Whether you are an experienced business consultant or considering starting a business consultancy, you need to be on the cutting edge regarding the advice you provide your clients.
Offering perfectly customised advice to businesses requires meticulous organisation and a range of tools available in your consulting toolbox! What better way to stay organised and at the top of the game than with excellent business consulting tools?
Let's explore how successful business consultants utilise tools to maximise their impact and the best tools for consultants.
What are Business Consulting Tools?
Business consulting tools and software are extensive terms. Simply, they refer to any tools that increase the effectiveness or quality of your work.
As a business consultant, you often have to cover all business roles such as administration, accounts, marketing, sales and customer support. Having the right business consulting software tools in place will streamline your business, saving you time and money. Business consulting tools and techniques help optimise your internal functions, such as accounting and project management. These tools also assist with challenges you face as a consultant, including creating lasting change and overcoming behavioural issues.
Fortunately, we live in a world where so many digital solutions are available that cover everything from finding clients to running projects and providing your clients with customised advice. Here are some of the essential business consulting tools you need for your business consultancy.
What Tools do Consultants Use?
Consultants use several tools to help optimise their business, such as project planners, marketing software, HR assessment tools, feedback tools, workplace assessments and customer relationship management (CRM). New business consulting software tools are forever entering the market. However, there are fundamental types of business consulting tools that you should always utilise. These include:
- Lead Generation Software
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Software
- Time Tracking Tools
- Project Management Software
- Online Consulting Platforms
- Workplace Survey Tools
- Employee Assessment Tools
- Accounting Software
Lead Generation Software
Lead generation software automates and refines the prospecting process. Lead-gen software helps you attract, engage and nurture qualified leads. As a consultant, your time is precious. Lead-gen software is an excellent business consulting tool to automate the process of generating, segmenting and following up with leads. Lead generation software achieves higher conversion rates, expands your potential client base, and eventually boosts your sales and revenue.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Software
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Software enables consultants to provide impactful services and maintain positive relationships with their clients.
The best CRM for a consulting business should help you manage your leads automatically, track client communications, create automated workflows for particular tasks, set notifications for future tasks or meetings and provide meaningful reports.
A CRM is an invaluable business consulting tool that allows you to automate tasks and provide customised services to your clients, saving you time while enhancing client retention.
Time Tracking Tools
Typically, consultants use time tracking tools to record worked hours on specific projects for billing, payroll, or operations. They also demonstrate the hours you've worked to your client, enabling you to deliver the project honestly and accurately, boosting your credibility.
Time tracking tools are also helpful to provide insight into your operations, such as which tasks take more of your time than others. A great time tracker is simple to use, includes custom categories, and generates practical and valuable reports.
Project Management Software
Project Management Software for consultants allows you to manage and organise client projects effectively. Using an effective project management tool will enable you to create projects, set and assign tasks, create deadlines and provide an overview of completed, ongoing and future tasks.
Project management tools also allow you to compare how a project played out to the anticipated timeline providing valuable data for business consultants to use when entering a new client relationship and preparing estimated timelines for future projects.
Online Consulting Platforms
Online consulting platforms have experienced phenomenal growth over the past decade and recently during the Covid pandemic. If you've found yourself conducting most of your consulting sessions over Zoom, then an online consulting platform might be the business consulting tool you need. These types of consulting tools provide you with flexibility when choosing how to connect with your client and allow you to brand and organise your platform.
Workplace Survey Tools
Workplace survey tools are an excellent way to gather information about your client to formulate an action and development plan to enhance performance. As a business consultant, you do not always have data that offers a complete picture of what's going on in your client's company.
Survey tools remove the guesswork and help you draw out the insights you need to make recommendations to improve efficiency and effectiveness.
Employee Assessment Tools
Employee assessment tools, such as a DISC Assessment, provide you with a deep understanding of your client's employees quickly and effectively. These consulting tools help you to accurately and efficiently identify people's behavioural strengths and how to get the best from them.
