Isolating the Effects of Consulting

This chapter explores useful techniques for isolating the effects of consulting. Up‐front attention ensures that appropriate techniques will be used with minimum costs and time commitments. The most important issues when isolating the effects of a consulting project are discussed. Measurable results achieved from a consulting project should be derived from the application of the consulting recommendations over a specified period of time after the project has been completed. A first step in isolating a consulting project's impact on performance is to identify the factors that may have contributed to the performance improvement. A variety of different inputs can be used to provide estimates of how much of the improvement in a business measure is related to the consulting project. Manager estimates should be analyzed in the same manner as participant estimates. In some cases, upper management may estimate the percent of improvement that should be attributed to a project.