OR/MS Today - April 2000 - Was it Something I Said?

April 2000

Was it Something I Said?

Adventures in Consulting

By Vijay Mehrotra

All winter I had been longing anxiously for both the weather and the time for a road trip to the ski slopes. When I finally saw a free Saturday on my calendar, I jumped at the opportunity.

No longer a rookie, I laid out the plans for my friend with confidence: up at 5 a.m., out of the city, and on the slopes by 9 a.m.; ski until 3:30 p.m., and then back on the freeway and home before the rest of the daytrippers.

I was pumped up to ski. I had a killer new ski jacket, a snazzy new hat, a new set of warm gloves, a cozy new pair of ski socks. Skiing was a HUGE disappointment. More specifically, it was my skiing that was the real disappointment. I was still struggling down the mountain, making lousy turns, catching an edge and/or bailing out way too often when the going got steep.

Why? In hindsight, it was all clear. New gear could not alter the fundamental fact that I am still a novice skier whose technique simply needs a lot of work. I had learned to ski at the age of 30, and had done little or no skiing for each of the past several seasons. The results should not have been surprising.

But the experience still made me mad.

After some reflection, I realized that the whole thing reminded me of some recent adventures in consulting. All too often, I see clients throw money into enterprise software wrapped around mathematical models because they expect some magical change. From here, without any internal leadership about how to make this investment pay off — and often ignoring the external advice from the vendor or associated consultants — they do not see anything change at all. And when the miracle does not occur as anticipated, the people involved with the decision — and of course the people who opposed it — are quick to point fingers at anyone who happens to be standing around, including the project managers, the product trainers, the consultants, the sales rep, and/or the hapless tech support engineer who happens to pick-up the phone when they call.

Too dramatic? Consider the following tragedy in which I recently played a part:

Scene 1: The energetic sales account manager arrives at the prospect's offices to meet with a cross-functional operations team. A very good salesperson, he cheerfully asks pointed questions about the customer's operations, identifying where the "pain" is. From here, he artfully describes how his product — regularly referred to as a "solution" — can help them address the problems that they are struggling with.

Soon after, there is another meeting with the IT staff, who happily blesses the purchase ("more systems!") as a very smart idea. With all the ducks lined up, the salesman prepares a proposal, the customer agrees to the terms, the deal is closed, the hardware is ordered. The anticipation begins.

Scene 2: A project plan is developed, and the implementation commences. Fortuitously, the installation of the software and the systems integration are both quickly completed. This is often where the finger pointing begins, usually because:

The customer receives scant instructions on how the software is to be installed.
Hardware or network incompatibilities are discovered AFTER the capital budget is spent.
The installation of the software reveals bugs that are unique to this situation.

Scene 3: The trainer/consultant begins working with the customer. Through conference calls and an exchange of documents, he documents the customer's requirements and develops a sense of the company's current culture. Based on the information that is provided to him, he develops an agenda for the site visit.

Scene 4: Flying to the customer site for several days, the consultant finds the preparations for training to be somewhat limited. In particular, the proposed "key user" of the software turns out to be available for only part of the training class; he spends the rest of the time running off to meetings or taking calls on his cell phone. However, the material is covered, and the consultant leaves the customer with a roadmap of what to do next to make use of the software. Most of his suggestions for business processes needed to leverage the software are ignored, shrugged off with the usual "our business is different" line.

Scene 5: The sales rep casually calls the customer to see how things are going. They are furious! The key user, already overburdened with too much to do, has done none of what the consultant had suggested, yet he is quick to complain about everything: the product is too complex, the system doesn't apply to their business, the training was not practical enough. The customer threatens to withhold its final payment to the vendor. The sales rep reacts by sending e-mail to everyone that he can think of, and everyone who is affected scrambles. E-mails are sent, threats are made and conference calls are held.

The customer's business continues on, exactly as it did prior to Scene 1.

Epilogue: In this particular case, there is a happy ending. The executive sponsor critically assessed her company's six-figure investment in the software package and determined that the problem was with the organization and not with the software. She commissioned the consultants to provide an analysis of how her division could most effectively embed the software's capabilities into its operations, and concluded that the original value proposition was still valid — provided that she had the right people engaged in the right activities around the system.

As for me, I'm still hoping that a new pair of skis will get me where I want to be.

Vijay Mehrotra is the CEO of Onward Inc., in Mountain View, Calif. He can be reached via e-mail at vijay@onward-net.com.

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