The consulting companies I often deal with are concerned with providing support to companies in the human resources sector with training, talent management, coaching and any other activities that allow organizational change to increase business power.
It is surprising, however, to find out how many consultancy firms are still tied to traditional models and have none, if not sporadically, activated digital proposals: this is the bad news.
The good one, however is the awareness that these consulting companies have matured: they know that they need to quickly develop a digital proposal to support transformation in the organizations that they support and, in parallel, to grow and adapt internally to a new culture focused on processes managed by digital tools. Helping these consulting firms to turn their offer from traditional to digital, and thus remain competitive on the market, is not easy. Below is a short archive that identifies 4 fundamental steps to operate successfully.
Reskilling
consulting companies, more than others, focus their value on the professionalism of people; It is therefore necessary for our purposes to reskill them on digital; this will be easy and almost automatic on younger staff as it will be more complex on senior staff, who have been accustomed to working without the digital support. The goal is not to bring everyone on board but to achieve cross-reskilling in all areas of expertise of the company that will then produce as many digital training offers.
Rethink
In all the processes of change one of the most gross error to make it to want to continue the old practices with the new tools; the introduction of these, in fact, induces a change of processes themselves which must then be rethought. Switching to digital provides unexpected solutions.
Auto-innovation
An innovative digital proposition is really effective if done in a convincing and professional way; this is possible if and only if the consulting company has experienced on its own skin and firmly believes that the solutions proposed are effective for the customer. It’s therefore necessary a strong digital injection within the consulting firm that will allow familiarization with the new models: this will be a prerequisite for rethinking processes and defining a new digital offer.
Integration
Consulting firms that have worked, and often successfully, in a traditional way have also consolidated important experiences and competencies; these are a tremendous value that must be preserved and capitalized. A good digital switchover project must therefore be able to integrate the company’s historical value into innovative digital solutions.
Following the four points mentioned above you will be able to focus on the definition of a new digital offer that will always have to be characterized by providing a solution:
- Usable for all types of users within the client organization
- Scalable to allow a step-by-step process
- Integrable with information systems but above all with client processes
- Innovative enough to fit today but look at tomorrow, considering the speed of the IT market
