The Consultant's Scorecard

Measure the business impact — and return on investment — of any consulting project!

Consulting clients want to know that the large fees they pay will bring measurable results to their organization — and successful consultants work hard to communicate the value of their work to clients. The problem is, both consultants and clients have been frustrated by the lack of rigorous methods for measuring the impact of the consultant's work. The Consultant's Scorecard offers solutions to this "accountability crisis" in the consulting profession by explaining how consultants can prove the value of their work to clients. Just as important, the book explains how clients can — and should — hold their consultants accountable for delivering measurable results.

Written for both consultants and clients, The Consultant's Scorecard offers simple data collection techniques to help consultants in any industry measure the value of their work for clients in six key areas:

• Client satisfaction
• New knowledge and skills acquired by the client
• Successful project implementation
• Business unit impact
• Return on investment
• Intangible benefits

• Part I: Setting the Stage
1. The Need for Consulting Accountability from the Client Perspective: Why Measuring Results Is Worth the Trouble
2. What's in It for Me? How Consultants Can Prove the Value of Their Work to Clients
3. Initial Analysis and Planning: Key to a Successful Evaluation
   
• Part II: The Six Measures
4. Was it Successful? How to Measure reaction and Satisfaction
5. What Did the Client Organization Learn? How to Measure Skill and Knowledge Changes During the Consulting Intervention
6. Was the Intervention Implemented Properly? How to Measure Implementation, Application, and Utilization
   
7. What Was the Impact? How to Capture Business Impact Data
8. How to Calculate and Interpret ROI: And Other Measures of Financial Payoff
9. How to Capture and Report the Nonfinancial Benefits of a Consulting Intervention: Identifying Intangible Measures
   
• Part III: Key Issues with the Measures
10. Separating the Consulting Impact from Other Factors: How to Isolate the Effects of the Consulting Intervention
11. How to Convert Business Measures to Monetary Values
12. How Much Did It Cost? Monitoring the True Costs of the Consulting Intervention
    
• Part IV: Challenges
13. How to Build a Business Case for the Consulting Expense: Forecasting ROI
14. How to Provide Feedback and Communicate Results to the Client
15. Overcoming Resistance and Barriers to Measuring Consulting ROI
• Appendix: Do Your Consulting Projects Focus on Results? A Self-Assessment
  

I wish some of the most well-known consultant companies read the book and used it, so that I better could be sure that I got a good result out of them.

The "scorecard" in the title is only loosely connected to Kaplan & Norton's Balanced Scorecard, but it is useful anyway as a starting point on how to show or demand value form a consulting effort.

Recommended reading for practitioners (both consultants and buyers).