Consulting is free |
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Some people seem to think that consulting is very expensive. When one only considers the hourly or daily consulting fee, one might indeed think so. But is consulting really expensive? There are two reasons that explain why this is usually not so. First and foremost consulting should not cost you anything. It should save you money. In situations where consulting costs you money you should not hire consultants. But how do consultants save money for you? They bring in your company lots of practical experience from other companies and lots of theoretical background knowledge. Gaining that knowledge by studying and repeating all the errors the others have already made would cost you orders of magnitude more than hiring a consultant. A process improvement consultant that makes that 98% of your projects finish within 98% of the estimated lead time and estimated budget will save you because:- • Your product launch can be on time synchronizing perfectly with your marketing campaign • You production lines are not waiting until development is finished • You do not need to cancel one project (and throwing away the many person-months or person- years already spent on that project) to try and save another project A consultant that can reduce your lead time by 25% tremendously increases your marketing potential. A consultant that can increase your productivity by 50% increases your development capacity, thus increasing the number of products you can develop and put on the market. A consultant that can increase the quality of your products will increase customer satisfaction, and as consequence will increase your market share and profitability. On the other side, the fees asked by most consultants may seem high, but are very reasonable if one takes into account that a good consultant spends lots of time on learning (by studying books, following courses, …) to keep abreast on the topics in which he or she specializes. |
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