The performance management challenge

Consultancies need a different scorecard from other businesses.

GreySpace comment

There is a dilemma at the heart of what professional services companies do, and that is to find a way to be both strong in 'operational effectiveness' and in 'client intimacy'. The former demands a focus on operations and a large degree of formal control; the latter an ability to wrap the organisation around the client predicament and implies control at the end-user level. The former is about standard normed transactions, while the latter centres on the processes of solution development and relationship management.
Individual consultants are the means by which value is added by the consultancy to its clients and they too need varying methods of being managed. For example, time is the consultant’s stock in trade and so needs to be controlled (and all professionals tend to resent the processes involved!) while at the same time they need time to express their innovative and relationship abilities.

Case example

An internal service function within a large industrial company was given the mandate to develop consultancy-style engagements with internal clients. Directors decided to launch a project which, amongst other results, had substantial impact on:

• Quality of services provided - as measured by the end-users
• 'Value for money'
• New services developed
• Decrease in staff turnover
• Identification of substantial business potential outside the 'mother' organisation