When organizations hire consultants, they often expect them to deliver specific outcomes. One lesser mentioned value-add from hiring consultants lies in their ability to see beyond their defined roles and notice high-value opportunities.

What exactly do consultants do?

Friends and family often have a hard time understanding exactly what I do. Unlike other professions, consulting offers no shortage of unique challenges, tasks, and responsibilities. In my division of consulting (tech), consultants are typically hired by companies to provide unbiased perspectives or advice, to help establish architectures (product, technical, enterprise, data), or to build systems (products, integrations, automations, etc.) in order to help businesses thrive. We're expected to quickly navigate the intricacies of the digital landscape at a client and ramp up quickly on their specific tools, processes, org structure, and business domain.

Case Study: The $100,000 Windfall

During one of my team's projects, we stumbled upon a quick win that proved surprisingly valuable for our client. Our focus at the client was product development - we were simultaneously helping them modernize legacy apps and refactor their product architecture to support a "product through composition" model. When we started the initial design process to migrate Single-Sign-On (SSO) over from a systems standpoint, the client provided helpful context about their existing identity provider - including how much they were paying for it. While their existing identity platform was well-known in the industry, we wouldn't consider it one of our first picks if architecting from the ground up. Knowing this, combined with our newly learned cost considerations, we quickly provided a recommended alternative. Since we've implemented auth and identity solutions across dozens of clients, it was easy for us to identify an opportunity for improvement.

The client was open to exploring an alternative tool/platform, and approved a quick proof-of-concept that allowed us to validate that it would check all of the boxes. Once we validated it, it took less than one sprint (two weeks) to incorporate into the product. With the help of feature flags, we were able to deliberately roll it out to specific customers as we worked with their IT teams to coordinate the change.

This tooling overhaul had a couple of significant benefits:

• From a cost standpoint, our client was able to realize cost savings of over $100,000 annually
• From a product standpoint, the new platform had vastly superior documentation and integration/setup tooling. We were able to eliminate the need for our clients Solution Engineers to assist their customers with SSO setup, and move it to a 100% self-service model. Setup time shifted from days to minutes, and freed up valuable time for our client's engineers.

Consultants bring a fresh set of eyes and an outside perspective to the table. We aren't tied down by internal biases or preconceived notions, allowing us to objectively evaluate systems and processes. In this particular case, our ability to question the status quo and identify potential areas for improvement set the stage for significant cost optimization and improved customer experience.

How can your company benefit?

Regardless of your industry, or position at your company, you can have a positive impact on driving business value at your organization by considering the following practices.

1. Engage with consultants

Companies both large and small can benefit from establishing relationships with consultants. They can be extremely valuable contacts to have in your Rolodex. If you've never used a consultant before, feel free to reach out to me! I'd be happy to direct you to some of the people in my network that may be well-suited to help you. It's very much a relationship-based industry, so it can be difficult to find a place to start sometimes. Also, most consulting firms are generally happy to provide you some thought leadership and a project proposal at no cost. These can be helpful insights to help you decide who to go with from a partner standpoint. One other thing to note is that depending on the size of your firm, it can be helpful to diversify your partnerships with at least two - this will help ensure competitive pricing. Just be sure to foster a spirit of collaboration, not competition, which can easily kill the success of your most valuable initiatives.

2. Share information broadly

Be open and transparent internally - both with your people and with external partners. Your best interests are generally in the best interest of your partners and your people. Air on the side of sharing information vs. gatekeeping it. Sometimes, even utilizing the appropriate workspace management platform can be a great first step in creating a community of collaboration.

3. Be open to change

Different industries have different appetites for failure. Define what failure and experimentation mean for your organization, and how you can leverage them to build value. Failing is good. It means you are experimenting. Spend some time with your team to see how you can intentionally create space for experimentation in your day-to-day. They can be the most valuable mechanisms for validating value. One way you can easily do this, is by allocating a percentage of your roadmap to exploration and experimentation.

Hopefully this short case study illustrates the potential value that consultants can bring beyond their defined roles and how, with or without consultants, you can create space within your organization to discover those hidden gems yourself. Thanks for reading!