BACS Consulting Group: Solutions for Success
Why do most companies –- especially small-to-medium sized companies –- suffer high failure rates in choosing and implementing information management technologies? Companies often choose from three information industry options: traditional information management consultants; triage-focused systems integrators; and/or relatively sequestered in-house IT departments. But industry and academic research strongly indicates that adhering to these traditional choices play a role in the 70% failure rate in adopting and adapting new information technologies and protocols for optimizing all facets of a company’s operations.
Three Problematic Choices
An old saw holds that tech consultants charge their clients handsomely to tell them what they already know –- and then move on. Research bears this out. In an eyebrow-raising study published in the Harvard Business Review, researchers Alaric Bourgoin and Jean-François Harvey note, “For [technology] consultants, work is largely a performance. Like skillful actors, they use a combination of ‘backstage’ preparation and ‘front stage’ performance to make clients believe the story.”
The end result, however, is that the more standard tech consultant too often proposes solutions that management and proximate stakeholders already anticipate –– as opposed to communicating what they, the stakeholders, need to know.
The second option that often leads to disappointing results involves depending upon in-house IT departments to make what are essentially strategic business decisions. For example, upper management often assigns in-house IT staff the make-or-break mission of choosing, implementing, and managing ever-evolving technologies that will provide their company the competitive edge in increasingly complex, volatile markets.
But such decisions require executive management-level expertise and experience in areas such as strategic planning, operations, labor management and productivity, as well financial planning and marketing. Yet according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, a full 25 % of America’s IT workers do not hold a bachelor’s degree of any sort. Few of the remaining cohort hold any undergraduate, let alone graduate, degrees focused on business, marketing, finance and accounting, and/or labor productivity and management. When IT staff undertake the mission of choosing and implementing information management systems, these staffs too often do not have the specialized education and career experience to make strategically oriented decisions that will produce desired results.
The third misstep involves hiring information integrators who favor the one-size-fits all approaches: information integrators tend to resell particular sets of solutions, fitting their clients into their solution rather than building a solution to fit their client’s business needs. Yet again, industry and academic research strongly indicates that implementation of any information management system and protocols must anticipate and provide solutions for both the unique challenges and possible market opportunities specific to any given company’s niche, especially for smaller-to-midsize companies.
Course Correction: BACS Consulting Group –– Your Solutions-Oriented Partner
At BACS Consulting, we offer our clients a results-focused alternative. We live by the axiom, “Show, not tell,” achieving a documented 93% success rate in contrast to the industry’s alarmingly low 30% success rate, an industry norm Columbia University School of Business has recently confirmed.
Any good consulting firm must first learn what the customer does and how they do it. Out of this conversation emerges a strategy and an implementation plan consistent with a client’s goals. But the standout company –– BACS Consulting Group –- not only does the deep-dive analysis but also brings to the process the insight of the long-view strategist and results of the pragmatic “doer”: accurate diagnosis…viable plan and strategy…and then execution, always the benchmark –- for desired results. Prescribing business solutions without first diagnosing business operations constitutes malpractice.
Collaborative and “deep dive” process: In contrast to the industry norm, we seek out essential information from a wider range of an organization’s stakeholder departments, learning about their capabilities, cultures, while gleaning their perspectives.
Depth and diversity in expertise: Unlike most IT departments, our diverse team includes both seasoned data/information management experts with years of experience in executive management as well as “digitally native” techs (millennial and Gen Z). We assign staff whose skills and team capabilities mesh across multiple disciplines –– including organizational analysis, finance, strong ERP/business processing and communications skills.
Results-oriented solutions for our clients’ needs: Instead of the triage-oriented, one-size-fits all approach, we provide information/data management systems tailored to our client’s unique needs.
Technology must enhance business operations, not just add cost. As we enter the new paradigm of business analytics and AI, every business must have a strategy that includes these new capabilities. When your company is ready to take those steps, BACS Consulting Group can deliver definitive advantages: client-centric, collaborative approaches; flexibility to meet budget targets –- delivering technology solutions for achieving higher efficiencies and operational nimbleness.
Contact BACS Consulting for more information without a sales pitch: www.BACSCG.com, Rkoski@BACSCG.com or PAdams@BACSCG.com. 650-383-4248
