Consulting Skills Unit 2

Outcomes addressed in this activity: Unit Outcomes:  Demonstrate an understanding of the processes used in Management Consulting Course Outcome:  IT402-1: Examine consulting processes and techniques Project Instructions: Assume that one year ago, your client, a large-scale manufacturer of chocolate candies, decided to replace their home-grown suite of applications with SAP for Consumer Products software to handle their needs for supply chain management, manufacturing processes, sales, and financial performance management. The client recognized that the applications they had developed in-house were not a good base for growth, as they lacked integration and flexibility, but they chose SAP without evaluating any other commercial offthe- shelf solutions, figuring that they could spend much time and money analyzing other offerings but in the end would probably select SAP anyway, because so many other companies had done so. So, to save time and money, they selected SAP without doing any cost-benefit analysis or any analysis of its functionality versus their business needs. Now, one year later, the client has spent a lot of money trying to implement SAP at one of their pilot sites, but so far the implementation has not been successful. Some people are blaming the consultant they had hired to guide the installation at the pilot site, and others are blaming the client project manager. Your client has asked you to do a retroactive cost-benefit analysis to determine how much more they would be justified in spending to implement SAP for Consumer Products. Using MS Word, write a 3-to-5-page single spaced paper in which you respond to the following three questions: Q1: What are the questions you would ask your client to challenge some of their assumptions and reveal their true needs? Q2: What other issues do you think your client faces and what type of consulting project (from Chapter 2) might be used? Q3: Assuming that the client is correct in questioning their decision to implement SAP, prepare a proposal on how you might help him as a consultant.