Small Business Operations Consultant – It doesn’t matter how good your strategy is, making it live is what separates a successful business from a failed one. When you own so many businesses, you know exactly what your business sells, but you’re not really an operational expert.
If so, it might be a good idea to bring in a performance consultant. While strategic consulting focuses on the current state of your business in the market and ways to achieve the desired position, operational consulting focuses on doing the job effectively and efficiently.
Small Business Operations Consultant
This blog post will explore the ways an operations consultant can help your business and what to look for when hiring.
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Management consultants often charge a dollar or two, so it makes sense to be clear about what results you can expect when working with one. And while certain outcomes are obvious as with all engagements, below are some things you can expect from hiring a mentor.
An operations consultant will analyze the value chain of your business. A value chain is the sequence of processes that produce value for your customer (ie, the services your customer is willing to pay for).
Based on this value chain, the consultant will work to eliminate unnecessary work and try to optimize the remaining processes using tools such as Lean Management or Six Sigma.
Processes like these allow you to scale your company, meaning you don’t have to double your infrastructure and costs while doubling your revenue.
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Transparency and a clear understanding of roles – or more specifically the lack thereof – is often a major problem in growing companies.
Your team doesn’t know what is part of their responsibility and what isn’t. It is true that things change quickly and everyone has to wear many hats. But defining who is responsible for what will give your team greater security and operational efficiency.
Integrating these well-defined roles into an organizational chart is one more thing that brings your career experts to bear. Consider your strategy, value chain, competitive landscape, complexity and speed of innovation to arrive at a model that can grow with you.
But it’s actually a good idea to minimize variations, dependencies, or volume carryovers to build a solid performance base.
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As your business grows and you bring on new team members, you need to document how you do business—how your organization generates the value you bring to your customers.
An operations consultant can help you analyze your current processes and refine them so they are easy to use, easy enough to review, and support your specific use cases to document.
All of the above will lead to increased performance, but only if you involve your team along the way. An effective advisor will make sure you do.
This improved functionality can be used in two ways: either you decide to expand your business with additional resources, or you decide to run things independently and reduce your workload.
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Contact with a career consultant will leave you with a sustainable working model: “We do things here” in all dimensions from people, processes to tools.
Such a model is sustainable if it can handle your expected growth in the near future. However, it has a limit: do not go too far into the future, because the operational requirements for stability, compatibility and power distribution are very different in a company with 500 employees than in a business of 15 people.
Don’t sacrifice your current performance by working in clothes that are two sizes too big. But at the same time, it makes sense to integrate your operational strategy with your business strategy.
As you grow, you will naturally add more people to the business at an increasing rate. While this brings in outside ideas and knowledge, it also puts your performance at risk by having new people working in your business who don’t know your way of doing things.
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An operations consultant can help you in two ways: First, they will legitimize and standardize your operation, making it easier for new people to pick it up. This forms the basis for establishing compliance with these practices.
Second, depending on the scope of your involvement, they can help you set up onboarding procedures to minimize new hire performance risks.
Ultimately, all of the above will be a competitive advantage over your competitors. Doing it right will allow you to consistently and reliably delight your customers every time they interact with you.
However, to accomplish all this, you need to find the right consulting firm to help you. Here’s what you should pay attention to.
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As with all vendors, finding the right management consultant that fits your needs and budget can be difficult. We recommend creating a clear catalog that you can use in evaluating potential firms.
The first thing you want to check is whether the consulting firm you work with is focused on the size of your business. The nature of the challenges you face as a small business is unique and not unlike the corporate world:
For extra hands, you usually hire a consultant to get more information. However, you should be very clear about what you want.
IndustrialExpertise is mandatory when bringing in a consultant to work on strategy, location and pricing with any product related opportunity. These areas require you to know how the industry works and what the competitive environment is like.
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Additionally, industry expertise can help understand best practices for specific operational questions. Example: Recruitment consulting (active) may be more effective if the consultant knows your industry, especially if it is highly competitive or specialized.
Bringing in a career consultant will often focus on workforce, especially knowledge work. This applies to jobs where industry does not play a major role.
In our experience, the industry’s influence on the operational problems our clients need to solve is very limited: the pain points we see in recruitment, sales performance, collaboration, project management or documentation are the same regardless of industry.
If you are looking for a potential consultant, check if they fit the recommendation and the problem of use. Recommendation here means identifying inefficiencies and making solutions to improve the process.
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Especially for small organizations, which may have a leadership team that does not have much experience in managing processes, quality or organization, a recommendation will not be enough.
These organizations need practical support to achieve the desired change. Additionally, achieving efficiency is a long-term effort that requires someone to hold stakeholders accountable.
A bachelor’s or master’s degree will tell you about the theoretical knowledge and problem-solving skills of a consultant. However, detailed and abstract management science models may be too much for your small business. Therefore, business leaders rely on other factors to determine whether a mentor is a good fit.
Years of experience in business management as a consultant can often be a good indicator of work or industry experience. In an ideal world, a consultant has extensive knowledge of small businesses but also knows how large companies operate.
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However, without understanding the theoretical models behind the information, it will be difficult to apply that information to your problem.
Another thing to look for may be actual consulting experience, as experience gained from past projects is of great help to a consultant.
In addition to the above skills, consulting firms can add real value to you. If there is a systematic process for solving your problems based on a healthy mix of theory and experience, you can be sure to benefit from both in a predictable way.
This last criterion for choosing a consultant for your small business and culture company is applicable. Especially for small organizations, bringing in a consultant can have a huge impact on the organization. As with all outsourcing decisions, make sure the service fits where you want the company to go.
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Example: If you are trying to create a self-directed or peer-led organization where decision-making is flexible and distributed across groups, a consultant using a formal approach would not be appropriate.
Additionally, if the cultural fit is good, customer engagement will be much better. This is a prerequisite for a successful project.
It all boils down to this: If you’re going to bring in someone to explain how your company does business, make sure you like the way that person thinks about business.
You may consider bringing in an external consultant to improve business processes. But is it worth it? Here’s a guide to determining the ROI of hiring a career consultant.
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You need to delegate work to scale your company. But successful commissioning is one of the most difficult tasks. This blog post outlines the five dimensions of successful outsourcing: time, work, delegation, accountability, and people.
Meetings create a lot of hatred. I see it another way. Check out this short post on why meetings are one of the most important tools for any leader. If you are an academic, you might consider turning that expertise into a consulting business. Before you print your business cards, learn about the steps involved in setting up a consulting firm.
With a few years of experience, you can start a fulfilling career teaching business owners how to be more efficient. Learn how to start a consulting business and take the companies you help to the top.
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