| | Comments | The 15 Value-Added Points of a Hub |
| 1. Expertise. | Expertise required in PMI projects covers functional expertise, sector-based expertise, and more soft aspects related to the PMI context (change management expertise..). In each of these aspects, a mix of capabilities must be provided, from thought leadership to operational implementation management and/or day-to-day running.
Consultancies do suffer from an intrinsic limitation of resources. They also have a bias in favor of leveraging internal resources as opposed to external experts. | 1. Overcome the difficulty to provide the right mix of expertise in due time by exploiting an extended sourcing capability.
2. Improve staffing adjustments through a modular/expert-based approach.
3. Leverage systematically small innovative firms or individual expertise
|
2. Experience. | Integration or carve-out projects cannot allow consultants to re-invent the wheel. Accumulated experience enables to concentrate on the real issues, and tackle complexity with the appropriate level of flexibility. What kind of experience is needed ? consultants need to have come across the management of multiple interdependencies beyond their own technical core capability, they need to be sensitive to cultural differences and ways to mobilise people according to their proper cultural patterns and beliefs.
Consulting firms build their profits on leveraging junior consultants at high costs. We prefer to favor a "high-leverage" expertise whereby expert-consultants maximise client support and internal junior teams.
| 4. Ensure that PMI experience is actually built on.
5. Focus on the right level of seniority -very high in the initial design phase, lower when getting into detailed implementation works).
6. Support the project team with a strong PMI coaching and QRM process.
|
| 3.Geographical coverage | Building international teams to tackle international projects is the best way to reduce risks.
Consulting firms face difficulties in providing consistent services across geographies. Internal barriers (formal or informal ones) do not ease cooperation between countries. As an external hub, we do not have these blocking issues. | 7. Secure delivery of services at international level through competitive sourcing.
8. Foster embedding of local innovation and/or pre-existing use of local advisory firms.
9. Build a truly transnational project team from early client meetings.
|
4. Cooperative mindset | Building a cooperative mindset has been established as a critical PMI success factor (Haspeslagh, INSEAD, 1997). Consultants must be role-modelling this, and ease the ability to build confidence and trust in the definition of the integration strategy and path.
In reality, this cooperative approach is often at stake and in complex deals, advisory teams may suffer from the lack of communication. This may even become competition between advisory firms - in order to lead the client relationship and influence resource allocation aspects. | 10. Exclude non cooperative consultants or firms - cooperation assessment included in the QRM process.
11. Force cooperation between workstreams with strong team coordination processes.
12. Select consultants on the basis of their relational skills and cooperative capabilities.
|
5. Methods and tools. | People involved in projects and task forces do not want to spend time re-inventing the wheel. Check-lists and templates are often perceived as the best way to accelerate the process and build on the experience accumulated by the consultants.
Consulting firms have often developed checklists and templates, sometimes beyond judgment call (hundreds of pages of to-do's). Our approach is to industrialise methodology around a global vision of the PMI process. Workstream integration vision should reflect experts' views, as well as innovative tasks. This toolbox should ultimately be related to an IT platform. | 13. Provide the client with the right mix of tools - programme office level and workstream levels.
14. Embed methods and tools developped outside of PMI Factory. Secure alliances when required.
15. Conduct customer workshops to co-create useful methods and tools.
|