Consulting and Advisory
Meylex provides both Consultants and an Advisors.
For advisory services, Meylex Advisors are associated with The Advisory Board Centre. In this regard, we will put a Board together including a chairperson and advisors. For SME companies this may take the form of 2 people and quarterly meetings. Meylex also provides advisors to join existing Boards, in both Executive and non-Executive positions.
Advisory Board Centre
in collaboration with The Advisory Board Centre, provides general business advice and board representation. For more on this association, please click here,
https://www.advisoryboardcentre.com.au
Logistics and Supply Chain
Logistics consulting is a discipline which has really ‘come of age’ in recent years, due to the significant changes in distribution models as a result of the decline in manufacturing, the advent of the services economy and the emergence of omni-channel retailing. Our logistics consultants are helping organisations to truly ‘get smart’ with their logistics, and the use of mobile technology has really helped with this agenda.
Our logistics consultants will guide you to manage the flow of goods between the point of origin and the point of consumption in the optimal way that your organisation seeks, in the ares of
- Drop Shipping
- Scanning, tagging and Inventory Solutions
- Logistics consulting services
Logistics consultants collaborate with clients to define, develop, evaluate and implement across areas such as:
3PL & 4PL outsourcing – and optionally provide third-party or fourth-party outsourced logistics services and solutions … once you have determined your requirements, use the expertise of 3PL and 4PL providers to deliver.
Distribution centres / warehouses – including layout and materials handling equipment … proven modelling techniques will help you locate DCs and warehouses, and constantly improving technology, including software, will deliver an earlier payback.
Distribution logistics – includes order processing, warehousing, transportation and freight … you will need to constantly refresh your tactics, and maybe your strategy, as the business environment changes.
Distribution Resource Planning [DRP] systems – Software packages for DRP and other specialist areas have always played a pivotal role … and year on year as the total cost of IT ownership drops a little, the ROI increases.
Productivity improvement – typically involves your people … but look at asset utilisation, IT and process too
Supply chain planning and management – you will need to constantly refresh these solutions, as the business environment changes
Transportation / Freight solutions – the ‘newest’ service, brought about by technology enablers (again!) and specialist transport / freight providers to deliver your solution.
Our logistics consultants are the ‘been there done that, and I know what’s coming next’ type, who will keep you at the leading edge, and who will never take you over the bleeding edge.
Engineering
Engineering consulting is perhaps the oldest and broadest consulting discipline. Engineering consulting continues to broaden with the foundation sub-disciplines of chemical, civil, electrical and mechanical coming together in different combinations to create the inter-disciplines of aeronautical, biomedical, industrial and mechatronics. Today, the skill-set required embraces scientific, economic, social and practical knowledge in order to invent, design, build, maintain and improve the subject of the engineering consulting project, structures, machines, devices, systems, materials.
Popular engineering consulting categories
These are the top areas of engineering consulting, and their scope:
- Aeronautical – design, analyse and develop flight vehicles
- Biomedical – design and develop biomedical devices
- Chemical – develop processes to convert chemicals into more useful or valuable forms
- Civil – design public and private works
- Electrical – design and develop electrical and electronic systems
- Industrial – apply a methodical or quantitative approach to optimise how a process, system, or organisation operates
- Mechanical – design physical or mechanical systems
- Mechatronics – design and develop computer-controlled systems
- Software – design, develop and maintain software.
Three factors for a successful engineering consulting project
Having a clear brief that sets out the desired outcomes for your engineering consulting project is essential at the start. But as work progresses and the actual project outcomes become known, the ‘actual does not equal desired’ equation comes into play. So the brief may need to be changed, and you must acknowledge this from the start.
Engineering consulting projects are significant and very tangible events over long periods of time, so the project management has to be flawless. Please refer to our Project Management category page for PM tips and tricks.
Selecting, tailoring and deploying the ‘right’ methodology is very important. Engineering is very structured, and each discipline has its own methods. So before the start of the project there will be several methodologies to choose from. During the project, there will be methodology tailoring as intermediate outcomes are reviewed, resulting in changes to the project path.
