Communications Industry Consulting: Building Integrated Solutions That Work

In a recent discussion with a group of industry experts, one director compared working in the communications industry today with attempting to teach advanced calculus with only a partial understanding of the subject. She said that today’s “experts” often fall short in terms of technical know-how. A service engineer in the group, however, described a totally different challenge. He felt confident in his knowledge of next-generation technology because he had taken numerous technical courses with titles like, “Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing.” But what today’s technical experts really lack, he explained, are consulting skills, tools, and processes.

In an industry that is reinventing itself continually, consulting enables you to meet the needs of the current market by providing solutions, rather than merely a product. In a time of increased competition, convergence, globalisation, and new technology, consulting allows technical experts to separate the white noise from what’s truly meaningful to their current project and see the big picture at the same time. This benefit, in turn, allows them to put their technical expertise to optimal use. At a team level, consulting skills provide a common language for conducting business with internal and external clients. For example, Wilson Learning worked with and monitored the progress of a group of people who introduced their organisation to a common consulting process, and the benefits spread exponentially as workers used the knowledge. The communications industry, therefore, requires a new job profile for today’s technical expert, in which consulting is equal in importance to technical expertise.

How do you explain this shift in importance? The service engineer made what he called his “brain analogy,” in which technical knowledge represents gray matter, or intellect, and consulting skills represent the synapses that ignite the intellect. In other words, the right consulting process allows an individual to translate any business challenge— whether it concerns a client, a strategic partner, the distribution channel, or a co-worker—into a workable assignment. Such an assignment draws upon his or her technical expertise to meet and exceed the client’s expectations.

Consider the evidence showing that consulting leads to repeat business. According to research conducted by the Purdue University Centre for Customer Driven Quality, a relationship that gives an effective consultant the opportunity to make contact with the customer is advantageous, even when the situation involves a customer complaint. The study reports, predictably, that 79 percent of customers who purchased a “good product or service,” and experienced no problems, made repeat purchases from the company. Here is the surprising figure: 85 percent of customers who had problems with purchases, and received effective consulting to resolve those problems, made subsequent purchases. In today’s service economy, your consultants can serve as a competitive advantage, even when all you had in mind was damage control.

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