, i.e. m-commerce, will become very big business too.

Key areas of IT consulting opportunity • Database applications

• Local and wide area networks

• Security

• e-Government

• Internet

• Intranet

• Knowledge management

Key areas of IT consulting opportunity • Documentation

• e-Learning

• Productor industry specialist

• Website development

• e-Business opportunities .

Key areas of IT consulting opportunity • e-Business model development

• Helpdesk

• Desktop publishing

• Vendor selection

• Recruitment

Key areas of IT consulting opportunity • e-Business model development

• Helpdesk

• Desktop publishing

• Vendor selection

• Recruitment

Key areas of IT consulting opportunity • IT training

• Computer telephony integration (CTI)

•  Business process reengineering (BPR)

• Strategic IS planning (SISP)

Consultancy Opportunities by Industry Matrix

The consultancy options

a cut-off line point needs to be established. It is probably usefulto establish an 80% rating as a cut-off point. Thus anything youdon’t feel at least 80% confident in you would not considerselling.This means, in the above example, that the consultant couldmarket his or herself in the areas of e-Government, InternetUsage and Project Management.

Although it could be argued that it is not really necessary toinclude on your matrix areas of consulting that would raterelatively low, you might decide to draw up a matrix of all theareas you feel that you could work in and then be realistic aboutthose that you are in a position to undertake work in now.5These high rated areas will then form the basis of yourmarketing plan.

4.5 Consultancy Opportunities by IndustryMatrix

As well as considering your competence in specific areas ofconsulting, there is also the question of which industry sectorsyou feel you are competent to work in. Figure 4.3 is aConsultancy Opportunities by Industry Matrix (COIM), whichlooks at the same 10 areas of consulting used in the previousexample in conjunction with seven different industry sectors.

The COIM matrix has been created by taking the 10 areas ofcompetence, sorted by competence rating, used in the previous

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Banking Education FinancialServices

Government ITSuppliers

Manu-facturing

Pharma-ceuticals

e-Government (eG) 4 3 1 2Internet (Inter) 1 1 1 1 1Project Management (PM) 3 2 3 1IT Training (Trn)Security (Sec)Intranet (Intra)Market Intelligence (MI)Networks (N/W)m-Commerce (mC)CRM

Figure 4.3 Consultancy Opportunities by Industry Matrix

5 Effective consultants continue to learn throughout their careers and so yourskills will evolve and you will become confident to expand or change yourhorizons. This learning often comes from doing the work for the client whichsome clients have been known to resent – they can sometimes unfairly say‘the only thing the consultant did here was to learn how to do the job’.

Checklist • Things to think about when considering the consultancy options

1. What is your personal core competency? 2. Are you satisfied that you are highly competent and have an in-depth knowledge and are thoroughly experienced in this field?

Checklist 3. What sort of assignments will you first look for: (a) Creative or lateral thinking assignments (b) Experiences-based assignments (c) Procedural assignments (d) Hands-on assignments (e) Responsibility assignments. 4. In what industry would you most like to work?

Checklist 5. If your core competency isn’t selling (and it probably won’t be) how do you intend to sell the skills that you have? 6. Are you planning to add to your set of core competencies and how do you intend to do this?