What to look for in an engineering consultant
Engineering consulting is one discipline where the majority of the consultants have a formal certification founded upon years of academic study and monitored practice, plus on-going formally measured professional development. And once you have found a consultant with the appropriate technical skills, check out their problem-solving ability. The twists and turns of engineering consulting projects demand that your consultant must have good problem-solving skills too.
Project Management
Project management consulting is a core discipline that’s been around for ever, because the need to manage a specific set of business activities to achieve a specific goal has always been there too. But project management brings a certain rigour to this basic management task.
A project has to be delivered within the constraints of scope, time, budget and quality to meet the project objectives. But as implementation proceeds, the risks, issues, dependencies (with other projects), assumptions made and the desired benefits have to be addressed too. It is these demands, plus the complexities of project portfolios and programs of projects, that have resulted in well-defined methodologies and standards emerging. And this in turn has resulted in project management consultants obtaining certifications in those methodologies. Not all projects will require a certified project management consultant, but all will require the foundation principles of project management to be followed.
In summary, project management is about planning, organising, controlling and even motivating resources (mostly people) to achieve a specific business objective. Clearly, this is a set of temporary activities which expire when the objective is achieved, and give life to the new and desired business-as-usual.
Key areas of project management consulting
- Program management and evaluation – when the requirement is to define and manage the delivery of programs made up of multiple projects that are related – so a ‘network’ of projects being carried out in parallel, or sequentially, or a mix of both
- Project / portfolio / program governance – to define and implement appropriate project / portfolio / program governance policies and procedures
- General project management – the very act of project management, sometimes in line with a specific certifiable methodology or standard
- Project portfolio management
- Training – where there is a need for trained project managers – via workshops, courses, coaching, mentoring
- Vendor management – to define, develop, evaluate and implement vendor management policies and procedures.
Three important questions to answer
First and foremost, does this project require a certified project management consultant? If your answer is “no”, please ensure that a disciplined approach is taken.
Does this project or portfolio or program also create significant change within your organisation? If your answer is “yes” then bring a change management consultant into the team, and refer to our Change Managementcategory page for tips and tricks.
Will your project / portfolio / program governance vary as the intermediate project objectives are achieved? If the answer is “yes” then bring in a project governance consultant to get the governance structure, policies and procedures in place.
Service Consulting
Service consulting is booming in today’s services economy. Granted service has always been important – we all experience good / bad customer service stories on a daily basis – but today, ‘good’ service is a critical business characteristic. And ‘good’ is in the eye of the buyer, the customer, the client and not the organisation delivering the service. Sometimes, it only takes one negative experience, maybe two, for us as buyers to switch to the ever-present competitor.
Innovating and creating new service models must be a permanent item on your agenda. Innovations will range from completely new models, through step-changes, incremental continuous improvements and minor tweaks, to old models. And all with one objective great customer experience!
Service consulting projects
Common service consulting projects include:
- Customer experience / Voice of customer to determine customer needs, wants, perceptions and preferences and translate into meaningful objectives to close the gap between customer expectations and the organisation’s services … this analysis delivers both immense value and invaluable insights.
- Service strategy … be prepared for regular review, as your strategic intent at any point may only be a transient strategic advantage.
- Outsourcing or offshoring … beware doing it just for cost reduction.
- Service (level) agreements are an essential and because it’s an infrequent activity, consulting advice, guidance and support for preparation, market analysis, management, and subsequent evaluation is invaluable … but remember that agreements drive behaviour, so consider this aspect too.
- Service design to get the service delivery model your customers will be fulfilled by … this design process may involve techniques such as co-creation, story-telling and customer journey mapping.
- Service provider management to define, develop, evaluate and implement service management policies and procedures with your service providers … try to stand in their shoes to predict and pre-empt any behaviour change.Self-service is becoming the ‘new black’ in some industries … but you must devote effort to not only post-implementation support, but also ongoing post-implementation review.
- Service improvement to design, develop, review and implement a regular regime of service improvements … a regular service keeps the ‘service excellence engine’ in good tune.
What to look for in a service consultant
Service consultants are typically creative and customer-centric, and understand where the two, sometimes polarised, main stakeholders (you, your customer) are coming from and heading to. A hallmark of a contemporary service consultant is intimate knowledge of customer experience techniques and methodologies around “multi-channel” or “omni-channel” and customer journey mapping. Finally, change management may come into your quest for service excellence. Visit our Change Management page for more information.
