Examining Evolving Consultant Relationships

No Jitter Article by Gary Audin, President of Delphi, Inc. 

The way communications consultants work with clients and vendors continues to change.

Networking at Enterprise Connect allows me to meet people I would otherwise not encounter. This year, while listening to one session, I sat next to a consultant I did not know. We struck up a conversation relating to the changing roles and experiences of consultants, comparing today to the past.

Tim Zarkovacki is a member of the Palitto Consulting Services (PCS) team. His primary roles are consultant and solutions architect. Tim reviews and analyzes business processes, focusing on pain points or areas where clients are having challenges. Here’s a summary of our conversation.

How have your consulting assignments changed in the last 10 years?
Consulting 10 years ago was largely focused on which products were the best fit based on features and functionality. There was a subset of businesses that would self-develop systems to meet their needs, however, most businesses would adapt their internal processes to software that was available to them. There would often be multiple systems involved that required internal employees to manage datasets across these systems.

Today there is a very different focus. Businesses are looking for systems that will enable their operations by adapting and integrating into their current processes.

Consultant-client discussions today start around how the client’s business works, what is valuable to them, and where they want to go in the future. This shift has been enabled by APIs and SDKs providing the agility to adapt as business conditions change.