Consulting Services' Scalability and Time Management
Published: 20/01/2025
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This extensive article will discuss the correlation between time management and consulting services’ scalability. Namely, how to use this link efficiently to prevent your success from becoming a disaster.
Every business wants to scale, consultancies being no exception. In the ideal world, scalability entails more clients and more projects, leading to an improved cash flow and the security of not having to worry about the sales pipeline. However, there’s a less good-looking side of it that often gets overlooked. Therefore, many businesses fail. Not in their pursuit of scalability but when they reach it. And it’s especially frequent with consultancy firms.
The issue lies with the fact all the efforts go towards scalability without much planning on how to sustain it once it happens. Most businesses find themselves in a predicament where they are not ready for the results achieved and suddenly cannot commit to the increased volumes of work without jeopardising one or several areas of their operation.
This doesn’t mean consultancies shouldn’t strive to scale, however. Like every business, to be successful, they need to grow revenue, and the purpose of scaling is precisely that. In this article, we will discuss how to keep scalability sustainable by both preparing for it and managing it. Additionally, we will briefly touch upon the next steps businesses should take upon reining their fast growth.
The quickest answer would be yes. The business model most consultancies utilise is designed to promote growth. Depending on the industry served, competition levels, demand, reputation, and many other factors, consulting services’ scalability can be rapid or take years to become noticeable.
The model entails building a team of consultants to bring various projects to life. Some firms will have a permanent salaried team, some will create new teams for every project, and some will utilise a mixture of both. Overall, the more successful and efficient the said teams are, the quicker the business will scale. In theory, scalability will be continuous as long as both delivery and quality leave the clients happy.
However, in practice, it’s not as stable. The demands are rising in every industry, especially when it comes to speed. Scalability entails more projects coming the consultancy’s way, and when volumes with tight deadlines are on the rise, quality tends to suffer. That may damage your reputation with the clients, in the industry and even with the consultants. And thus, your scalability may quickly become the downfall of your company.
As you scale, the workload will grow past the point where it can all be completed by your team in a timely manner. Not to sink under the increased volume of project deliverables, you will have to streamline your processes. Automation is your best friend when it comes to the task. So, let’s discuss it in depth.
Every business wants to scale and celebrates it happening up until a certain point. A common roadblock to hit in consulting services’ scalability is becoming short on resources as the client base grows. The usual solution is to hire more workers, but it’s not the best choice. First of all, the hiring process takes time if you really want to land good talent. Secondly, bringing your new employee up to speed will also take time. Thirdly, both salary and taxes for taking in a new hire may result in scaling costing you more than the revenue it generates.
You should grow your team at the right pace and be diligent in training the new staff - something that isn’t viable when you’re in the middle of juggling multiple projects at different stages of completion. And while expanding is natural as you scale, scaling shouldn’t be the reason you do it. Instead, you need to figure out how to make do with your existing resources. Time management is absolutely necessary, and today’s technology, such as timesheets or on-screen time trackers is perfect to aid you. But that’s a topic of its own, which we shall discuss in the next chapter.
To begin allocating your resources efficiently, you first need to have a solid understanding of where their time goes in the first place. This and correct client billing is precisely why you need to stay diligent in recording your team’s and individual workers’ time expenditures. The approach creates a centralised view that highlights the strong and weak points of your team’s work, allowing you to implement changes not only at the planning stages of the project but also when it’s in full swing.
Understanding individual skill sets and repeating time frames will aid you in workforce delegation, which will enhance general time optimisation without having to expand your team. It is a quick and budget-friendly way to support scalability without bringing it to a halt or letting it spiral out of control, which can be damaging to your company’s reputation moving forward. For the vastness of benefits they bring, time tracking solutions are inexpensive and should certainly be part of every consultancy’s digital toolbox.
What other tools will you need to support your consultancy’s scaling? The answer will largely depend on the industry you’re servicing. However, as a default, you will need a project management system, an accounting package and the aforementioned time tracking solution. Connecting the three via integrations is also crucial, as this will help the tools exchange the data they collect seamlessly, almost voiding the risk of human error. What’s more, most of the time, they will come with modules that serve other purposes that enhance your processes, too. For example, an average time tracking solution is rarely ever limited to the sole functionality of recording time.
Take Timesheet Portal as a sample. While the name suggests our platform’s primary feature, there is more ground we cover. Inside, you can find other handy functions such as expense management, billing, onboarding, document management, shift scheduling, holiday management and many more. In addition to that, an extensive list of available integrations helps Timesheet Portal quickly and seamlessly link up with your existing tools, becoming an irreplaceable aid to your processes.
The issue most consultancies face when hit by rapid scaling is that they start cutting corners to stay deadlines-compliant. This leads to suffering quality, which may damage your relationships and reputation permanently. In this section, we will talk about what measures can be taken to prevent a regression of your deliverables.
