4.4 What an Internal Consultant

Business Case Looks Like

The business case is a written document making the argument for instituting the role of internal consultant within the Reliability / Maintenance organization. That role is specifically designed to work with the plant personnel to deliver improvements in the plant’s reliability and maintenance work processes. In some cases, the business case is trying to identify the need for a new position where even a special projects role did not exist in the past. In other cases, the business case is attempting to have the special projects role solidified and recognized for what it actually is—internal consulting. 

A business case needs to include all of the information necessary to obtain management’s agreement to put this position permanently in place. Without this identified position, the plant will continue to borrow people from their day-to-day work on a part-time basis or, even worse, have them work on special projects “in addition to the regular job.” We learned in Chapter 3 that these approaches are seldom if ever successful. That is why a permanent position is required.

The internal consultantbusiness case has the following sections:

Purpose

This part of the document introduces the issue and states what the balance of the document will be trying to accomplish.

Background

This section identifies the current situation. Often it is used to point out how part-time work in this area has failed to achieve the results that were expected. Specific examples can be used to support this information. The background sets the stage by identifying the need for the internal consultant role.

Benefits

In this section, you state the benefits that can be achieved by having this role as part of the Reliability / Maintenance organization. You need to state both the short-term and long-term benefits. The short term benefits, which may include a dedicated person supporting a current work initiative, are usually easy for management to recognize because they deal with concrete work efforts that are in progress. The longer-term ones which do not address concrete initiatives may be harder to articulate. However, they have far-reaching impacts, not just for yet-to-be-identified initiatives, but also for sustainability of those current in progress. For the benefits section, you should focus on the six components identified in section 4.3. Another approach is to explain the value lost by not having this position. But this last approach is far less likely to succeed than showing the value the job will deliver.

The Process

In this section, you explain how the internal consultant job will be put into place. If someone is already doing this work full time, the official movement to the internal consultant role will be easy. If not, you will need to outline a strategy for creating and filling this position. This is a much more difficult task. Another aspect of the process is the reporting relationship for the internal consultant. Because this role is essentially designed to be an advisor to management, it makes sense that the consultants will report at the highest level within the organization possible—in this case the Reliability / Maintenance manager. This relationship will also free the internal consultants from working at a lower level in the organization and not having their ideas reach the manager.

The Cost

There is always a cost associated with establishing a new position. The justification for this cost must be tied to the benefits section so that a true cost–benefit analysis can be performed. This justification is not difficult if the internal consultant is dealing with initiatives that have real documented savings. It is, however, very difficult if the work is in the area of intangibles and neither direct cost savings nor avoidance are apparent.

What Success Looks Like

This section is designed to close out the case. It should paint a clear picture for the managers so that they can visualize what having an internal consultant on their payroll looks like. Tie this section to the cost and benefits sections to establish the link.

4.5 You Need a Business Case for All That You Do

Let us assume that you have achieved your goal and gotten approval to establish a position for an internal consultant. Even with the internal consultantbusiness case accepted and the role of internal consultant approved, there are many other instances where the business case approach is needed in order to have internal consulting included within major work initiatives.  

As an internal consultant, you need to make sure that you are involved in support of new change initiatives because of the value you can deliver. These initiatives are often presented and accepted by management in the form of a scope of work (see Chapter 8). A typical scope for a change initiative usually addresses the work to be done, how it will be done, and the expected benefits. Seldom is the issue of internal consultant support included. In fact, it is more often completely overlooked. This area is where the scope needs to be expanded and a business case for an internal consultant resource included. The same outline we used for the justification of the internal consultant can be used to assure that an internal consultant is an integral part of the change initiative.  

A business case within the work scope also needs to be made for the identification of a change initiative champion. It has been shown in numerous cases that when an initiative has a champion from the plant’s senior management team, the likelihood of success is far greater then when one does not exist. This follows from the concept that “what gets measured gets done.” In this case, it is not so much that the work is getting measured, but rather that it is getting the level of attention and support required for success. As we will learn in Chapter 5, the champion essentially is tying the initiative into the values of the organization’s culture.