Strategy Consulting
Classically, strategy consulting projects set goals, establish actions to achieve those goals, and organise resources to implement the actions. This satisfies the colloquial definition of strategy – “a strategy describes how the ends (goals) will be achieved by the means (resources)”.
This traditional foundation has paved the way for a comprehensive range of key strategy consulting areas that will enable you to deliver on your strategic objectives right across your organisation.
Please note that because all other consulting disciplines have elements of strategy within them, you may feel that some of these key areas should be moved into those disciplines. However they have been included here because of their strategic importance for most organisations.
Key areas of strategy consulting
- Branding to design, develop, review and implement your strategic branding
- Business modelling and planning – there are significant new methodologies emerging which enable a quicker and clearer move to implementation.
- Channelsto define, develop, review and implement your strategic channel initiatives.
- Corporate responsibilityto design, develop, review and implement corporate social responsibility initiatives. Social responsibilities should be embedded within business strategy.
- Diversification / privatisation / commercialisation – fundamental strategic initiatives.
- Feasibility study
- International expansion to assist your international expansion initiatives … –in-market connections, knowledge and understanding of the local culture and language can add great value.
- Intrapreneurship and entrepreneurship – weighty new methodologies are emerging to foster these activities
- Operations strategy, design and effectiveness to boost your operations – new approaches move an organisation more quickly to implementation.
- Partnership, alliance and community to design, develop, review and implement strategic partnership, alliance and community initiatives … these responsibilities are crucial elements of business strategy.
- Pricing to define, develop, review and implement pricing models … pricing is a clear sign of strategic intent
- Profit improvement to design, develop, review and implement strategic profit improvement initiatives … these initiatives will always be needed.
- R&D initiative support – specialists in grant sourcing have a role to play here.
- Restructuring
- Strategic planning and review- there will always be a need for a different ‘pair of eyes’.
What to look for in a strategy consultant
Given the range of strategy consulting areas, your strategy consultant must possess the appropriate technical expertise to tackle your project, and know how to pragmatically tailor that expertise to serve your needs. If they propose to use any emerging methods then they must be abreast of how those methods are being used by other strategy consultants. And finally your strategy consultant should have demonstrable experience in your industry.
Technology Consulting
Technology consulting is the pervasive discipline, because technology enables almost all business activities in most organisations across all sectors and industries. Technology simply touches everything that we use and do.
Technology consulting skills are very broad, ranging from business focused (e.g. developing an IT strategy) through to highly technical (e.g. designing real-time communications services). The most popular, or common, technology consulting projects are positioned towards the business-focused end of this spectrum. The projects highlighted below range from dealing with strategic topics, through tactical matters to operational projects with a technical focus but a robust business rationale.
Technology consulting projects
Common technology consulting projects at the strategic level include:
- Business cases for investments in technology … monitor as investment proceeds.
- IT architecture and infrastructure designs and implementation … mission critical for highly technology dependent organisations.
- IT governance policies and procedures … governance needs and structures must change as implementation proceeds through the SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle).
- IT security policies and procedures … mission critical for all organisations.
- Strategic IT sourcing of new technology … a proven methodology is the key.
- Technology strategy, design … IT strategy must align with business and not the other way round.
At the tactical level, typical areas of focus are:
- Application portfolio rationalisation … applications have a ‘use-by’ date … enforce it.
- Disaster recovery / business continuity planning … essential plans … test them.
- Hosting / cloud services
- IT planning and review
- Systems integration
- Technology migration
And these are two operational projects with a robust business rationale:
- Telecommunications design, planning … constant advances in telecommunications alone could deliver an acceptable project ROI.
- Unified communications … constant advances in telecommunications plus the availability of multiple mobile technologies could also deliver an acceptable project ROI.
What to look for in a technology consultant
Proven technical skills matching your specific technical requirement are essential. At the strategic level, the ability to align IT with the business is important. At the tactical and operational levels, your technology consultant must be able to understand what the business is trying to achieve.
And finally, change management may come into the technology equation, because of the ‘high touch’ between your people and technology. Visit our Change Management page for more information.