Employee assessment tools will help you understand how people are motivated, how they prefer to communicate and what may cause them stress or pressure. These types of business consulting tools provide you with invaluable knowledge helping you quickly get to the issues.
Accounting Software
One of the essential areas of a consultant is managing your accounts. An efficient and straightforward method of invoicing and collecting payment from clients is vital for every business consultant. The best accounting software for consultants makes it easy to fulfil invoices and track who owes what and when it needs to be paid, so you can focus on what you love - consulting!
What are the Best Tools for Consultants?
The best tools for consultants will vary based on your specialisation and personal preference. Some business consulting tools and techniques are great to have, may increase your productivity and efficiency but are not necessary. However, there are some tools we recommend that no consultant should go without. Here are our top five best tools for consultants.
- Lead Generation Software
- Accounting Software
- Employee Assessment Tools
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Software
- Online Consulting Platforms
Lead Generation Software
Lead generation software is essential for business consultants to help you find and generate leads. These types of business consulting tools eliminate a lot of the manual work, ensuring you have a steady stream of leads to convert into future business. Here are our top recommendations of lead generation software for consultants:
- Salesforce
- Hubspot
- Keap
Accounting Software
Every business consultant needs an efficient and straightforward method of collecting payment from clients. Billing and invoicing software lets you keep track of who owes what and when it needs to be paid, in addition to making it simple to send out invoices. Here are our top recommendations for accounting software for consultants.
- Xero
- Quickbooks
- Kashoo
Employee Assessment Tools
Assessments provide a focused and personalised way of obtaining deeper insights that would otherwise take months or years to uncover. Assessments can help your clients and employees better understand themselves and others by increasing self-awareness and self-perception. Consultants utilise DISC personality tests and 360 feedback tools to gather insights that develop more actionable goals, build stronger relationships, and improve performance. Here are some employee assessment tools we recommend:
- DISC Assessments
- 360 Feedback Tools
- Cognitive Ability
CRM Software
Without question, the primary objective of most customer-focused organisations is to provide their clients with effective services. They will be able to create and maintain strong relationships with their clients as a result. The same holds true for consultants. They must be selective when choosing a CRM for their consulting firm if they want to establish engaging client interactions. Client loyalty is essential for consultants, and the right CRM software for consulting businesses can assist with this. Here are some CRMs we recommend for consultants:
- Hubspot
- Pipedrive
- Zoho
Online Consulting Platforms
A solid online consulting platform might be the best consulting tool in your toolbox! Online consulting platforms are an excellent way to find new projects and work remotely with existing clients. Some of the best consulting platforms also help with admin work to further enhance your efficacy. Here are some of the online consulting platforms we recommend:
- Gurulize
- Riverflex
- Consultport
What Tools Do You Need to Start Consulting Business
Starting any business is challenging, and creating a business where your goal is to help other companies is even more difficult. From brand development to client engagement, the appropriate technologies can help you free up your time and create a better customer experience.
There are specific tools you need to start a consulting business compared to tools you need to scale. When beginning as a business consultant, you need similar tools to any other new business, such as
- a website
- lead-gen software to help you find your first clients
- accounting software
- social media marketing and management tools
Whether you're developing an online business or opening a physical store, the tools you'll need to succeed are reasonably similar. Maintaining a solid network, building a distinct social media presence, and communicating with your clients are critical components of small company success. Starting with the correct tools can help you from the beginning and ensure that your entrepreneurial path is the one you intended from the beginning.
What to Look For When Choosing Consulting Tools
There are thousands of consulting tools available today. How can you pick the best technology for your company with so many alternatives? When selecting consulting tools, there are various factors to consider. Before delving into the features of particular applications, it's a good idea to grasp the commonalities of successful software. Here are some of the top factors to consider when choosing consulting tools:
- Flexibility
- Customisable
- Scalability
- Customer Support
- Time Investment
- Security Measures
Flexibility
Clients have varying requirements. Look for consulting tools that allow you to get creative. It is critical that the tools you employ adapt to the work, allowing you to design solutions depending on your client's needs and wants.
