A consultant cannot be a Swiss army knife. An agency is.

Implementing technology at organizations is a complex undertaking. Whoever ventures into this must have an eye for technical, business, and human aspects. At ACOMPANY, we occasionally receive job descriptions for which organizations just can’t find suitable candidates. The organization has thought very carefully about its digital transformation, the result areas and the goals to be achieved. And they are willing to pay good money for a consultant who can take it all in hand. Dissecting that job posting, it turns out that the organization actually needs seven different specialties, something that one consultant cannot possibly provide.

In other words, looking for the impossible. Do they grow on trees? Unfortunately not. In fact, they’re as scarce as hen’s teeth.

Companies with generous budgets sometimes choose the solution of bringing in multiple consultants, each of whom are top performers in their field. Unfortunately, this is no guarantee of success. Not only does someone from the company have to manage those consultants, they have to get them aligned and working well together. A High Performance Expert Team, like the one ACOMPANY deploys, works in a very different way: we make sure the various experts on that team work like a well-oiled machine. I briefly outline why a High Performance Expert Team is a good thing:

• T-profiles cannot be stretched endlessly.
  In the recruiting world, people sometimes talk about T-profiles: the vertical stripe then represents the depth of someone’s skills, the horizontal stripe shows that someone also has knowledge of other fields. To some extent I can go along with that, but there is a limit to the breadth of expertise one person can have. For example, if you are an enterprise architect and like to look at things holistically, you can do project management for a short period of time, but you will never be as good at it as a true project manager who kicks ass at getting all the details right. You can’t be a ‘high performer’ in all those areas.
• Shorter time to value:
  A team that comes through an agency like ACOMPANY starts at the client perfectly prepared, and can hit the ground running. We invest a lot of time in ‘prepping’ a team: all angles have been gone through, everyone knows exactly what is expected of them. Once such a team starts working for a client, they immediately achieve results and add value.
• Jupiler Pro League versus Red Devils:
  When footballers from various top clubs start playing together in their national team, it takes a while before their interplay is perfect. Within their own club team, they know blindly where the striker wants a cross, and it’s ingrained in everyone what their position is when in possession of the ball and how to act when the ball is lost. When they join the Red Devils, those automatisms fall away. This is also how it works when the stars of the consultancy are fitted into a new team, especially if the ‘coach’ is also new. Within an agency model, though, they are used to working with each other, and also speak with one voice to the client.
• Cost efficiency and scalability:
  In a digital transformation, you don’t need an enterprise architect at the same intensity all of the time. Nor do you need a full-time change manager at the very start. If you hire several consultants, you will tend to use them all the time. Within an agency model, experts show up only when they are needed. Thanks to orchestration by the Team Lead who serves as a ʽsingle point of contact‘ with the client, they are still perfectly informed about the entire project. The flexible deployment of the various profiles also makes it easier to scale up when the job requires it, or scale back when needed.
• Better knowledge transfer:
  Members of the High Performance Expert Team work closely with the client’s own people. Change management, for example, uses the communication channels managed by the internal communications team. As a result, our team members transfer knowledge to the customer. Also because they have worked at various customers in different sectors, gaining a wide experience, that they can then share.
• More innovation:
  Because of the external perspective, and the experience of other projects, an agency can bring in new ideas, and will be more likely to stick its neck out than an internal employee, or a hired sole proprietor who mainly wants the contract to last as long as possible.
• Concrete results:
  An agency focuses on deliverables that provide an integrated solution to a problem set, not on simply performing hours for a client.

A High Performance Expert Team, like the one ACOMPANY deploys, works in a very different way: we make sure the various experts on that team work like a well-oiled machine.

Everyone agrees that there is a huge shortage of talent, of people whose unique skills add value to an organization. That search is difficult enough. If we want to combine too many skills in one single person, it becomes even more difficult. One consultant cannot be used like a Swiss army knife. An agency, however, can provide all the specific skills.

Contact us if you are looking for that ‘Swiss army knife’. that elusive multitasker!