The June 2009 issue of CFO magazine hit the DARTON offices last Friday and we were especially curious to read one of the featured cover stories.
The subject?
Financial consulting firms and how they regard the finance department as a “still-warm, if not hot, target for their services, thanks to the slimming down most departments have endured”.
According to Derek Smith, director of research for Kennedy Consulting Research and Advisory http://www.kennedyinfo.com, services specific to CFOs are the “bright spots” for firms like Accenture, Ernst & Young, and many smaller ones.
That being said, it is critical for businesses to deploy best practices when
using financial consultants. Team DARTON fully agrees with the following tips for CFOs/project owners as highlighted in the article:
- Structure projects to make consultants’ time as efficient as possible
- Provide a clear sense of direction or tangible achievements
- Select the best consultant for the job
- Crisply define the tasks to be accomplished
- Break tasks into independent phases so that spending can be turned off at any point
- Rely on internal staff to monitor and streamline the process
To learn more best practices and the five-year forecast of consulting services growth, click here: http://www.cfo.com/article.cfm/13691549/c_13720245?f=magazine_featured
Visit www.dartongroup.com for more information on DARTON and our highly experienced team of finance/accounting project and interim professionals.
This was an interesting article. I think the tips are exactly right. It is extremely difficult to be on time and on budget without following all of these tips. My experience shows that tips 2 and 5 are especially crucial.
Tip 2 gets at the heart of establishing expectations. How often have we seen that 2 or more people’s expectations are not aligned?
Tip 5 gets at the heart of milestones as it relates to project exit strategy. Without knowing the cost of a project in its phases and the associated timeline, it is difficult to measure progress and make a go/no-go decision.