Consultant - An Introduction
In this chapter, we'll talk about consultancy and its importance, and how wearing the hat of a consultant helps in delivering successful projects. This chapter is useful for developers who aren't aware of who a consultant is, and what is expected from a consultant.
This chapter assumes the reader is conversant with basic Qlik development and is aware of terminologies used in business analytics. The BI market is growing at a phenomenal rate, and hence it is natural that consultants will play a big role. The figures quoted by Gartner for Analytics are mind-boggling indeed.
This chapter will be covering the following topics:
- Understanding who is a consultant
- Importance of being a consultant
- Difference between a developer and a consultant
- Roles and responsibility of a consultant
- Strategy which a consultant must follow
Understanding who is a consultant
Before we start the discussion on who a consultant is, let's take an analogy. Though the analogy has nothing to do with Information Technology, it helps you to relate the point which we are trying to make.
For a moment, let's assume you are sick. The sickness is causing you a lot of discomfort. It is decreasing your efficiency and your ability to work effectively and doesn’t allow you to focus.
For obvious reason, you go to a doctor. You wait for your turn. When it is time, you enter the doctor's room, but you see that the doctor is impatient and looks in a hurry. You complain about your ailment (say, stomach pain) and lo and behold, the doctors writes a prescription, collects the fees, and you are out of the clinic feeling disappointed. You might take the medicine or rush to another doctor. You would agree that the experience was not pleasant.
Let’s take the same example, but say that instead of an impatient doctor, you come across a doctor who is calm, composed, and welcomes you with a smile. He makes sure you are comfortable. He starts asking you questions. You complain of stomach pain. He asks you detailed questions, such as:
- Is it the first time you are facing this or does it happen regularly?
- What time of the day does it bother you?
- Do you have any allergies to any specific foods?
- What did you eat in the last 24 hours?
Plus, more questions which help in correct diagnosis.
As he asks these questions, you feel comfortable and that you are in safe hands and with the right doctor. The doctor proceeds with examining you and checks your pulse and blood pressure. Only then does he prescribe medicine. The doctor shows genuine intent to make you well and asks you for a follow-up visit to ensure that you are fully fit again.
Did you note the contrast in the approaches?
This is exactly what happens in IT world. If we equate it to the doctor-patient analogy, we can say the patient is similar to a customer who has business challenges and is looking for a doctor, who is, in this case a consultant to overcome the challenges and provide the right solution.
Just like every patient is different with a different constitution, similarly every business is different. In fact, the situation varies drastically across different industry verticals and across geographies.
Moreover, in the real world the situation is more complex, as a consultant must deal with multiple teams in an organization and each team has its respective set of challenges and different expectations.
A consultant is a person whose approach is to understand the business challenges and find solutions to them.
A consultant is the one who does a lot of ground work before he/she starts working on a project. The consultant brings in the best practices during various stages of the project. (The details will be covered in subsequent chapters.) A consultant must the business of the customer, understand the process, and the way existing reporting/analytics are done.
A customer will always prefer a person who understands his concerns, thinks proactively, and gives suggestions. A consultant needs to play an important role in all the aspects of a project. The book will take you through each of these aspects and help you in your transition towards becoming a consultant. The various aspects are mentioned as follows:
- Preparation
- Getting ready with the prerequisites
- Requirement gathering
- Architecture
- Modeling
- Designing
- UI (User Interface)
- UAT (User Acceptance and Training)
- Go-live
- Post Go-live steps
Each of these steps is important in its own way and each of them will have its own challenges. The book will also cover a consultant's journey in each of these steps. We have tried to give examples to make it easy for you to relate to the points which we are making.
Importance of being a consultant
After having understood who a consultant is, let's look at the importance of being one.
Before we get into the importance of a consultant, it’s important to understand the power of analytics and the role it plays in any business organization.
Business users are no longer looking only at just reporting. They now want analytics which helps them to look at data in a more scientific way. In fact, analytics has now become a decision-making system. As businesses become dynamic and competition fiercer, the window for making decisions is also shrinking.
With changing technology, companies no longer have an ERP as a data source. The information is now spread across different applications. The applications too are no longer on-premise; some of them have moved to the cloud. Even social media applications like Facebook and Twitter are now considered sources of information for companies. Big data is one of the buzz words, and Microsoft Excel still remains one of the prevalent data sources! It's important for customers to get the best from all the data sources.
Companies look at Analytics in multiple areas, such as:
- Sales
- Marketing
- Finance
- Operations
- HR
- Supply Chain
- IT
Analytics brings great value to the company in each of these areas. We will delve deeper into these areas in further chapters, but for a brief understanding, let's look at why these areas consider analytics so valuable:
- Sales looks for increasing profitability and increasing revenue
- Marketing wants to up-sell and cross-sell, and improve Return on Investment (ROI) on campaigns
- Finance wants to find ways of reducing cost
- Operations wants to streamline the process
- HR wants analytics for talent retention, succession planning, reward management, and performance monitoring
- The supply chain wants better sourcing and better vendor management
- Information Technology looks for better asset management, service delivery, and IT project performance management
Let’s take an example of a fictitious company, say PQR Corp, which is a manufacturing company. PQR has a turnover of 150 million USD and has all the previously mentioned functions of sales, finance, operations, HR, supply chain, and IT.
If PQR Corp invests one million USD in Analytics (with the help of a good consultant, of course!), then a good consultant can not only recover the cost for PQR but can also make the investment turn substantially beneficial:
- If he/she can help improve sales revenue by 10 percent, a company’s revenue can grow from say 150 million USD to 165 million USD, which is an increase of 15 million USD in revenue USD
- If he/she can help in reduction of the inventory cost from 30 million USD to 20 million USD, it is a savings of 10 million
- Similarly, if the consultant can help improve sourcing strategies and help save 5 percent in sourcing cost from 60 million USD to 57 million USD, a saving of 3 million USD can be achieved
The statistics are amazing. Considering the preceding example, one can easily see an overall benefit of 28 million USD. If one adds other benefits from other functions, like HR, IT, and/or operations, these numbers will grow.
When you look at the Key Result Area (KRA) of each of these functions, you can understand the mammoth implications of getting the BI strategy right. KRA are areas in business for which an individual or group is responsible.
You will appreciate how analytics plays a crucial role for a company and how you as a consultant can influence the success of an organization. The power of analysis helps organizations to understand their data better and to take better business decisions. A poorly executed Analytics implementation gives no added value to the organization and the investments go waste.
After being a developer, a natural progression in one's career is to look at becoming a consultant. Organizations look at consultants as trusted advisors. A good consultant always commands great respect from a client.
After years of development experience, a person is expected to want a more challenging role. A consultant carries tremendous responsibility on his/her shoulders. The approach which a consultant takes will have a direct impact on the fortunes of a company. Any company which invests heavily into an analytical software, like Qlik, will expect a good Return on Investment and a low cost of ownership.