Customisable
Every business consultancy is unique and has specific demands and requirements, and it is beneficial to discover a software provider that can modify their product for your needs. Regular updates and new features, and the ability to interact with your existing tools are excellent indicators of customisation. Because one size does not fit all, you should be able to tailor your product by removing features that you do not require and adding those that you do.
Scalability
Your business may be small now, but what happens when the size of your client base expands? Can your software keep up? One key consideration is to think about the scalability and whether or not the software has the functionality to grow alongside you. You'll want to find the right consulting software that will benefit your business in the long term, not just temporarily.
Customer Support
Check to see if the solution you're considering offers excellent customer service. Customer service is essential when purchasing anything, especially a new consulting tool. You will undoubtedly have many questions as you learn the new product, and you will almost certainly require continuing technical help. Even though it doesn't appear that anything could go wrong, a mistake that takes too long to remedy because you can't reach anybody can be costly. Look for businesses that provide customer service 24/7, or have local support in your region.
Time Investment
Learning a new software system can be challenging. One of the most critical components of selecting company software is determining how simple it is to deploy. The best approach is to choose a software application that you will quickly and easily adjust to. Keep in mind that you may require training and support, impacting your productivity for a few weeks or months.
Security Measures
Security is another significant consideration. There are many legal considerations when storing sensitive and personal data. Look for software that provides the highest level of security and conforms with local and international legislation, such as the GDPR, to keep your clients' data safe. Don't take any chances when it comes to security software for your organisation.
Using the right business consulting tools may help streamline your job as a consultant. The majority of these tools are inexpensive, but the value they provide is priceless. You don't need all of these tools; even if you only utilise a few of them, you'll see a change in your productivity and business progress very quickly.
What Consulting Tools Do HR Profiling Solutions Provide
We supply Business Consultants with a range of workplace assessments. Using these consulting tools, consultants can make informed and reliable people decisions to enhance team productivity and organisational performance. Consultants can use these insights to extend their client retention, generate further coaching opportunities and host additional workshops.
We provide several types of business consulting software tools such as behavioural assessments, cognitive ability tests, competencey assessments, HR surveys and 360 feedback.
Our online cloud-based platform, FinxS, is accessible 24x7 and allows you to administer all business consulting tools from one integrated system. Consultants can view data in real-time, white-label reports and 'play' with the data. See our range of consulting tools below.
Extended DISC Assessments
Extended DISC assessments are the most intelligent DISC profiles in the world. These assessments enable you to maximise your clients' performance and enhance teamwork, communication, and development.
Sales Competence Assessment
Designed to strengthen and streamline learning, the assessment identifies strengths and weaknesses in 18 critically important sales competencies. These game-changing sales competence assessments are ideal for sales consultants looking for deeper insights to improve their consulting skills.
Cognitive Ability Assessment
Our cognitive ability assessments are designed to measure and evaluate an individual's reasoning skills in nine different areas required in a professional environment. HR and Recruitment Consultants use cognitive ability tests to assess a person's current capability level and ability to learn, solve problems and process information on the job.
HR Surveys
HR Surveys are one of the best tools for consultants to gather feedback from a specified group of respondents or everyone from an organisation relative to your goals. Using our surveys, consultants can create fully customisable, action-orientated workplace surveys that measure employee engagement and satisfaction, the organisational climate, and customer satisfaction.
360 Feedback Assessments
360 feedback assessments are one of the most effective ways to uncover development areas, strengths, and performance issues. The primary reason to engage in a 360 program is to understand a leader's specific performance or behavioural challenges. 360 assessments can also be used as a general developmental tool or needs assessment for any employee.
Get started with Workplace Assessments