Most industries are experiencing a shortage of skilled talent. It is particularly prominent in trade-oriented sectors like consulting and has been a long-term issue in IT. The problem lies in the fact the supply does not meet the demand as the industry talents age. Most senior workers are now entering retirement age, whereas the new generation isn’t yet qualified enough to replace them. Naturally, there are more young and less experienced talents, but most companies expect a specific level of seniority when it comes to hiring. Staying location-bound, especially in industries that can work remotely or in hybrid, will narrow your list of options even further. Being flexible is your best bet.
Although remote and hybrid working models gained popularity due to a global pandemic, they’ve caused many companies to adjust their hiring and internal processes. With that, employers can now tap into a wider talent pool, even potentially crossing borders when it comes to building a project team. In some cases, this may mean not only hiring workers with a wider skill set, but also spending less money due to them potentially charging different rates than the local specialists. Additionally, many workers report that the ability to work remotely and within hours of their choice is a deciding factor when choosing the place of employment. Many are even willing to leave if hybrid working gets revoked.
The key to a successful project team is how well they communicate, collaborate and align. A team that works together like an oiled machine usually has a process to follow, something that’s irreplaceable when ensuring the quality of the services not suffering under the pressure of volumes. You may hire the world’s top talents, but if they can’t figure out how to work with each other, there are gaps in communication and no consistency - your project will fail. If you’re looking to scale your consulting services and take on more work, creating an environment for working together should be among your key priorities. Today's software, especially that aimed at time management and project management, is designed to work as the base component of the said environment.
First of all, being browser-based, the platforms are easily accessible as long as there’s internet access. Secondly, they accommodate real-time collaborations, tracking and let multiple users view and edit files simultaneously. Thirdly, most of the said solutions offer a degree of automation, taking repetitive admit tasks off your team’s hands and instead letting them focus on tasks that require their direct judgement. Such an approach can also remove friction from task handovers, quickly identify and support a struggling colleague, collect more in-depth, create more accurate forecasts moving forward and many more. The extent of the impact depends on the extent of your use.
The best way to empower consulting services' scalability is to pass all the heavy lifting to the corresponding tools. As we’ve already discussed above, automating repetitive manual tasks will let your teams focus on other areas, such as communication or overall development. Although the mindset of using digital tools being ‘lazy’ is almost eradicated these days, there are still some old-fashioned businesses entertaining this school of thought. We assure you this couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, utilising software to automate various business processes is proven to not only raise efficiency but also deepen insights as well as collect new data, both of which become the cornerstone for decision-making.
Informed decisions are bound to bring success as they are made upon assessing your organisation’s exact situation and are built to address it. Naturally, the more information you have to bounce off, the less guesswork you’ll be entertaining. Not only will this speed up your seeing viable results, but it will also reduce the risk of errors. As a cherry on top, when you delegate some tasks to automation and let your team handle the others, you also speed up the completion. Think of digital tools as an extension of your team - one that takes over the tasks no one was to do, but which are essential for maintenance. Because that’s exactly what they are - alas a subscription to one costs less than paying a wage.
If you want your business to succeed in today’s environment, seamless and streamlined communication across your entire organisation is non-negotiable. And this stands for more than ensuring different departments have an outlet for conversation. More specifically, we are talking about centralising the data your company collects and making it easily accessible to everyone, therefore assuring visibility and alignment.
Siloed departments unintentionally withhold a lot of data from one another. The reason it matters is because it translates into missed opportunities. Often, separated parts of the company that wouldn’t normally collaborate (think legal team and creative team, for example) don’t think the data they gather would be relevant in other areas of the business. However, very often, putting the same data into different contexts can unlock insights or chances for growth that would otherwise be unavailable. Digital tools, especially those built on SaaS model, tear down the siloing walls, promoting easy visibility and real-time collaborations. What’s more, the results are evident almost immediately.
While consulting services’ scalability is a goal of every consulting firm, it’s also often their downfall upon the goal being reached. Most companies aren’t prepared to handle bigger work volumes with their current resources and end up cutting corners, inevitably damaging their reputation. Time management is key to avoiding such an outcome, and there’s no better aid to it than digital solutions. Automation carries many benefits when it comes to scaling.
By delegating manual tasks to machines, you let your teams focus on more human-judgement-requiring jobs. Additionally, process automation captures heaps of actionable data, allowing your teams to stir projects in the right direction the moment they spot the first signs of it getting off the tracks. Controlling workflows gives you and your team complete visibility of the progress, allowing you to easily balance and manage the growing client base.
Not only does the software take over all the heavy lifting for you, but it also helps to enhance in-team communication and collaboration. This factor also expands your reach when scouting for new talents, opening the door to hiring consultants from all around the globe. Finally, today’s digital solutions offer a centralised view of the whole company, eliminating departmental siloes and elevating the team’s efficiency that’s crucial to sustain scalability.
Is your business ready for the challenges scaling brings? Consult us for an evaluation today.