Monitoring Progress

Working with professionals has both its up- and downsides. The upside is pretty forthcoming. Professionals usually have a very strong work ethic, take pride in their work and are effective communicators – usually. The benefit of this is therefore that monitoring and actively managing the work outcomes of your business consultant is likely not that necessary. Having said that, not everyone is the same. The fact remains that you’re hiring someone to provide a service and you need it delivered in a cost-effective and timely manner. So what are the options that you have available to monitor progress? Here are a few pointers:   

Quantify 

Make sure that you quantify deliverables as much as you possibly can. This can be sometimes quite a tough thing to do due to the nature of the outcomes that they need to achieve. The key is simply to ensure that you quantify your goals as much as possible. 

Regular Reporting 

A key part of your consultant’s job should be to regularly report their progress to you. Mistakes and miscommunication often creeps in when there’s not regular official communication taking place between the consultant and company owner. How often? This depends entirely on the size and scope of the project as well as the level of interface required by the company director/owner. A good rule of thumb is to have reports produced at least once a week.  

Scaled pay structure 

A new recent technique introduced is to have the outcomes of the measures introduced by the consultant used as an input in calculating their remuneration. It basically boils down to a performance driven pay. This is obviously very popular with business owners and also a great way to keep the consultants accountable to their work.   

Relationship 

Often overlooked is the need to cultivate a strong personal relationship with your consultant. Not only is it more difficult for a consultant to ‘cheat’ their friends (as opposed to simply clients), but it makes for a more comfortable platform between the two parties in discussing a project’s progress.  

These above are four of just many measures one can introduce to ensure you keep close taps on ongoing performance. They underlying objective should be to be comfortable with you consultant to be able to adequately communicate any issues that may arise from previous stated expectations.