When it comes to evaluating a consultancy proposal, it's important to adopt the right type of thinking, concepts, methodologies, design and implementation. To ensure valid and reliable evidence-based evaluation results, the evaluation process must reflect the purpose of hiring a consultant. If this is not taken into account, the evaluation concepts, methodology and subsequent results will be unreliable. It's essential to configure the unique, subtle and special explicit and implicit conditions of the consulting effort.
An evidence-based evaluation approach guides the type and level of thinking, applicable concepts, process design and implementation, and provides a framework for the valid and reliable evaluation of consulting contracts. It's also beneficial to include a post-mortem evaluation to capture lessons learned and knowledge acquired during consulting hiring. When an evidence-based evaluation uses logical types that are at the same level at which problems arise, evaluation efforts become short-sighted, suboptimal and risky, leading to faulty results. Mistakes in determining the right impulses for hiring and consulting evaluations can be costly and counterproductive.
They describe the relevant concepts specific to a consulting contract and describe the logical type and level of thinking as the cognitive driving forces of evaluation. The better consultants understand your needs, the better they can adapt the solution (scope, timelines, team size) to suit your requirements. The demand for consulting services is driven by the client's need to add value to their organization and activities. This trend is accentuated when the consultant and clients face additional responsibility in high-risk situations, as well as uncertain and complex consulting commitments, decisions and results.
Consider including a competent and experienced consultant in the team to help you develop a procurement process that provides the greatest possible benefit to your company. You must ensure that the consultant answers your queries and contributes more than just repeating your request for proposals. Hélène Laffitte is the executive director of Consulting Quest, a global performance-driven consulting platform and author of “Smart Consulting Sourcing”, a step-by-step guide to getting the best ROI from her consultancy. The main measures and metrics used in consulting processes also focus on external success requirements from start to finish.
An evidence-based evaluation approach provides valid and reliable information on the effectiveness of consulting efforts and provides opportunities to generate knowledge, learning, improvement and innovation. It also provides opportunities to improve the knowledge and practice of consulting and evaluation, as well as an alternative to a process that is too often carried out as a casual evaluation contaminated with possible biases and aberrations. To evaluate a consultancy proposal effectively, it's important to explore best-in-class thought leadership, find consultants and solution providers, network with other professionals, consider including an experienced consultant in your team for procurement processes that provide maximum benefit to your company, ensure that consultants answer your queries rather than just repeating your request for proposals, use evidence-based evaluation approaches that provide valid information on consulting efforts' effectiveness, generate knowledge, learning, improvement and innovation.
