PUBLIC sector managers need more than simply a generalised notion of what consultants will bring to a particular project; specific, measurable outcomes that demonstrate the extra value that consultants bring are key to winning an approval to hire outside help. Here’s how management consultants recommend approaching the task: 1. It’s not about the headcount. “If all you need is bodies, [the client] can get them from anywhere,” says Phil Dunmore, the managing director of PIPC, a project man-agment consultancy. “Consultants should be brought in to do something that the client couldn’t do on its own.” 2. Know what you want to measure.“The starting point is determining what value you expect people to add,” says Fiona Czerniawska, director of the MCA’s think-tank. “What [the public sector] should be asking is why it needs consultants [to do a project] and why it can’t do it itself.” The answers to those questions show the added value you need to measure. 3. Value is about more than money.“Unless you can show that the overall impact to the customer is positive, then saying that you saved £100 a day using a consultant is not enough,” says Howard Lewis, a managing consultant at Xantus, an IT consultancy. Consider the soft benefits. As Dunmore says: “Knowledge and skills transfer [between consultants and staff] need to be scoped and planned from the outset” and treated as a “distinct piece of work given their importance to the client”. 4. Change how you negotiate contracts. Czerniawska advises making your project budget public and encouraging firms to compete based on the added value that they can bring – extra resources and knowledge, earlier completion and so forth – rather than the prices they can quote. 5. Does the firm measure up? “Look at the consulting organisation, its capabilities and its track record,” says Pervinder Johal, the public sector consulting director at Vertex. “Talk to previous clients about its delivery. That’s how you can tell whether you are engaging with the right organisation.” 6. Tailor your metric. There is no single template that can measure, say, cost reduction, improved end-user satisfaction and staff development. “There’s no ‘one size fits all’ answer,” Johal says. “It depends on the type of contract.” Cause and effect won’t necessarily be neat and tidy either; expect a network of contributing factors, Lewis says. “You need to understand who does what and what it contributes. The way to do that is by taking [one element] away and seeing what happens if you don’t use it.” 7. Get the timing right. The structure needs to be built into the contract before the project begins, while measurement should be undertaken at prearranged checkpoints throughout the work. “Monitor it all the way through, not just at the end,” Czerniawska says. “But don’t get bogged down in detail,” Lewis says. “Keep your eye on measuring the right things.” 8. Get and keep your colleagues involved. “People don’t talk enough about what they want consultants to bring . . . they don’t get enough people involved in the discussion,” Czerniawska says. It’s also important to make sure that everyone knows what is expected from the consultants’ involvement and to express the results in simple, clear language, Lewis says. 9. Use a consultant. “The first place consultants can add value is where a lot of people struggle: to implement a benefits management technique,” Lewis says. A consultant can help clients to recognise and measure the real value of what they are working on. “It sounds like a sales pitch, but it’s true.” 10. It’s not over when it’s over. Measuring hard benefits can be done promptly, but measuring soft benefits needs a medium-term approach, Johal says. “Benefits such as knowledge transfer may become obvious and measurable only quite a bit later. You need to allow a realistic timeline.” It’s also important to include a postproject review allowing you to set benchmarks for future projects based on the measures just achieved and to think about improving the way you measure value for next time.

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