The Client Perspective on the Requested Service and the Consulting Approach
The major mission of Arts Council England (ACE) is investing public money to create unique art that has a profound effect on people’s lives (What we do n.d.). The organization supports a variety of activities associated with museums, libraries, and arts. According to the previous framework, issued in 2010 and reissued in 2013, ACE is interested in long-term collaborative action with the prospective supplier (Arts Council England 2013).
Drafting a framework involves consulting as an essential phase of the organization’s development (Our next strategy: the timeline n.d.). There are several vital issues on which the strategic framework should be based. The first one is eliminating the divergences between defining and valuing arts across the population (Arts Council England 2018). Another aspect is reducing the gaps in the levels of engagement with the culture that is funded publicly.
Also, ACE aims at developing opportunities for youths to perceive creativity and culture both inside and outside a school in different regions of the country (Arts Council England 2018). Next, the client would like to find more flexibility in cultural organizations so that they could resist challenges connected with the digital economy and poor public funding.
Because of the defined perspectives on the part of the client, the project needs a consultant with specialist skills (Newton 2006). The most relevant approach in this case is management consulting. According to Newton (2010), a management consultant is a term synonymous with such notions as an operational consultant, business advisor, and strategy consultant. There is a variety of job characteristics and duties of management consultants.
The primary function of management consulting is offering recommendations and advice to organizations’ managers and giving help in implementing these recommendations. Another benefit of such consulting is that it is grounded in unique expertise and knowledge (Newton 2010). Also, management consulting is valuable because it allows arranging dialogue between the firm and its employees and the consultant. As a result, specific reeds can be discussed, and clear recommendations can be suggested.
The consulting process requires analyzing the environment and coming up with the most beneficial strategy (Chereau & Meschi 2018). Thus, it is important to bear in mind that the collaboration with the client is temporary and select the advantageous approaches through brainstorming the ideas and discussing them with the organization. Finally, a crucial asset of management consulting is that it adds value to both the client organization and its manager by helping them to alter (Newton 2010). As a result of this consulting approach, ACE can count on decreasing its business risks and enhancing their decision making.
Relevant Facts Needed to Prepare the Contract Bid
When shaping a contract bid, one needs to take into consideration some pieces of information and facts that might play an essential role in the process. First of all, it is necessary to collect data on the stakeholders of the project. In the case of ACE, there will be a vast number of stakeholders, including the organization’s employees, its clients, partners, art creators, and artistic works’ consumers.
Each of these parties has different goals of participating in ACE’s activities, and the consultant needs to inspect all of them thoroughly. Sometimes, conflicts of interest or identity conflicts may arise in the process of cooperation (Harvey, Morris & Müller Santos 2017). To predict and eliminate the emergence of such disagreements, a consultant should perform a preliminary analysis of each prospective stakeholder. These data will be rather helpful in the project’s development and further work on it.
Another essential fact to include in the preparation is the list of costs. ACE’s strategic framework development is difficult not only because of its prospective duration but also due to the number of smaller projects included in it. One of the main objectives if ACE’s strategic framework is eliminating expenses and saving costs for exciting creative endeavors. However, it is not an easy matter, taking into account the number of single artists and organizations collaborating with ACE. Thus, a consultant and the company’s chief financial officer must meet and discuss the budget issues for the next decade.
The next piece of relevant data to consider is the number of employees involved and their functions. It is crucial to increase each worker’s loyalty and dedication (Dundon & Wilkinson 2017). To do this, it is critical to collect such data as the number of years a person has stayed with the organization, the greatest achievements and creative projects on which one has worked, and the level of reliability of each person. Such data collection is likely to be time-consuming, and its results may be somewhat subjective. However, all possible efforts should be made to gather these indicators since they will promote the successful development and implementation of the framework.
Finally, it is necessary to collect information on marketing tools and advertising approaches used by ACE, both past and present. Doing so will allow predicting successful future options in this direction. Without carefully crafted information management, it is difficult to reach out to consumers of the services and products offered by ACE. Thus, the consultant will have to gather and analyze the technologies that have been used by ACE. It is also necessary to scrutinize sponsors and other promoters of the organization since they also serve as a means of arts advertisers.
The Implementation and Delivery of Service
The primary step in implementing the services will be concerned with data collection and analysis. This part of the work will last for a few weeks, and the consultant will likely need assistance from the organization’s manager. With the help of gathered facts, the consultant will be able to shape the framework’s rough structure. First of all, it will be possible to conclude who the main stakeholders of the project will be. Next, it will be relevant to set the goals, mission, and vision of the new framework.
The following step to be taken will be using financial data to predict expenditures and assets for the next decade. Here, the information on sponsors will also be relevant since it will enable the consultant to calculate preliminary funds. At this stage, the delivery of service will also include the efforts of the consultant to increase the organization’s profit and decrease expenditures. The set of facts connected with financial issues will be used in collaboration with the information collected on employees. The consultant will suggest how many people should be allocated to every part of the work.
Finally, it will be necessary to make every stakeholder aware of the prospective changes. To do this, a consultant may call a meeting of the key stakeholders or delegate this responsibility to a manager. Since a consultant is not an employee of the organization, it is most likely that the explanation of the new framework will not be given by them (Newton 2010). By taking all of the outlined steps, the consulting efforts will most likely be justified, and the goals set will be achieved.
Reference List
Arts Council England 2013, Great art and culture for everyone: 10-year strategic framework (2010-2020), 2nd edn. Web.
Arts Council England 2018, Shaping the next ten years: developing a new strategy for Arts Council England 2020-2030. Web.
Chereau, P & Meschi, P-X 2018, Strategic consulting: tools and methods for successful strategy missions, Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
Dundon, T & Wilkinson, A 2017, ‘Employee involvement and participation’, in A Wilkinson, T Redman & T Dundon (eds), Contemporary human resource management: text and cases, 5th edn, Pearson, Harlow, pp. 407-428.
Harvey, WS, Morris, T & Müller Santos, M 2017, ‘Reputation and identity conflict in management consulting’, Human Relations, vol. 70, no. 1, pp. 92-118.
Lewandowska, K 2015, ‘From sponsorship to partnership in arts and business relations’, The Journal of Arts and Management, Law, and Society, vol. 45, no. 1, pp. 33-50.
Newton, R 2006, Project management step by step: how to plan and manage a highly successful project, Pearson Education Canada, North York.
Newton, R 2010, The management consultant: mastering the art of consultancy, Pearson, Harlow.
Our next strategy: the timeline n.d. Web.
What we do n.d. Web.