Analytics consultant vs. Management consultant- In a SME (Small and Medium enterprise)/bigger organization

Many in the industry are aware of the profile, Management consultant, But very few are aware of the profile “Analytics consultant” or (BAO Consultant defined by IBM), which is the topic of discussion today.

A typical organization has different set of teams and profiles, in Marketing, Finance, Operations, Human resources, Systems and Technology, etc; each team has their own processes and functions enabling the smooth running of the organization, and more a life line for many organizations future growth.

Moving the organization to the next level, every company needs the help of the domain consultant or an expert, so called Management consultant who engages himself with the domain which he is working in, come’s out with innovative ideas on different process and performance, and also look’s the updated process till the successful implementation of the new process. Once after process implementation, he comes out with different performance metrics or process metrics or Key performance indicators, for different time periods, defining the future growth of the organizations in the market place.

Modern organizations, having killer ideas funded by venture capitalists or shareholders, wanting to show a tremendous growth with less manpower, and within a short span, should come out with a blue ocean strategy to outpace their competitors. Here, the scope of a management or IT consultant is limited to a certain extent, as each may not get the enough support in terms of collaborative planning, are different levels of hierarchy followed within the organization, and also may be less cooperation among the team members and decision makers.

To overcome these problems, bigger companies as well as modern companies are looking out for a typical role called as Analytical Consultant’s whose profile is not only to update or innovate the process, but should also aid the decision makers with unique and intelligent insights. To deliver these insights’, he should also be an expert in identifying the business problems in different functions or domains, and should be able to give solutions for the problems identified, with the data and the process.

Apart from that, he should also be able to set up an Business intelligence system(a complex system composed of many sub-systems that must be aligned with each other and work well together to produce the desired business results), like which data to be captured into the database or systems, and the other tools and technologies(such as ETL-Extraction, Transportation and Loading,etc;), and also able to set up a proper team with efficient tool and technologies in place (Can use open source technologies for an small organization).Apart from that he should be able to give adequate training to the team of different skill sets and making them to think in unison.

Once the data set and the process is ready, with the help of the team and technology, he should be able to tune the process with intelligent dash boards (for different performance metrics or score cards), with in a web based system, which will enable the decision makers to know the exact performance of different verticals at each point of time. Apart from this, he should be able to take the data and process to the next level and interpret the same with robust statistical models or prediction models and come out with brilliant insights, to come out with the blue ocean strategy to outpace the competitors.

In writing, this role may look more a combination of Business intelligence consultant and Management consultant. But, in reality, finding this people with the appropriate skill set and experience is really tough, because it is a mix of critical pillars like Technology, Statistics, Domain, Performance, Strategy, Business insights and Team management.

The person should be able to allocate 50% of the time to the business related issues, like problem identification, data selection, strategy formulation and implementation and the remaining 25% of the time to technology and statistics discussion and implementation, and the remaining 25% of the team for training his team and supervising the entire data flow from data to decisions or data to strategy or in financial terms data to year on year growth.

Looking at some organizations, engagement of a management consultant is not that easy, like providing him the adequate data, resource, etc; and similarly for an IT consultant who is more focused towards technology and systems. So budding analytics professionals, either coming from a Statistics (Predictive Modeling using SAS/SPSS), Technology (Database Modeling, ETL, Strong Queries), Process Management (Advanced dash boards and Scorecards), Strong Domain Knowledge (Like creating the data into variables for Marketing/Risk/Supply chain/HR/Web, etc), Business back ground(Identifying the problem, finding the solution and implementing the solution) should hone their skill sets in the above mentioned multi domain, so that he can have a successful and satisfactory career.

In future, government in India, are in the process of approving separate platform for the SME’s to trade their shares, Once they get the nod from the government, we can see quite number of venture capitalists showing interest in these kind of organizations. On the other hand, the big organizations like IBM, SAP are also looking out for these kinds of profiles who can speak the language of Technology, Statistics and Business with the same frequency and wavelength, and iam sure that these peoples will be in high demand with a hefty package waiting for them. Because modern organizations to grow, with in a less span requires lot of Analytic consultants in huge numbers who can create the Blue or Red ocean strategy for the respective organizations.