What of my company resources or staff does a consultant need access to?

Hank Harris, Director of Consulting, answers the question in another episode of Consulting Conversations. Watch it now!

It really depends obviously on what you have the consultant doing, so let's assume that you're trying to have the consultant do something that involves gaining a fairly deep understanding of your business.

In that case, you're probably going to need to have the consultant understand background information which would include financial audited financials, if you have those, or the best quality internal financials you might have, the organizational chart, the backgrounds of your key staff members, general information on the company's products and services, and things that will help the consultant understand the business get background information.

In terms of the staff, it probably depends on the assignment, but I think if the consultant is going to understand business in any depth, one way that they all do that is to talk to various people, and typically that's probably going to mean some interviews that the consultant has with staff going down into some cross-section of what you consider to be your management ranks.

I would love to hear from any private business owner in North Carolina that thinks we could be of some help to them in understanding how their business gets better or where it might go in the future.