21 Jun 2010
The Enterprise 2.0 Consultant
I was heading to work for my new client this week when something fairly mundane happened to me. While entering the elevator, a woman bristled against me. After apologizing, some small talk ensued:
Me: Don’t worry about it. I’m used to being hit. I’m a consultant.
Nice Lady: What type of consultant are you?
Me: Technology.
This innocuous exchange had me thinking all week.
Now, at 6 am, I’m hardly about to bore a nice lady with a long, detailed description of the nuances of what I do. This isn’t to say that what I–or many consultants–do is fundamentally or necessarily boring. It’s not. But it’s pretty presumptuous of me to assume that, from her query, she wanted anything more than a simple answer to a simple question. Plus, did I mention that it was 6 am?
This little exchange affected me all week. I kept wondering, “What type of consultant am I?”
Traditional Types of Consultants
When I started consulting in 2000 (arguably the height of Enterprise 1.0), I quickly became aware of three general types of consultants:
- functional consultants who knew how to configure applications
- technical consultants who worked with security, databases, servers, and other “behind the scenes” things
- strategic consultants who did, you know, “strategic” stuff
This is no accident. Historically, many large consulting firms or system integrators (SIs) have intentionally segmented consultants for several reasons. For one, to be fair, no one person (no matter how bright) can know everything about a large enterprise application such as Oracle or SAP and the business that it’s trying to serve. Second, it takes time and money to train consultants and SIs to place their consultants on projects to recoup their investments. A byproduct of this second reason is that many consultants have been typecast. SIs would send in specialists at occasionally exorbitant rates because no one consultant could do everything required by its client. Again, this wasn’t altogether false, but the benefit to the SI here should not be overlooked.
Enterprise 2.0 and the Blurring of Terms
So, with Enterprise 2.0, have traditional consultant classifications blurred? Are most consultants becoming equal parts techie, “tool jockey” and trusted business advisor?
Speaking for myself, I’m pretty much staying the course. On enterprise software consulting gigs, I have always tried to know as much as possible about applications, the technology and database tables behind them, and the business reasons for the project. I just didn’t like being pigeon-holed. This isn’t to say that I’m somehow more evolved than all or even most consultants. I’m really don’t think that I am exceptional. I know others who refuse to limit their knowledge to one narrow area. People like us are fundamentally curious and we like to solve problems.
But what about these large SIs? Let’s just say that I have my doubts. For years, I have not seen eye-to-eye with the practices of huge consulting firms for a whole slew of reasons, many of which are outlined in a recent lawsuit. When I read about lawsuits like these and hear stories of IT projects gone wild, I wonder if large SIs are still mired in old ways. Are they continuing to train specialists at a time of collaboration and the widespread dissemination of information? Do they hope that we somehow revert to the halcyon days of Enterprise 1.0?
Feedback
What do you think? What kind of consultant are you? Are strict classifications changing?
June 22nd, 2010 at 2:18 am
Technologist, Business Person, Psychologist
I also wonder how to best describe my craft. I am a technologist, I feel it is my responsibility to understand (as much as possible) about the technology, systems, interfaces and architecture. But it is also my responsibility to understand not only the business reason for the project, but for a broader understanding of the business objectives. Often I can identify alignment with other business objectives adding additional business value. I need to be able to think ahead of my customers, what is driving their business value? What are the trends in their industry?
And then I am psychologist because I have to understand the culture of the organization, what are their collective behaviors with technology and with each other? What and who drives decisions? Do processes align with these behaviors? What are the motivators? Was the “non-project” culture considered for the ERP project?
Maybe, we call ourselves business scientist.
One of the main benefits of a E2.0 approach is the ability to view the relationships between the “Business” and the systems that support it. Enterprise means the whole of the organization; we can not take only a technical approach. To properly assess, diagnose, recommend and implement appropriate solutions, we have to dig in, research and understand the problem – which as most consultants know, often takes a good amount of detective work because the problem to resolve may not be as the customer says it is. I am not sure the larger firms business models can pivot to support this approach without a major overhaul to how they train and hire.
With innovation business needs have changed and it became difficult to implement smart enterprise strategies with knowledge siloed into specific buckets and ignorance about the impacts across areas. I think it is the curiosity you write about that is the difference. It requires an broad investment of resources across multiple subjects as well as the ability of an individual consultant to connect the dots strategically. Consultants want to understand how it works and fits together.
Business itself is experiencing a change – thanks to us consumers. In order to fulfill products and services demands for faster, better, cheaper, business continues to become increasingly reliant upon sound technology initiatives for delivery against the lofty business objectives. They expect delivery of solutions that align and are scalable and they will hold us as accountable as any other business partnership.
June 22nd, 2010 at 6:47 am
Interesting!
I think I am whatever my audience (or potential client) wants me to be, or at least will most easily understand in the 15 seconds exchange such as yours. The 6am example was perfect – your audience was being polite, and you provided an easy answer. I think I might have done the same.
In other situations, the elevator pitch for my consulting services probably changes depending on what little (if anything) I know about my audience. This involves a lot of thinking on my feet, but when I nail it, well its worth the effort. The question is whether I know enough about my audience at that point to provide them an answer they can relate to. But going in blind, I normally stick to something generic like “I help employees work together better and therefore companies make more money, normally by finding technology solutions to their business problems”.
But like many things, sometimes by appearing to be inside an accepted box or market you’ll get more business just because people think they know what you do.
I’m definitely going to follow along and see what works for others.
Phil
June 22nd, 2010 at 9:12 am
Guys
Great comments. I agree that it can be hard to describe your craft but, as Phil points out, there’s a time and place for everything. I also agree that the big firms aren’t really built for the type of cross-pollination that independents (and boutique firms) require.
June 24th, 2010 at 5:18 am
Hi Phil; Great question, and at the risk of repeating my last performance on this site, I would like to humbly propose a fourth Enterprise 2.0 type: a technostic consultant.
While I don’t always get to practice my craft in a visible way, my approach is to try and steer my clients away from the pearly gates of the technologists, the strategists and the functional disciples and instead consider the greenfield of a granular, language-based and canonically-driven solution.
It’s topical, it’s granular and it’s agile in the extreme. Also, and hence the handle, the discipline does not much care which set of tools push things along.
In the world of the technostic consultant, all gods are equal, all things are possible and even SAP (like IBM before it) is capable of breaking out of its 100,000 table shell and doing something surprising.
Cheers.
John O’
June 25th, 2010 at 12:35 am
At least my customers does not look for someone who explain what problems they had, but do not offer any solution. Although they are looking for consultant that´s offer solutions.
So at least for me Enterprise 2.0 Consultant mus be one that offer solutions instead of a list of issues, that the company mey already knew.
Finally customers does not any more looks for someone who just list their issues, but they look for someone who list them and also have a solution that fits the customer needs.