The overall objectives of these courses are:

• Explain the business model of the management consulting industry
• Understand the management consulting value chain
• Describe the potential organizational structures and key business processes of a management consulting firm
• Identify the day-to-day operational requirements, tools and best practices of a management consulting firm
  
• Analyze selected business cases by applying appropriate management consulting tools and frameworks
• Identify the skills and capabilities required to deliver management consulting services
• Explain and demonstrate the elements of effective facilitation and presentation development
• Construct a sample management consulting proposal and presentation that addresses a specific “client” requirement
• Explain and demonstrate the construction of a Statement of Work
• Identify the critical elements of client relationship management
• Demonstrate client relationship-building skills through role play exercises

The description of the 4 required courses are:

(All courses are available face-to-face , online, blended/hybrid )

1. Managing IT Organizations and IT Strategy 

As firms increase their investments in information technology as part of a transformational business strategy, and leverage these investments in their competitive strategies and drive for performance improvement, it is essential to understand how to effectively manage these information technology resources. There are numerous decisions to be made about managing IT resources and they involve business and IT and executives across the firm. 

Experience has made it clear that firms need well-thought out organizational structures, processes, and governance (decision rights) to ensure that the decisions about how to leverage IT investments are well thought-out and integrated across the enterprise in order to obtain business value. This course will help candidates understand the important decisions related to the management of IT resources and the types of organizational structures, strategies, and processes that will help effectively and efficiently attain value to the enterprise. The course concentrates on developing the participant’s competency in understanding and applying current/emerging issues and methods in creating and coordinating the key activities necessary to manage the 21st century tactical and operational IT functions of a firm for effective transformation.

Topics include:

• The Business-IT Consulting “Life Cycle”
• Differences Between Management/Business Consulting and Service Providers, and Internal IT
• Consulting Organization Structures
• Types of Consulting Engagements and Implications
• Presenting Proposals
• Consulting Agreements
• Scoping the Business and IT Problem(s)
• Structuring and Staffing Consulting Projects/Engagements
• Outcomes-Based Thinking and Value Management
• Approaches to Identifying, Refining and Selecting the Vision
• Consulting Portfolio and Program Management
• Applying Frameworks and Methods to Business-IT Issues
• Governance and its Centrality to Success
• Performance Metrics
• Organizational Change Management and Organizational Alignment
• Applying Performance Metrics to Consulting Engagements
• Trends and Directions in Management Consulting

2. Engaging the Client – The Essentials of Management Consulting 

In the 21st century management consultants are often called upon to address business and IT and operations, processes, and strategies which enable and drive organizations to become more competitive and profitable in rapidly evolving technology-centered marketplaces. The deployment of emerging information technologies for revenue generating initiatives has accelerated the pace of strategic and operational change as well as enabled/driven new business ‘disruptors’ to enter markets previously considered to be stable and resistant to innovation.

Management consultants must become trusted advisors to senior IT and non-IT client executives to help them address critical client business problems and get their buy-in on how to address these issues and opportunities in a way that ensures business value generation. Management consulting engagements and projects must begin with consensus-building among senior IT and non-IT executives to ensure understanding and agreement on how best to improve the competitive position, alignment of business and IT strategies and operating performance, establish appropriate business and IT organizational and process infrastructures and value-related analytics, and address business and IT governance and sourcing considerations.

This course will concentrate on developing the participants’ competency in engaging with clients to assist them in evaluating, establishing and coordinating the key strategic and operational options, processes, activities and organizational structures required to manage the business and IT functions of in today’s technologically intensive environment that will generate measurable and sustainable business value. This course, and others, in this Certificate will be grounded on the principles and implications of the Henderson-Venkataraman Strategic Alignment Model (SAM) and Luftman’s Strategic Alignment Maturity Assessment.

Course Topics include:

• The Business-IT Consulting “Life Cycle”
• Differences Between Management/Business Consulting and Service Providers, and Internal IT
• Consulting Organization Structures
• Types of Consulting Engagements and Implications
• Hiring/Mentoring/Growing Team Members
• Consulting Sales and Marketing
• Constructing and Presenting Proposals
• Constructing and Presenting Consulting Agreements
• Scoping the Business and IT Problem(s)
• Structuring and Staffing Consulting Projects/Engagements
• Outcomes-Based Thinking and Value Management
• Approaches to Identifying, Refining and Selecting the Vision
• Consulting Portfolio and Program Management
• Planning and Managing Consulting Projects
• Applying Frameworks and Methods to Business-IT Issues
• Consulting Engagement Leadership and Relationship Management / Telling Clients “No”
• Governance and its Centrality to Success
• Performance Metrics
• Organizational Change Management and Organizational Alignment
• Applying Performance Metrics to Consulting Engagements
• Expanding Your Consulting Services “Footprint” – The Value of Networking
• Trends and Directions in Management Consulting

3. Establishing and Enriching Client Relationships

Management consultants must become trusted advisors to senior IT and non-IT client executives to help them address critical client business problems and get their buy-in on how to address these issues and opportunities in a way that ensures business value generation. This requires not merely the initiation and development of sustainable contractual relationships, but the establishment of trusted and valued relationships that enrich the client’s perceptions of the consultant’s value as well as the nature of their own business and potential for transformation.

