Daily Post 1312
IS CONSULTANCY A FAIR WEATHER JOB?
For the uninitiated, consultancy can most possibly be understood as giving advice for some complex tasks of any company or Govt. decided for a perfect execution or when businesses face rough weather, managing the sails deftly to reach the safe shores. Their expertise is expected to be beyond the extraordinary, delivering success after success or at least the money’s worth. Over a period of time consultants have become auditors, things which even a software can perform provided the business logic is fine. Conveniently, it has been kept in the same format for decades.
The routine documentation which happens to be the work of the office personnel in any organisation, has been handed over to these guys, for their lethargy. Compliances has become a red letter world for these companies, who have feasted on it. Objectivity and neutrality are supposedly congenital to these blue born companies. How many practitioners and technologists are on the rolls of these companies? Consultancy it is feared cannot be a solo career or enterprise. Being worried about their business on their dictated models; terms, conditions and price, flaunting some offshore successes, is their trademark.
This is what is called a fair weather business, with elegance and style for which the customer has to pay, execution clearly out of the purview. COVID 19 has brought back the primary question to everyone’s mind, is consultancy required for sundry jobs and that too at throttling price. With the cash squeeze getting tighter by the day, nobody knows what all would still remain essential for a business enterprise. The irony of the situation is that the consultants who fleeced till yesterday, today have no consultancy to offer to the very same companies, in the hour of their gravest business crisis.
Not that they are capable enough to advise to tide over this crisis, much less implement it, the irony of the situation is that they are not even giving it a try. They are busy keeping their flock together, of partners, who can termed as a hybrid between a owner and an employee. The advance pruning of employees or at least their financial perks has started happening. Consultancy enterprises have been a clear cut case of cash registers ringing with hardly any effort. Where is zeal and involvement to turn around the businesses of the clients today. Payments will happen only if the turnaround happens. For fair weather consultants as they are, customers are just a golden goose.
CONSULTANTS HAVE TO PROVE THEIR WORTH BY HELPING BUSINESSES TO MANAGE THE COVID 19 CRISIS.