Profile

Professional summary

Business Consulting Services is a professional, cost effective management consulting service focusing on business performance improvement and strategic technology consulting.  Specifically, we seek to improve client performance by analyzing their business processes and work flows, designing a more effective and efficient approach, then recommending the proper technology to deliver the highest ROI.  We also provide many ancillary services, such as research, analysis, performance metrics, feasibility studies, RFP development, vendor selection and project management, to name a few.

Typical engagements include: technology planning, analysis and design; operations process and workflow analysis; business automation planning; computer hardware

Engagement overview

At our client's preference, we will perform our services on a fixed professional fee basis.  Travel expenses are additional and are billed at cost or the client's own per diem rate.

Clients

We have worked in the following industries:

• Manufacturing
• Technology
• Financial Services
• Utilities and Telecommunications
• Transportation and Distribution
• Retailing
• Health Care
• Government (Federal, State and County)
• Non-Profit

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Areas of expertise
Insights

Question: Why do large projects fail?

In our experience, there are 10 main reasons why projects fail. They are:

1. Executive Level Non-Support
2. Poor Management (Leadership)
3. Improper Staffing
4. Unreasonable Expectations
5. Poor Project Planning
6. Inadequate Change Management
7. Insufficient Staff Skills
8. Poor Decision Making
9. Communications
10. Lack of Training.. Read more

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Question: How do I encourage my employees to actively seek help?

In order to encourage collaboration, your employees must get to know each other and be comfortable with each other. This instills confidence in sharing ideas and concepts with people they are not close with.

One of my clients recently began a program where each of their teams would go out to lunch every 2 weeks, allowing team members to get closer with each other socially. Positive results we... Read more

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Question: Lowering labor cost as a percentage of revenue

Both Gary and Dan are spot on. Break down your services into market segments, and then choose the 1 or 2 areas that will provide you with the highest return on investment. It is similar to the old "80-20" rule...You should find that most of your benefits will be derived from those areas that have the highest ROI.

And don't just measure everything in dollars and cents. Utilization hours vs. r... Read more

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Question: Measuring effectiveness of the management team

Assuming you were the chief of staff asking the question, you seem surprised at the responses. While conducting our Rapid Transformation program for clients hoping to improve their performance results, a byproduct lesson we often find during our analysis is that management in general has very little understanding of the organization's operation. This is often due to retirements, executive trans... Read more

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Question: Getting consultant performance tied to results

As a manager and/or consultant in many similar such projects (more than I can count!), the following comment is critical: "...we are nowhere near recognizing the productivity benefits that were promised at the beginning of the project."

You have to ask yourselves honestly who "promised" the productivity gains. Was it really the consultant, or did you fall prey to an overzealous software sales... Read more

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Question: Designing a better knowledge management system

Consider a supplement to the documented procedures, worksheets and process charts: VIDEO.

We once conducted 20-30 minute interviews of a client's accounting staff as a test to ascertain how much "documentation" can be captured from current employees. If organized properly, an employee can sufficiently summarize and detail, with visuals, the amount of "work" they perform on a daily, weekly and... Read more

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Question: Growing IT complexity is negatively impacting our business

I assume you have developed and used a strategic plan for your business. Why not extend that planning process to include strategic technology planning? It will force your management team to integrate its IT ventures (active and planned) into the business plan, and thus become a more effective and productive organization... Read more

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Question: Resolving conflict between key metrics

The "right action" is NOT what creates value for the company, but what creates value and resolution for the customer. Sometimes we as managers can get "snowblinded" with the use of metrics, and allocate too much time and effort in evaluating the statistics, rather than analyzing the results... Read more

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Project Proposals

Rapid Transformation: Streamline your Business Processes and Improve Operating Results

Using our Rapid Transformation program, we will:

1. Flow and document the current processes with key employees ("as-is")
2. Review our findings with your employees and management
3. Develop and re-design the processes to create a streamlined, cost effective work flow ("to-be")
4. Review our new design with your employees and management for acceptance
5. Create a plan to implement the c... Read more

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