A project description from your current perspective is the fundamental element. Haufe consultants will read it carefully and, based on the description, decide whether or not to apply for a cooperation.
A project that is part of a company-wide programme and that might build upon an earlier project has a very different outset to a stand-alone project.
Both situations bring different opportunities and challenges that need to be considered and that have an impact on the approach and methods used during theproject.
Experience from numerous consulting projects has shown that in the majority of cases, project parameters are subject to change up until project kick-off; in the majority of cases, this is due to at least one of the following reasons:
Haufe consultants are used to navigating complex environments and involving decision-makers and people concerned in consulting processes. The more information on stakeholders and corporate culture you can provide in advance, the better will consultants be able to take these into consideration during project planning and implementation.
If you define a goal for your project right from the start, it’s much more likely that the objective will be met, even if there will still be amendments to theproject itself. A good goal can be measured, is ambitious yet achievable and includes a timeline and a resource estimate. Once you even introduce criteriato measure the success of your project and use these criteria during the project work, hardly anything can go wrong anymore.
Sometimes negative descriptions allow for an even better definition of a project. The question “What mustn’t happen at all?” can be surprisingly helpful to assess the importance of different requirements.
On the project’s profile page, you can specify which expertise, sector knowledge and experience you want consultants to have. The values that you check will be shown to consultants (whereas values that you didn’t check will be hidden).This enables consultants to compare your requirements with their skills.
Please bear in mind:
Only very few projects — not even the most urgent ones — are actually kicked off within 2 weeks of publication of the project definition.
The company is faced with a number of tasks before the project can be kicked off: selection of the best consultant, meeting to discuss the best approach, final approval of the budget to purchase the consulting service, announcement to the management and employees if necessary, ensuring that all relevant people are present for the actual project kick-off.
If you bear these considerations in mind when indicating the kick-off date, you will enable consultants to check your requirements against their current availability situation.
That way, you will be able to benefit from the best match with available consultants.
It is up to you whether you want to indicate the exact location or just the region, but in general, precise specifications allow better planning for consultants.
However, the project venue will not be anonymised. Should your company be the best-known and largest employer at the venue you indicate, it might be sensible to mention nothing but the region for reasons of confidentiality.
Try to be brief and concise anyway — 2 to 3 lines are usually enough to outline the consulting project in a way that enables consultants to decide whether that project is of interest to them. Drafting the project description should take no longer than 10 minutes. While they are familiarising themselves with your company and the projects, Haufe consultants usually ask quite a few useful questions; these will help you define the project in such a way that you can get started at full tilt as soon as possible.
The Haufe Consulting team wishes you every success in drafting your project definition.
If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact us at anytime.
Send us a short message, we will contact you promptly!
