II. Give the summary of the information in Ukrainian/ Russian/ English.

III. Watch the video. Give the summary of the information in Ukrainian/ Russian/ English.

UNIT 5

Consultancy

Presentation

I. Read the brief, answer the following questions and translate the collocations in bold using the context and the information given below.

12. What can a consultant do for a company? How can his successful activities be measured?

13. What are the types of consultants? What functions can they perform and on what conditions do they work?

14. Why do many businesses have a love-hate relationship with consultants?

15. Comment on the part of the sentence “Enron have tarnished the reputation of the industry”. Why end-to-end or bundled services and aggressive selling cause problems?

16. What are the ways of getting the most benefit from working with a consultant?

17. What are the constituents of the consultant’s methodology?

18. What are the key factors when selecting a consultant?

19. What should the contractual arrangement include? Why is it important?

20. What is required from the company when hiring a consultant?

BRIEF

A consultant is an independent contractor that provides specialised services or skills to a client for a fee. As experts in their fields, consultants can help with analysing and solving problems, completing projects and specific tasks. They can also help a company to focus on results, based on the client’s objectives. The degree to which these objectives are achieved is an important measure of success.

There are different types of consultants. Management consultants analyse and propose ways to improve an organisation’s structure, efficiency and/or profits. Technology consultants provide implementation, support, training and strategic planning services. Web consultants provide assistance with websites, which may include setting goals, optimising search engines and designing the site.

Consultants can offer the most cost-effective solution to a company's needs by providing specialised expertise; overload assistance during a peak period, as consultants can absorb workloads from permanent employees; impartial analysis (providing an objective point of view); іnnovation and training. Consultants may also carry out the work themselves.

Many business leaders, however, have a love-hate relationship with consultants, as advisory services are expensive and organisations have become more dependent than ever upon bought-in advice. Consulting expert, Fiona Czerniawska says that cases such as Enron have tarnished the reputation of the industry and reinforced clients’ concerns that consulting projects are likely to go wrong when they involve end-to-end or bundled services; that there is insufficient objective information available to clients; and that aggressive selling compromises the ability of firms to offer the best possible advice or assistance.

Companies should not retain consultants without understanding how to capture the desired return on investment (ROI). There are different ways of getting the most benefit from working with a consultant.

If a company wants to streamline business processes or increase profitability, they should choose a specialist in tactical matters. This type of consultant should have real-world experience in the same industry as the client. Competitors’ benchmarks, as well as cause-and-effect analysis and cost-benefit analysis should form part of the consultant’s methodology for a tactical project.

If a company is looking to enter new markets, increase sales from existing clients or acquire another business, they should choose a consultant who excels in big-picture thinking. Scenario planning, forecasting and risk analysis are required for this type of strategic advice. A client sometimes decides to retain a consultant as a coach.

When choosing a consultancy firm, check the consultancy’s references and whether the consultant has advised clients in the same type of business, at the same point in the company’s life cycle. It is also necessary to understand the potential conflicts of interest. Is the advice truly objective?

Communication is another key factor when selecting consultants. The advisor’s answers need to be clearly explained. A good working relationship on a personal level is also essential: the client needs to work with the consultant with trust, often revealing confidential information.

Where cost and contract are concerned, if the consultant bills by the hour, both parties need to agree on exactly where and when the work will take place. The contract should detail precisely what the consultant is paid to do. It should include details on how to handle issues that are not anticipated. The contractual arrangement should also include a confidentiality agreement or non-disclosure agreement that prevents the consultant from revealing the company’s business to anyone else.

Finally, there will be no return on investment when hiring a consultant unless the company’s managers buy in, or agree, to the proposed changes. This is best achieved before the consultant begins the work, so that managers and other staff will be co-operative in providing necessary information to the consultant.

Extra info

A web consultant is a person who designs and maintains a web site for an organization. A web consultant can provide a wide variety of services to businesses, from designing a webpage to maintaining the activity that is generated by the site. While web consultants can serve in an on-site capacity with a company, they typically are brought in for special projects for a limited time. Consultants are sometimes kept on a retainer and used as advisers throughout the company’s business cycle. Start-up businesses may employ a web consultant when they first open. The designer works with the owners to define the company’s goals and find out what they want the website to do for the business.

Web consultants often are marketing specialists as well. They are well-versed in what draws customers to a site and what will keep them there to conduct business with a company. The web consultant may work in tandem with a company marketing team, partner with another full-service ad consultancy or design complete campaigns for a business.

Cost effective describes something that is a good value, where the benefits and usage are worth at least what is paid for them. 

A love–hate relationship is an interpersonal relationship involving simultaneous or alternating emotions of love and hate. This relationship does not have to be of a romantic nature, and may be instead of a sibling one. It may occur when people have completely lost the intimacy within a loving relationship, yet still retain some passion for, or perhaps some commitment to, each other.

Enron Corporation was an American energy, commodities, and Services Company based in Houston, Texas. Before its bankruptcy on December 2, 2001, Enron employed approximately 20,000 staff and was one of the world's leading electricity, natural gas, communications, and pulp and paper companies, with claimed revenues of nearly $101 billion in 2000. Fortune named Enron "America's Most Innovative Company" for six consecutive years. At the end of 2001, it was revealed that its reported financial condition was sustained substantially by institutionalized, systematic, and creatively planned accounting fraud, known as the Enron scandal. Enron has since become a popular symbol of willful corporate fraud and corruption.

Benchmarking is the process of comparing one's business processes and performance metrics to industry bests or best practices from other industries. Dimensions typically measured are quality, time and cost. In the process of benchmarking, management identifies the best firms in their industry, or in another industry where similar processes exist, and compare the results and processes of those studied (the "targets") to one's own results and processes. In this way, they learn how well the targets perform and, more importantly, the business processes that explain why these firms are successful.

A Cause and Effect Analysis is a method of analyzing an event or a problem which was devised by Kaoru Ishikawa in the 1960s. The chart used to represent the information gathered in such an analysis is also known as a Ishikawa diagram. It represents the various causes related to an event in the form of arms leading towards an event and the entire structure is in the shape of a "fishbone" and hence a cause and effect diagram is also sometimes known as a Fishbone Diagram.

Cost–benefit analysis (CBA), sometimes called benefit–cost analysis (BCA), is a systematic process for calculating and comparing benefits and costs of a project, decision or government policy. CBA has two purposes:

1. To determine if it is a sound investment/decision (justification/feasibility),

2. To provide a basis for comparing projects. It involves comparing the total expected cost of each option against the total expected benefits, to see whether the benefits outweigh the costs, and by how much.