Consulting as a Service: remotely building internal competencies

01 April 2019 Consulting.us

The rise of cloud services is set to transform the consulting industry. Paul Boucher, cofounder of Oneflexiwork, shares his thoughts on the benefits of Consulting as a Service (CaaS) and elaborates on offerings in the space.

Consulting is all about delivering services, but as technology and the related consulting market transitions to the cloud, the way in which services are delivered, consumed, and billed is also changing. Companies want to be efficient, they want to invest in their people, and this is where the full-time culture that has developed in traditional consulting is no longer the only option – CaaS offers an alternative.

Traditional consulting typically requires clients to spend on overhead, flights, hotels, and other related travel expenses that in effect don’t add any direct value to projects. In a CaaS model, external experts are sourced remotely at a lower cost, while performing the same activities.

CaaS focuses on strengthening program governance and developing organizational skills. A true CaaS offering includes highly qualified mentoring resources, deployment methodologies that meet best practice from the relevant knowledge areas and innovating governance platform. This innovation supports the client organization and its deployment partners with on-demand access to the progress and status of their change program.

Consulting as a Service: remote consultancy support at a lower cost

Benefits of Consulting as a Service

An overview of what a CaaS offering should deliver:

Invest in people knowledge and expertise

 Quality consulting is important, so a CaaS partner must offer experts that are qualified in project and change management governance as well as being highly qualified in their industry sectors. Beyond the certifications, the team must have experience in many different types of projects.

Invest in technology applications and toolsets

To deliver efficiently and provide the best environment for knowledge sharing, a CaaS provider should invest in a secured toolset which offers an efficient and safe platform for collaboration, work management and, document management as well as on-demand reporting. Clients will benefit from access to a reliable and safe portal platform, ensuring that team members interact with each other in managing project deliverables and progress reporting.

Invest in knowledge sharing

The real focus of a CaaS solution is knowledge sharing. A big part of this happens via the "as a Service" consulting activities, but the second part comes from the safe sharing of templates and methodologies that meet industry best practice. A good CaaS solution should provide clients with an extensive library of templates that can be accessed as needed by the users.

Clients that adopt a CaaS approach can expect to reap the following benefits:

  • Receive quality professional mentoring advice that supports team development;
  • Gain access to a collaboration platform that will offer improved project collaboration experience and on-demand visibility to transformation program status;
  • Access to templates and methodologies that will speed project ramp-up.

Conclusion

As cloud becomes more prevalent and consulting markets begin to change, it is inevitable that new consulting models will expand. Of course, the usual concerns about quality versus price apply, and due diligence by customers should remain. With all the digital disruption in the market, there have to be changes in how consulting services are delivered. At Oneflexiwork, we think that the most innovative methods, CaaS, will drive success.