The Consultant's Scorecard
Book

The Consultant's Scorecard

Tracking Results and Bottom-Line Impact of Consulting Projects

Jack Philips
McGraw-Hill, 2000
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Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

  • Innovative
  • Applicable

Recommendation

As any consultant - and author Jack Phillips - will tell you, the days when a consultant could make a living by sharing the latest trendy approaches to business are long, long gone. Today’s executives expect consultants to adhere to the same standards of accountability that consultants themselves have advocated for years. Therefore, the ability to determine a consulting project’s return on investment is an important skill for both executives and the consultants they hire. Phillips offers a practical approach to ROI that somehow avoids consulting jargon and complex formulas. Although it lacks case studies that show how to overcome specific obstacles to data collection and interpretation, this is a valuable book that fills in an important piece of the consulting puzzle. Best of all, it does so in a common-sense way that can be understood by carbon-based life forms, therefore getAbstract recommends this book to consultants and those who hire them.

Summary

Return on Investment: The ROI

The consultant’s first piece of advice is always, "You need to hire a consultant." Today’s executives have some advice of their own: "You consultants need to demonstrate a good return on our investment in your services." Today, consultants are under pressure to demonstrate a solid ROI. Yet measuring ROI is difficult and sometimes expensive. The solution: a logical ROI approach that is simple enough to implement within most budgets. The successful ROI assessment will yield six measures:

  1. Various stakeholder groups’ response to the consultation across various time frames.
  2. The degree of learning that has occurred.
  3. The degree to which the approach is actually implemented in the workplace.
  4. The actual business impact of the changes implemented, including hard and soft data.
  5. The actual financial return on the consulting investment, stated as a ratio or percentage.
  6. Intangibles, which are soft measurements not converted to monetary measures.

ROI Myths

The search to demonstrate ROI has spawned many myths:

  • ROI is...

About the Author

Jack Phillips  founded Performance Resources Organization, a consulting firm handling accountability issues. As the author of or contributor to more than 20 books, he has served as a consultant to AT&T, Federal Express, Motorola and Xerox. He has also worked as a bank vice president, a Fortune 500 training and development manager and a professor of management.

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