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Over the years consulting firms are growing in numbers; offering various consultancies in almost all aspects of the business with diverse industry scope. But its popularity remains limited to large enterprises.

Medium or corporate-grade enterprises are slowly seeing the benefit of hiring consultants primarily driven to scale-up or simply wanted to double their revenue. It’s a universal fact that a third-party opinion matters after exhausting all internal efforts with no success. As Albert Einstein nicely put it – doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is insanity.

While the undeniable benefits of contracting a consultancy firm are out there screaming, some organizations still find it hard to finally say yes to this kind of engagement. Here are some tips to help you discern if you really indeed need an external partner:

1. In need of a stop-gap, quick win initiative – If you have skill or competency that is not currently available within the organization – hands down, go look for an agency that will do it for you. For instance, capital development, sponsor sourcing and mounting of a national convention, is such a huge task and requires a full-time team to do it for you; building an in-house team for this is not in the equation because of its one-time-deal nature. However, the project may be considered high impact, depending how you define its importance, you would rather let the professionals do it for you.
2. In need of competent “fresh eyes” – While tenure often equates mastery of the trade, once in a while you need an independent opinion to keep you ahead of the competition. Consulting firm gives you unbiased survey of industry trends and successful use cases that will be meaningful for you. Depending on the details of your tasks for your consulting firm; you can actually ask them to do an audit for you and bash your current company status against acceptable standard of framework and measurement. They can highlight your waterloo and recommend how to address them quickly and at the same time pursue the greenfield available to you.
3. Manage BAU and new projects at the same time –  Sustaining business life and relevance is of paramount concern of all organization. If the management accepts the need for a consulting firm to do internal gap analysis whether for current operation or to read potential revenue initiatives, consulting firm will allow the top management to juggle between BAU and new projects efficiently.
4. Optimize cost – Contrary to popular belief, consulting firms can also bring you cost saving. Imagine the cost of maintaining your own marketing department, with full benefit and employment accommodation, versus outsourcing it. Consulting firm also offers short-term and long-term job-out marketing services that can deliver the same result, or even better at times; without the headache of recruiting and maintaining an organic team.

The benefit of tapping a business consulting firm or entity is out there for taking. But to make sure it would really work for you; top management needs to define clearly the need and the specific deliverable you want the consulting firm to accomplish. A well outlined service agreements and scope-locked business requirements would benefit both parties.

Contributor:

Allan Catli – is a senior consultant of Muovere Veloce, Inc. and at present is working for Tao Community of Companies as Head of Marketing for Techbox International. He’s also the former marketing services head of Allphones, Philippines and previously worked for Globe Telecom under Small and Medium Business segment as Group Product Marketing Manager. Allan has a bachelor’s degree in mass communication from Adamson University, Manila.