Thinking About Hiring an E-Commerce Consultant? The Readiness is All.

If you're considering hiring a consultant to help you with your e-commerce business, think again.  While bringing on a good consultant can be a cost/time effective way of gaining insights, building plans and getting things done, it's also possible to end up disappointed (not to mention poorer) at the end of the engagement.  Certainly a lot of this has to do with whom you choose to hire, but just as much of it has to do with your organization's readiness to work with a consultant and to implement the changes that they recommend.

Assume you find someone with the right background, expertise and cultural fit that can work within your budget.  Great.  But DON'T hire them if you're in one or more than one of these circumstances:

1) Your corporate metabolism is out of sync with your expectations.  If you hire a consultant, you're probably going to ask that they work quickly.....and chances are they will.  But will you?  If your consultant is going to deliver a road map for how to improve your website, but your internal resources are log jammed till next year, your consultant will only be able to take you so far.

2) You think a short term consultant can make long term cultural change.  Yes, a consultant can help you define change, justify change and can help you implement change, but they can't be the owner and agent of change.  Someone inside the company needs to play that role and understand the importance of it.

3)  You just want someone to come in and tell you what to do.  An objective outsider's perspective can be essential to identifying opportunities to improve your e-commerce business.  But it's unlikely that an outsider, no matter how good they are, will be able to be successful without the counter balance of your deep knowledge about your company and your business.  It's critically important that you challenge, contribute to and adapt your consultant's recommendations into what is feasible and right for your business.

4)  You think the changes you need to make should be highly successful, fast, easy and free.  The "e" in e-commerce does not stand for easy.  Ask anyone who is doing it successfully, and they'll tell you it is anything but easy.  That's not to say that a consultant won't be able to identify some low hanging fruit. There may indeed be some of that.  But you're smart. If there were that much low hanging fruit, you probably would have grabbed it by now.  Chances are, some of the recommended changes will take some intestinal and financial fortitude .  If the thought of making hard decisions is unappealing now, it won't get easier when you're paying a consultant to encourage you to do it.

When the time is right, a good e-commerce consultant can provide insight, save you time, and bring you a strong return on your investment.  But, in they words of Hamlet, "...the readiness is all". 

For more on this topic, you can check out my previous post: 5 Tips and 1 Little Secret About Hiring a Consultant

Comments

[E-Commerce India]

Very true...while planning can work wonders for your company an inefficient plan can make things worse...nice post.

[Modulesoft]

This is a nice posting . I really like this post .