We see almost all enterprises embarking on a new age digital journey. The programs are expected to transform the enterprise across customer, sales, marketing, finance, HR, procurement and the supply chain.  The goal is to significantly advance customer interaction, products / services, organizational collaboration, process and the overall business model.  The benefits of the digital journey may be well defined. The roadmap may be clear as well. In most cases, the ensuing program to achieve the results is comprised of a complex set of initiatives. Like any complex program, there are key risks that can severely disrupt the ability to achieve the full benefit with the budget and timeframe allotted.

Accordingly, many of these enterprises are bringing in outside consulting expertise to help them achieve their goals.

Does the Outside Assistance Mitigate Risk or Bring it’s Own?

Many remember the period when ERP was the new technology. There are countless horror stories where Big name consulting Firms hired to guide the transformation drove in the bus load (s) of freshers along with a few experienced consultants that didn’t deliver the value to justify the billings, failed to mitigate risk and severely disrupted the enterprise.  Even today, there are many enterprises with an ERP architecture that doesn’t have the promised technology fully enabled, has legacy components left behind that constrain future capability and the ability to easily analyze the data is lacking. Of course, the Big name consulting Firm wasn’t the sole reason for failure, as many factors including staff adoption, process refinement, altering the reward system to promote progression and the like, are required to be successful on a complex program.

So now that you’ve engaged the big name consulting Firm for the transformation program, how do you make sure that your organizations best interests are not only protected but optimized?
An independent program manager can be utilized to objectively help the enterprise succeed. The role should provide the right level of experienced leadership and guidance that has been honed on other business transformation initiatives. It’s important that the program manager is in a position to carry forward the enterprises interests at all times via objective independence from the larger firm.

The role will potentially fill a void in senior program management capability that the enterprise has in short supply. At the same time, providing an individual that is not bound by company culture, politics and career performance reporting relationships. The ability to look over the near term horizon for both planning and execution is crucial to the success of the program. Accordingly, “look forward” transparency should be guided by objective measures to ensure a predictable path.

The role should actively manage and drive program management objectives not simply monitor the Big Firms actions. The independent program manager is not in a position that has responsibility to cater to internal commitments of the Big Consulting Firm. Accordingly, the role will not be used to grow Firm revenue or feel a need to defend contractual decisions. Inevitably, rough patches will occur over the life of the program. The program manager should serve as an independent trusted counsel for C-level executives and other key stakeholders to objectively suggest solutions.