Consulting Enhancement Services

Consulting assignments are a crucial source of revenue for Lotus Business Partners. These assignments enable system integrators to gain a good perspective of customer business requirements and are quite often the highest value services in the Business Partner's suite of offerings. Furthermore, these assignments enable the Business Partner to align themselves with the customer's priorities and set the stage for further implementation/maintenance revenues downstream. Delivery organizations focused on consulting have a high "partner to associate" ratio - implying a lot of work by top level people with little opportunity for leverage. Maarga's services in this area are built around the "star" model - providing discretionary resources to help the consultant do the highest value work and provide maximum results in the smallest possible timeframe.

Background research of options: After analyzing the problem, the consultant typically narrows in on a set of solution alternatives and recommends the most appropriate to the customer's problem. The process of arriving at the solution alternatives goes through a "divergent thinking" phase when a lot of potential solutions come into the picture, and then onto a "convergent thinking" phase when a few potential solutions are chosen for their utility in the situation. Maarga's analysts can provide background research for identifying some of these alternatives, running them through standard analytical frameworks to determine applicability of the solution etc.

Prototypes/Mockups of systems: As part of the presentation of findings, consultants often present some prototypes of the chosen solution alternatives. Providing a "touchy-feely" prototype helps in eliciting user feedback and illustrates the pros and cons of different solutions far better than reams of paper report. Maarga can help your consultants create these mockups and prototypes given basic specifications, throwing in all standard features of applications in the context of the specs.

Graphic do of presentations: As with the proposal, a well structured and illustrated presentation does a good job of getting thumbs up from customers. Maarga can help your team put together good presentation and associated materials while allowing your consultants to be focused on the key analytical work.