From measuring production to measuring progress

Let’s compare consultants with some other knowledge workers on keeping track of their business. Neurologists keep production statistics: number of personnel involved, amount of hours worked, the percentage overtime, the number of patients treated, and what equipment used. On top of that, they keep statistics that show the progress in their craft: recovery time, side effects, and survival rate, to name a few. Consultants record production, not progress. To highlight the difference between production and progress, here is how it works out for automated consultancy:

Currently, on the partner’s dashboard (all production figures)

•          Hours worked

•          Utilization %

•          Average dayrate realized

•          Salaries paid

•          Out-of-pocket costs (e.g., training, travel, equipment)

•          Overhead (e.g., cost of HR, IT, office space rent)

Added through automated consulting (some examples)

Production

•          Cloud services rental costs (3rd party tools)

•          Number of consultancy hours ordered online (see Part 6.)

•          % of Algorithms Engineers vacancies filled

Progress

•          % test assessments (see Part 6.) leading to client projects

•          Average number of respondents/teams per assessment (indicates scale)

•          Average number of assessments from the same source questionnaire (signifies possibilities for comparison across organizations to drive pattern recognition)

•          Number of patterns discovered

•          Amount of scientific articles submitted/accepted

Production is about administration and looks back. Progress is about competitive advantage and looking forward. What would you choose?