SchellingPoint is a software provider designed to enable enterprises in the Fortune 100 to early-stage companies, governments, non-profits and consultants to design and implement more effective collaborations. ALM Intelligence's Nathan Simon recently sat down with Michael Taylor, co-founder and managing principal.
ALM Intelligence: What's your background and role at SchellingPoint?
Taylor: I feel my career has had three stages so far. The first was management consulting, where I was up to my neck in supply chain redesign and corporate strategy modeling. Then, leaving Accenture with five colleagues, the second stage was walking in the client's shoes as I helped build a 500-person company and turn around another. While highly enjoyable periods of my life, these experiences were the trigger for this third stage. My SchellingPoint co-founder and I agreed there had to be a better way to get a group of people from "We each think this…" to "We all agree to do that…" to "We did it." This task still proves to be highly unpredictable, unreliable, and inefficient for most consultants and leaders.
ALM Intelligence: What was the genesis of SchellingPoint's products and services?
Taylor: Named after Nobel Prize recipient, Professor Thomas Schelling, a Schelling point is the focal point that enables a group of like-minded individuals to coordinate their actions with minimal communication. Unfortunately, this ability for a group of people to come together around a new topic and naturally agree where to go and how to get there is rare. Looking at over 150 projects – corporate, divisional, departmental strategies; mergers; outsourcing contracts; process improvements; innovation cycles; IT implementations; alliances; and over 50 other types of program—we found that when you strip out what makes them all different, they share a core collaboration process.
ALM Intelligence: How do SchellingPoint's products and services apply to management consulting?
Taylor: A management consultant helping a leadership team advance their business is responsible for fostering coordinated action around their best shared future: one that is considered viable, endorsed, and can adapt during implementation. Consultant's and client's subject matter expertise determines their ambition—the where and how—but today's collaboration methods simultaneously compromise the critical "viable, endorsed, and adaptable" attributes. According to our analysis, traditional stakeholder interviews, client meetings, and workshops surface only three of over 30 process quality leaks that get in the way of great outcomes.
We deployed this learning into the SchellingPoint consulting software to provide great consultants with the process and enabling technology that can yield better and faster outcomes for their clients. With more than 100 pre-defined templates and the ability to embed a firm's consulting knowledge into proprietary digital templates, SchellingPoint is being used by individual specialists, mid-size boutiques, and brand name firms. One Fortune 500 transformation attained its three year goals in one year, while another CEO volunteered that he and his team accomplished in three months what used to take them a year—all making their consultants look very good.
ALM Intelligence: As a former consultant, what are the biggest challenges consultants face with process automation technology?
Taylor: Consulting process automation is certainly disruptive. We are on the forefront of a new s-curve, with firms shifting from 50 years of analog management consulting to a new era of digital management consulting. There's no consensus yet on the meaning of digital consulting. Some think "digital" means virtual and equate it with less client contact. In my experience, it actually means higher quality face time. Some see the ability to run a project in one-half the hours and one-third the elapsed time as a threat to their ability to sell rate-based labor, while others see it as a way to enhance their value proposition, scale their capacity beyond headcount, and produce greater margin through digital assets. Some see features such as an expert system that draws conclusions about the client at the click of a button as a threat to the "art" of consulting, while others value the hours saved not writing reports and creating PowerPoints.
Ultimately, process automation enables consultants to bring new levels of collaboration quality, efficiency, and outcomes. More used to evaluating and implementing software for their clients, management consultants are learning how to market a differentiated consulting service that uses software and process automation to augment their deep resumes and knowledge capital.
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