Tech Tips for a Better Consulting Practice
John Fennig, Ph.D., Heather Mortensen, Ph.D. in progress, and Jon Zimmer

 In the "Rule of St. Benedict", a 1500-year old manual for how to run a monastery, the Abbot or Abbess is instructed to ask the newest members of the community to speak first in a meeting, then hear from the more senior members. This is done to help keep fresh perspectives, new ideas, and active curiosity flowing in the organization. As a lead in, I asked our firms newer staff for their comments on how we "do technology." This article will then review my 12 must-do technology tips in addition to offering proposed budget allocation for technology to improve the efficiency and ultimately earnings of your consulting practice.

"Heather, as the newest member of the DRI Consulting staff, what have you noticed about our use of technology - from the time you first made contact with us to this afternoon's work on a major client project?"

There were four things I noticed about DRIC's use of technology. The first use of technology is the comprehensive and informative DRIC website. It educates potential clients about our services, which reduces the consultant's time in addressing inquires. 

In addition, I noticed the company's storage of electronic files rather than paper files. It not only saved space and reduced costs but also allowed us to access information from multiple locations. 

The third aspect I noticed was the company's use of technology to make our services more convenient for clients. For example, in contrast to the administration of paper and pencil inventories, DRIC assessment and testing is completely electronic from administering the assessments online to scoring to comprehensive reports. This use of technology is not only convenient for the client but also saves the company time, money and resources. 

Now, after working with the company for several weeks and having more contact with clients, I appreciate the fourth use of technology the most: bold-communicating with clients.-bold The use of electronic mail versus ground mail to send clients their "finished product." With the use security passwords to ensure confidentiality, once the document is completed it can be in the "secure hands" of the client within seconds via electronic email. Clients will call with a request additional services or products immediately. This allows clients to not only get their needs met rapidly but also saves consulting time and cost.

"Jon, as the youngest member of the DRI Consulting staff at 16, what have you noticed about our use of technology - from the time you first made contact with us to this afternoon's work on a major client project?"

I came to DRI Consulting as a high school sophomore that is especially competent in the area of computers and technology. The following are a few tools/resources that DRIC frequently utilizes:

Remote access, a feature built into Windows, allows one to dial in to a server and use the desktop remotely to do work that normally one could only do when physically at work. This is quite valuable because one can work on a project away from the office if he or she is out of town or on a business trip. If he or she needs to obtain or edit an important file and finish it before a deadline, but is unable to make it into the office, they have Remote access to back them up. Simple to use, but easily one of the most valuable tools we have.

Our new online survey program at SurveySage.com. What once was a long, tedious data gathering and scoring process for 360 surveys has become a task that takes minutes due to the automated scoring systems developed online. This is a user-friendly yet powerful online program that can save hours of time.

Microsoft FrontPage, a tool that is used to edit and build web pages. This program simplifies the complicated HTML code down into a more simple and efficient interface. This showed me how much work and time it takes to keep a website maintained, but also how simple FrontPage makes it for one to do this. FrontPage makes it simple to fulfill basic and complex needs for a website. 

We upgrade often to new technology and techniques that save time, money, and increase the quality of work for clients. 

We are blessed with talent that students such as Heather and Jon provide our small but thriving practice. Here are my top tech thoughts for improving your consulting practice:

Business Truths...According to John

1. To be profitable you must earn (or be subsidized in some manner to the tune of) at least $100,000 per full time employee (FTE) - including yourself.
   The most profitable can earn up to $500,000 per FTE and more. (Given a premium we place on family time and other uncompensated work we do, DRIC targets $250,000 per FTE annually).

2. On average you need to spend 3-5% of gross annual revenue for total information technology to succeed - hardware, software, connections, website (useful life is 2-4 years on 80% of it).

3. On average you need to spend 3-5% of gross annual revenue for advertising to succeed (useful life is 1-2 years on what you buy).

So . . . 