This course will concentrate on developing the participants’ competency in engaging with clients throughout the pre-sales, business development and delivery processes in ways that help the participant understand the essentials of client engagement, building a contractual relationship, sourcing the right resources to address the client’s key business issues and to build out the firm’s ‘footprint’ (its presence at the client) in a way that the client values the relationship with the consultant and wants more services.

Course Topics include:

• Enhance the participant’s ability to perform successfully as a consultant
  
• Increase the participant’s ability to form strategic relationships with clients and become a trusted partner
  
• Delineate the contracting mechanisms and legal relationships between clients and consultants from both sides
  
• Explore the social, cultural, ethical and legal considerations of working in a single and multi-vendor client environment
  
• Establish a firm understanding of the various skills necessary for success in consulting such as influence, conflict management, expectation management, and general communications
  
• Look at the pragmatic aspects of consulting such as building a consulting firm and administering the consulting organization

4. Facilitating Transformation as a Management Consultant

Throughout one’s career in management consulting, it’s highly unlikely that a management consultant will be faced with executing the exact same project twice. This is due to the fact that different industries will have different value propositions, executive clients will have different styles of management and governance, alignment between business and IT will be different, and criteria for success will be different among various stakeholders (this is a polite way of saying that internal politics and culture in each client will be different), let alone the dynamics of the industry and technology. How the management consultant and the consulting team guides the client through an engagement to get to a consensus-based solution is the subject of this course.
 
While the process of management consulting projects is often deceptively similar from engagement to engagement – e.g., the “Consulting Life Cycle” - the tools and techniques leveraged by experienced management consultants need to reflect the context of the sponsors’ and stakeholders’ points of view on:

• The business and/or issues they face (sometimes there can be strong disagreement between business stakeholders on the ‘shape’ of the problem, let alone the potential solutions)
  
• The vision of what the future should look like (and how to reconcile competing visions)
  
• This strategy and programs needed to reach an agreed-upon future (this is where value statements come in to play)
  
• How they measure success

Outstanding management consultants are those who can successfully leverage previous client experiences and the knowledge-based tools they’ve built and applied to facilitate engagements. All while creatively adapting to the different circumstances they are faced with in each new engagement and set of stakeholders. 

   This course will expose the candidate to practical and field-tested management consulting techniques and tools that are essential as part of the practical ‘toolbox’ of capabilities needed by management consultants and their teams to successfully execute a transformational engagement.

   Course Topics include:

• Creating Effective Teams
  
• “Coopetition” and Partnerships
  
• Techniques for Solution and Services Selling
  
• Employing Consulting Frameworks in Sales and Marketing
  
• Capturing Client Mindshare in Proposals
  
• Proposal Development and Guidelines for Delivering Oral Defenses
  
• Applying Consulting Frameworks and Methods for Issue Analysis, Visioning and Program Plans
  
• Staffing Transformational Consulting Projects
  
• Managing and Communicating Engagement Risks
  
• Frameworks for Consulting Project Delivery
  
• Agile’s Role in Project Delivery
  
• Program and Project Communications and Change Management – Do’s and Don’ts
  
• Aligning and Measuring Performance to Transformation Objectives
  
• Alignment as a Management Issue
• Developing and Measuring IT Satisfaction Questions
• Managing Engagement Involving Emerging Technologies
  

• Case Studies & Practicums
  

This course is offered only in face-to-face delivery for candidates and includes intensive real-world based case-study exercises that allow the candidate to apply their knowledge from any three of the above courses. It is conducted in a team-based setting led by experts from academia and business and has the objective of enabling  the facilitated leadership/mentoring of discussions that apply the concepts of the certificate courses.

• Enterprise Systems Management
  

Business process transformation is a critical aspect of IT management consulting. This course would satisfy the need for participants to understand the intimate connection between business transformation and the role of information technology (IT) as both an enabler and a driver of change. The emphasis of this course is on enterprise and IT integration and synergy creation. Effective design and implementations of business processes produce meaningful business performance improvements. This course will also address the identification and development of business performance criteria and metrics that can be used to manage both the process of transformation and the subsequent on-going management of the business.

• Legal Issues in IT Outsourcing

The purpose of this course is to acquaint students with the specialized legal aspects governing IT outsourcing arrangements. The course addresses negotiation of the outsourcing contract, including terms relating to legal risk, as well as terms, negotiation techniques and contract structures relating to the memorialization of the business deal. Additionally, the course addresses contract management as an on-going aspect of the outsourcing relationship, including dispute resolution, managing change, re-negotiation, and managing termination of the IT outsourcing relationship. No prior legal training is required to take this course. Successful completion of the course allows the student to achieve a useful level of specialized management knowledge.

Courses from the following certificates can also be considered:

• Service Thinking
• Business Process Management
• Supply Chain Management
• Managing IT Vendors & Outsourcing
• Industry Certificates