Professional Consulting

Professional Consulting

Professional Consulting: The Escalating Dimension of the Service Sector

Competition began with life itself but for millions of years, natural biological competition involved no strategy or idea. The laws of probability used to govern the competition and competitors naturally found the combination of resources that best suited their needs.

However, as somebody has rightly said that an invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come, today’s business competition does not follow the laws of natural selection. With businesses striving to beat the cutthroat market competition and to find a foothold in the ever-changing marketplace, professional consulting has evolved as one such idea whose time has come.

Truly, now it’s a time when knowledge needs to be set free so that at least in terms of knowledge there remains no difference between the haves and have-nots. And this is what professional consulting is all about.

More specifically, professional consulting is basically a knowledge transfer process wherein the practitioner’s technical skills, education, observations, experience, and knowledge is brought to the limelight so that the world benefits from these valuable assets. Professional consulting does set knowledge free, but like all good things professional consulting does not itself come for free.

In fact, professional consulting is the most expensive and desirable commodity in the services sector and is sold under different names, such as quality consulting services, IT consulting services, and software consulting services. However, the domain wherein professional consulting is required most is software implementation.

With software becoming more and more useful, its implementation is becoming increasingly difficult. Moreover, since innumerable software is hitting the market these days, it has also become difficult to select the right software for the right purpose. And one cannot ignore the fact that in today’s business world one wrong decision can spell doom. Therefore, before making huge investment in a particular solution, businesses always prefer to get the right advice from the right people. And the right people are the professional consultants who help these businesses leverage their software investment.

For example, consider the case of ERP implementations. The ERP market is flooded with packages from numerous vendors and some of them like SAP, BAAN and Oracle are too big to be neglected. Each of these ERP vendors would promise to streamline your entire business process but reality is that only one or two would fulfill your exact needs.

It is therefore that you need the help of an ERP consultant who can study your business process and guide you to the right product. But let me tell you that your quest for streamlining your business process does not simply end here. You need to integrate the innumerous modules of your selected ERP package into all your business processes so that the flow of information across your organization is seamless. And believe me you cannot do this without the ERP consultant guiding you at every stage.

Apart from implementation, another important domain where professional consulting has made a mark is quality. With every business desiring to enhance their business processes and improve their productivity, professional consulting has become a must. Professional consulting helps these businesses pursue the various quality standards such as ISO, CMM and Six Sigma.

An important aspect of the term “professional consulting” is that “professional” and “consulting” are actually two different and yet very similar services. The difference becomes clear when the same company provides both professional and consulting services. In such a case consulting service refers to the generic service wherein a consulting group of the organization interact with the customers to throw light on the various products offered by the organization whereas professional service refers to the product-specific technical support services provided by the organization.

However, the fact of the matter is that it doesn’t really matter whether professional consulting refers to the same thing or two different things. Reality is that professional consulting has opened the floodgates for knowledge transfer and at the same time it has provided yet another new and exciting dimension to the service sector.

posted by navneet biet @ 4:24 AM 0 comments

profess

Professional Consulting: The Escalating Dimension of the Service Sector

Competition began with life itself but for millions of years, natural biological competition involved no strategy or idea. The laws of probability used to govern the competition and competitors naturally found the combination of resources that best suited their needs.

However, as somebody has rightly said that an invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come, today’s business competition does not follow the laws of natural selection. With businesses striving to beat the cutthroat market competition and to find a foothold in the ever-changing marketplace, professional consulting has evolved as one such idea whose time has come.

Truly, now it’s a time when knowledge needs to be set free so that at least in terms of knowledge there remains no difference between the haves and have-nots. And this is what professional consulting is all about.

More specifically, professional consulting is basically a knowledge transfer process wherein the practitioner’s technical skills, education, observations, experience, and knowledge is brought to the limelight so that the world benefits from these valuable assets. Professional consulting does set knowledge free, but like all good things professional consulting does not itself come for free.

In fact, professional consulting is the most expensive and desirable commodity in the services sector and is sold under different names, such as quality consulting services, IT consulting services, and software consulting services. However, the domain wherein professional consulting is required most is software implementation.

With software becoming more and more useful, its implementation is becoming increasingly difficult. Moreover, since innumerable software is hitting the market these days, it has also become difficult to select the right software for the right purpose. And one cannot ignore the fact that in today’s business world one wrong decision can spell doom. Therefore, before making huge investment in a particular solution, businesses always prefer to get the right advice from the right people. And the right people are the professional consultants who help these businesses leverage their software investment.

For example, consider the case of ERP implementations. The ERP market is flooded with packages from numerous vendors and some of them like SAP, BAAN and Oracle are too big to be neglected. Each of these ERP vendors would promise to streamline your entire business process but reality is that only one or two would fulfill your exact needs.

It is therefore that you need the help of an ERP consultant who can study your business process and guide you to the right product. But let me tell you that your quest for streamlining your business process does not simply end here. You need to integrate the innumerous modules of your selected ERP package into all your business processes so that the flow of information across your organization is seamless. And believe me you cannot do this without the ERP consultant guiding you at every stage.

Apart from implementation, another important domain where professional consulting has made a mark is quality. With every business desiring to enhance their business processes and improve their productivity, professional consulting has become a must. Professional consulting helps these businesses pursue the various quality standards such as ISO, CMM and Six Sigma.

An important aspect of the term “professional consulting” is that “professional” and “consulting” are actually two different and yet very similar services. The difference becomes clear when the same company provides both professional and consulting services. In such a case consulting service refers to the generic service wherein a consulting group of the organization interact with the customers to throw light on the various products offered by the organization whereas professional service refers to the product-specific technical support services provided by the organization.

However, the fact of the matter is that it doesn’t really matter whether professional consulting refers to the same thing or two different things. Reality is that professional consulting has opened the floodgates for knowledge transfer and at the same time it has provided yet another new and exciting dimension to the service sector.

posted by navneet biet @ 4:24 AM 0 comments