1. Only do the tech things you really love and that add value to the business - farm out all else.

2. Right tech is better than over tech - start simple and reliable and comfortable for you, grow with your tools.

3. The lack of focus/plan, interest, or skill at sales is the #1 killer of a business - 1 in 8 businesses make it in 5 years. Use technology to boost your selling capabilities. 

4. Ideally, your IT costs are reimbursable to a large extent by client (build into expenses, such as project sub-web fee).

Tech Tools You Gotta Use!

• E-mail to advertise, bid on work, manage projects, coach/report/do the work.

  • Attachments - This is called "push," putting information out into another's hands 

  • Links back to your site - This is called "pull," bringing people to you to get the information. Pull is far superior to push in most cases.

  • Use vendor sites and/or your own to administer/score information gathering/bold-assessment tools-bold - (e.g. www.feedbackshop.com, www.cpp.com, www.pantesting.com, www.psionline.com)

  • Use web-linked bold-accounting tools-bold to invoice clients, collect money, pay bills, bank, and generate postage (e.g. QuickBooks!)
    

• Order stuff from vendors online and have them deliver it - Simon Delivers (food), Office Depot, you name it. Free delivery. Memorized order lists that permit fast identification of your needs.

  • VERY COOL! Electronic proposals, delivered to prospective clients as a web-link to a customized web page at your company site (e.g. using FrontPage). This pulls people into your world and serves up the proposal, examples, and other material you want to display for them.

  • VERY COOL! Submit reports or proposals to print, bind, deliver with Kinkos online service  This is why FedEx bought them - no need to ship. Just order from a Kinko's near where the document is required, and they will deliver it for free or very inexpensively.

  • Connect staff, partners, and vendors to data files stored at the office (staff working at home/road/client, accounting firm)

  • VERY COOL Cellular Internet and Remote Access. For $80/month (e.g. Verizon) you can have unlimited internet access through a card for your notebook - many cities at very high speeds and nearly all of the country at an acceptable speed. This is not Wi-Fi which is limited to being near a building. This is built into Windows and allows you to "call home" and run very big programs and files on the home machine over slow connections or this faster cellular card.

• Company website and tools to:

  • Inform clients

  • Win over clients

  • Close sales (from order form to shopping cart)

  • Offer tools/tips/writings for a fee or free

• Connect clients to a common project workspace (sub-web of company website). Most every project we do with clients uses a web-page as the project bulletin board, a centralized "go-to" place for everything from schedules to program material to photos and video clips of people involved. Society of Consulting Psychology's recent adoption of an association bulletin board is an example of this.

• Web calendar for self-scheduling by clients. Your internet service provider has these at little to no extra cost to use. Great when needing to get a large number of people into timeslots - send them a link to the calendar and they pick and schedule.

• Use a digital projector and notebook in teamwork sessions/meetings in place of flip charts. Have one of the participants be the recorder. Use Word rather than PowerPoint as a facilitation tool and permanent record of the work done, real-time!

• Tools to maintain and enhance your non-work life.

  • Family website (e.g. www.2otter.com)

  • Travel workbook (e.g. www.enchantedlearning.com)

  • Webcam for video tuck in, contact with loved ones. Free with MSN messenger. Camera is cheap and internet connections now fast enough to do this well. 

In summary, there are five major reasons to use web-based tools in a consulting practice: 1) to increase revenue (e.g. sales tool), 2) to decrease costs (e.g. from lower postage fees to cheaper test administration and scoring to reusability of an online flyer, to 24/7 interaction with market at minimum labor costs), 3) to increase efficiency, accuracy and speed, 4) to convey expertise through technology and 5) to match your clients needs and preferences in communication.

Dr. John Fennig and the DRI Consulting staff advise client organizations, including consulting firms, on their automation needs. We presented some of the material in this article at the SCP 2003 Mid-winter conference. Please check out this summer’s APA conference and a presentation by Stewart Cooper, Rodney Lowman and John Fennig entitled: “Ethical Considerations of Cross-State and Cross-National Consulting Using the internet”, and John’s specific presentation called “Better, Faster, Wider, Cheaper: A Decade of (Largely Successful) Internet Use”.