Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Ministry of Higher Education Al-Imam Muhammad ibn Saud Islamic University College of Computer and

Information Sciences

Chapter 4: The Consultancy Options

Core competence or expertise

It is important to emphasize that the consultant is !someone who is highly competent and has in-depth

knowledge and experience that can be brought to the aid of an organization when it has a specific problem. It is therefore essential that you select the specific !area in which you want to work and that you focus on being able to offer high quality advice and deliver real value for money when working in this arena.

Keeping your focus on your core competence or expertise is really quite essential for two main reasons. !The first is that it is difficult enough to acquire and maintain a high level of expertise in one specific area. !The second reason is that if you attempt to be expert in several areas your credibility may be impacted and you may well be seen as a low-level jack-of-all-trades.

As IT professionals sometimes have a reasonably wide range of skills its important to spend some time thinking about the area you will present yourself as expert in. It is important that you are quite confident that you can hold your own in this field.

Flexibility is key
Many levels of consulting practices.

! Creative or lateral thinking assignments ! Experiences-based assignments ! Procedural assignments ! Hands-on assignments ! Responsibility assignments

Key areas of IT consulting opportunity

Quality assurance Quality assurance is therefore an area in which there is a continual demand for good consulting services as there are still numerous organizations that need help in setting up effective quality assurance programmes.!

Key areas of IT consulting opportunity

Project management Extensive opportunities exist to take over projects which have lost their project manger, to teach projects managers and other members how to use software to help plan and control their work and also to understand and control their project risks. This is really a field that can offer good potential for any IT consultant with a new angle on how to improve project performance.!

Key areas of IT consulting opportunity

Data warehousing and mining The setting up of the application software for this type of work is not trivial. Furthermore there are extensive opportunities associated with helping clients interpret the results of data mining. !

Key areas of IT consulting opportunity

Market intelligence The area of market intelligence is a very neglected field, which is of considerable importance to any effective IT department.!

Key areas of IT consulting opportunity

Clientserver applications Consulting services are especially needed in regard to the evaluation of where and how to use this architecture and what are the appropriate strategies for optimizing its use.!

Key areas of IT consulting opportunity

Customer relationship management (CRM) The field of customer relationship management is more than a little challenging for many organizations. This is due to a number of reasons not the least of which is that to effectively employ customer relationship management requires significant changes to the mind set of many if not most commercial organizations.!

Key areas of IT consulting opportunity

Data administration Any attempt to integrate disparate applications packages without giving appropriate attention to data administration is likely to fail.!

Key areas of IT consulting opportunity

m-Commerce (or mobile commerce) The rapid acceptance of e-commerce and e-business suggested that the next step in the evolutionary chain of IT developments which allows business to be conducted both remotely and also on the move, i.e. m-commerce, will become very big business too. !

Key areas of IT consulting opportunity

!Database applications !Local and wide area networks !Security !e-Government !Internet !Intranet !Knowledge management

Key areas of IT consulting opportunity

!Documentation !e-Learning !Productor industry specialist !Website development

! e-Business opportunities
.!

Key areas of IT consulting opportunity

!e-Business model development !Helpdesk !Desktop publishing !Vendor selection !Recruitment

Key areas of IT consulting opportunity

!e-Business model development !Helpdesk !Desktop publishing !Vendor selection !Recruitment

Key areas of IT consulting opportunity

!IT training !Computer telephony integration (CTI) ! Business process reengineering (BPR) !Strategic IS planning (SISP)

looks at the same 10 areas of consulting used in the previous example in conjunction with seven different industry sectors.

Consultancy Opportunities Matrix The COIM matrix hasby been Industry created by taking the 10 areas of
competence, sorted by competence rating, used in the previous
Banking Education Financial Government IT Manu- PharmaServices Suppliers facturing ceuticals e-Government (eG) Internet (Inter) Project Management (PM) IT Training (Trn) Security (Sec) Intranet (Intra) Market Intelligence (MI) Networks (N/W) m-Commerce (mC) CRM 1 3 4 1 2 3 1 3 1 1 1 2 1

Figure 4.3 Consultancy Opportunities by Industry Matrix

5

Effective consultants continue to learn throughout their careers and so your skills will evolve and you will become confident to expand or change your

Checklist
!Things to think about when

considering the consultancy options

1. What is your personal core competency? 2. Are you satisfied that you are highly competent and have an in-depth knowledge and are thoroughly experienced in this field?

Checklist
3. What sort of assignments will you first look for: (a) Creative or lateral thinking assignments (b) Experiences-based assignments (c) Procedural assignments (d) Hands-on assignments (e) Responsibility assignments. 4. In what industry would you most like to work?

Checklist
5. If your core competency isnt selling (and it probably wont be) how do you intend to sell the skills that you have? 6. Are you planning to add to your set of core competencies and how do you intend to do this?