That’s promising a lot, but it’s a realistic promise, too. When you are a consulting company (and we are one) you are on a constant quest for new business and increased revenue. There is more competition than ever. Standing apart from your competition can be a challenge, especially if you are competing against one of the big consulting companies.
Building your change management capability is one option worthy of consideration.
4 Primary Benefits to Upgrading Your Change Management Services
What will this mean for your business? 
- Get in and out of client projects faster, enabling you to expand business and leverage your resources more effectively.
- Gain new business by offering a new or a better change management solution and setting your company apart from competitors with a weaker offering.
- Improve client satisfaction when projects are delivered on time, on budget, with all business, technical and human objectives met—resulting in measurable benefits realization.
- Get your client Sponsors to do more of what you need, when you need it. Most client project failures can be traced back to poor Sponsorship! This reduces consultant frustration and increases your success rate at the same time!
Change Management Can Help You Break Out of the Pack
Many consulting companies say they do change management, or say they have a methodology, but quietly admit that what they offer are really marketing words vs true capabilities. Or they limit change management to communication messages and training, which are only a small part of achieving benefit realization for project investments.
At the same time, clients are getting savvier. Many even require a detailed explanation of what you specifically offer as part of their RFI or RFPs. So here are your options:
- You can partner with a company like us that specializes in change management
- Or you can build your capability to deliver a much more robust level of change management that you can actually charge your clients for
Share revenue, or take revenue? It seems like an easy choice! Done right, change management can be a true service offering. Does it require some up-front investment to build the capability? Of course. Does it require some consultant time? Yes. But you will not only end up with consultants with more skills and knowledge; you will actually have more effective consultants who will deliver projects faster and more successfully, with happier customers!
A Case Study
A few years ago, a large healthcare consulting company was smart enough to see there was an opportunity to differentiate themselves from the competition. More of their clients were asking for the company to build change management into their solutions. The company had used the words “change management” as a service before, but the leaders recognized their expertise was narrow and shallow, and actually created risk.
The company developed an RFP to look at what options were available in the marketplace. After an exhaustive search, the organization selected IMA and our proprietary Accelerating Implementation Methodology (AIM) as its change management partner.
Here were some of the reasons for their choice:
- Practicality and fit with their consulting practice
- Focus on business and clinical outcomes
- Training options and philosophical fit with building internal capability
- Flexibility and scalability
Working in partnership, the company and IMA developed a plan to build a core group of consultant practitioners at the Managing Director and Director levels who had the depth of expertise to mentor project teams as “Super-Users.” These individuals went through a 2 day Introduction program and a 4 day Accreditation. In all programs, participants brought real projects so that the time was spent in knowledge building and practical application, including building consultative skills that would be needed for effective mentoring.
The feedback from this group of busy, experienced consultant leaders?
- Best use of our time; could have kept going
- Life-changing
- Thanks again for inviting me; this was hugely valuable
- I want more!
- I’m drinking the Kool-Aid
Using a co-developed strategic approach, the organization embedded the methodology into their own processes and branded the methodology as its own.
The business results?
- Use of AIM measurement diagnostics built business and client relationships
- Improved client satisfaction when methodology principles were built into technical solutions
- More effective discussions with Sponsors which drove faster project delivery and ability to stay within project budgets
What’s Next Generation Change Management?
As change management matures, we see a necessary transition from “traditional change management” to “Next Gen Change Management.”
Critical differences between Next Gen Change Management frameworks like AIM are:
For clients that are Lean/Six Sigma users, implementing Agile, embarking on business or clinical transformations, or implementing other types of strategic change, the change management approach needs to be speed up, rather than slow down project implementations.
Building a Strategic Partnership with IMA
We’ll work with you to develop a customized plan for building capability in your organization, based on your clients and your business objectives.
Contact me directly at palsher@imaworldwide.com or 866-996-7788 for a by-distance overview of the framework and tools.
