Virtual Consulting

There is no avoiding the elephant in the room, Virtual Consulting was born from a global pandemic but at Lean Consulting we have found it to be incredibly beneficial; maximising value while minimising costs. When we entered the pandemic, clients had grown comfortable with the concept of having our people on-site to be seen and heard but have since realised the significant advantages remote delivery brings.

How do we deliver our service from a digital environment?

We use a range of different methods to suit our client’s requirements. We can fully integrate with your Microsoft 365 & Teams, or we can use Zoom or JoinMe for screen sharing and video conferencing. We have modified our robust governance framework for virtual delivery – ensuring meetings and vital conversations can take place an engaging and safe environment.

To study a process, we used to sit with or visit with the staff that complete the process to observe what they do and gain a deep understanding of the process and the opportunities to improve it. We’ve found that we can successfully replicate this approach using Teams and Zoom.

When delivering improvements we use technologies like Stormboard and Miro to deliver outcome-focused workshops.

We use virtual Kanban boards, online project planning applications and use 3 tier governance packs to cater messaging for all levels of the business and automation to follow up with timebound activity; ensuring all of the project team are kept up to date with the expectations laid out for them.

What are the benefits?

Health and Safety

First and foremost, the safety of our people and our clients are the priority. This approach ensures no external risk of our people or clients contracting Covid-19.

Overcomes normal logistical challenges

Most of our clients are spread across multi-sites, working remotely removes the constraints of managing diaries to fit a specific (often limited) time window. Sometimes meetings are delayed because there are no meeting rooms available! There is less need to pull in everyone to a centralised location, teams and individuals can attend based on their need and capability. This shows a significant reduction in loss of time; no travel time cost reduction and versatile in planning/availability movement (e.g. flights/trains cancelled/late).

Cost-effective

Digital consulting eases the need for travel-related expenses for both the consultant and the client’s own resources. This approach delivers a much lower cost-to-serve benefit over the traditional consulting delivery; especially for lengthy engagements with several travelling consultant/developers.

Increased Quality

Charged by the hour – not the day.

Traditionally, we charge a ‘day-rate’ for our consultant’s services to reflect the day spent on site. Virtual delivery means you only pay for the time used. So if we only spent 5 hours working on your project today, then you’re only billed 5 hours.
This allows clients to temporarily hold consulting activities or reduce internal/SME support when business demand changes. With our current clients, this has allowed us to design and implement a solution that satisfies a much greater degree of requirements than if we were on-site and had a limited period to ascertain these requirements.

Clients also benefit from having the flexibility to onboard resources as required against their specific expertise.