Develop key skills, confidence and knowledge to work in the world of Business
- Manage your own business
- Start a business career working for someone else
- Apply what you learn through your studies and build your skills through experience
Knowledge provides a foundation. Experience builds on that foundation. THe people you connect with along the way will enable you to work better and provide opportunities to advance your career.
Modules
Note that each module in the Qualification - Advanced Diploma in Business is a short course in its own right, and may be studied separately.
How Graduates Move Forward after this Course
This diploma provides knowledge and an awareness that can be of value to many businesses. As a graduate, you have three ways of using what you learn:
- Working for someone else (as an employee)
- Working in your own business (as an owner)
- Working to support businesses operated by clients (eg. as a consultant or coach)
What is a consultant?
Consultants are experts in a specific field. In most cases, this is a technical or highly professional field, such as the law or medicine, though there are consultants available across a wide variety of disciplines. The thing that sets apart consultants in less technical fields is their expertise in a very specific niche. For instance, a horticultural consultant may specialise in turf seeding and growing premium quality turfs for high-end landscapes quickly – this type of consultant fills a very specific niche and may be in demand by a certain type of client (e.g., universities coming into spring readying for bug reunions and fundraising periods, golf courses readying for prestigious tournaments after an intense storm season).
Consultants are hired based on three key factors:
- knowledge/expertise
- experience
- communication skills.
If you have a lot of knowledge in an area, but not a lot of experience, it can be hard to convince clients that they should listen to your advice. This is because most clients can go get knowledge for themselves – they can hire on employees, take courses, or pay employees to take courses for less than it costs to hire a consultant. The reason they want a consultant is to benefit from knowledge and experience. This is because a consultant’s past experience is really like evidence of their success – what they’ve achieved elsewhere is proof that their ideas and methods work.
As a result of of downsizing, companies are increasingly out-sourcing for services and expertise that is not available from their own staff. Consultants bring their time and expertise to help fill in the gaps.
What do consultants do?
Remember, consultants are experts in their specific area. This means an essential part of consulting is continuing to build knowledge. As such, successful consultants are continually learning, networking, and researching.
In terms of interacting with clients, consultants generally offer a variety of services. These include, but are not limited to:
- Audits of existing processes and workflows
- Analysis of company, suggestions for strategy or change in strategic direction
- Data collection
- Data analysis
- Reviewing problems and providing feedback and potential solutions
- Creating materials and/or templates etc. for company use
- Providing specialist training.
One of the most valuable things a consultant brings to the table is fresh perspective. Companies are often very close to any potential problems etc., which can make it difficult to identify issues. When a consultant comes in, they are at a distance, with an emotional remove, which makes it easier for them to find problems.
A high percentage of graduates are now looking at earning their living by independent means rather than being employed by an organisation. These include graduates from areas such as psychology, law, IT, accountancy, business, the different areas of medicine, engineering, physiotherapy etc. It does not matter what field you are in, there will always be organisations or individuals who will be in need of your expertise.
Why try consulting?
One of the benefits of consulting is that it doesn’t have to be a full-time job when you first start out. Many people start by taking consulting work on as a side hustle, picking up projects while still working for another business or employer. This gives you the opportunity to build a client base with low risk and see how you feel about consulting as a potential career path.
If you do enjoy consulting, there are many benefits to setting up a practice of your own, such as the:
- opportunity to put to work the knowledge that you've accumulated in your years of study and/or industry experience.
- ability to enjoy the freedom and independence of doing your own thing
- possibility of achieving excellent financial rewards
- flexibility of living wherever you want
- freedom to take on those assignments you feel are stimulating and rewarding and the option of walking away from opportunities you don't intrinsically enjoy
- chance to meet new people in other companies and industries
- satisfaction of working with the best resources you can find to get the job done
- ability to arrange your life around your work, if you want to, and live a much more flexible lifestyle.
Why aren’t there more consultants?
You need to be a special sort of person to be a consultant. You cannot be a good consultant if you cannot motivate yourself to work, or if you are too concerned about risks and risk-taking.
It can be tough being a consultant – but it can also be rewarding. You must be totally committed. Four keys to consulting success are:
- total commitment to making a success of your practice. If it is not there – forget it.
- meaningful differentiation of the services you have to offer
- the ability to sell yourself
- the deserved reputation for providing more value than expected
Consulting is a lifestyle you choose for your future because of what it gives you.
How to become a consultant
The type of practice you are intending to set up will dictate what qualifications are needed. You cannot practice medicine if you do not have the correct qualifications.
Different professions (as well as requiring a certain qualification level) may also require you to register (and maintain registration) with a relevant registration board. Recognised credibility can also be gained by being a member of relevant organisations/associations. Skills can be gained from ongoing professional development offered by these bodies as well as association with other professionals.
Learning the ropes
Knowledge, expertise and industry contacts can be built in any industry through studying a qualification (eg. certificate, diploma or degree) in that discipline but the qualification alone is unlikely to equip you to be a good consultant.
Many courses teach you about the discipline and industry, but don't teach you about being a consultant. Learning about the practice of consulting, and how to develop key skills, are an important step in getting started.
First, it’s important to think about the different types of consulting, and which one suits you best. Consulting can generally be broken down into four main categories:
- strategic
- output and operations
- technological
- business.
Strategic Consulting
Strategic consultants are focussed on helping people and companies set their direction. This can include working with start-ups to define everything from their mission statement and five year goals to working with a company seeing a downturn in sales to reassess their market position and look at ways to shift the company strategy un a new direction.
Although strategic consultants are most often associated with business, they can work with governments, charities, educational institutions, and more.
Though it may not be immediately obvious in the name, strategic consulting can be considered a larger umbrella term that includes other forms of consulting such as diversity and equity consulting, as it looks at shifting the priorities of the company. It’s important to note, however, that the actuality of bringing more diverse employees into the company, and ensuring equitable processes, would then fall under operations consulting; as such, many consultants in this space would identify as specialist diversity and equity consultants. It’s vital to keep this in mind, as there are many such niches – these are only broad categories of consulting.
Output and Operations Consulting
This form of consulting is focussed on how things work within the company, It looks at the processes and workflows in place, trying to identify weak spots and pain points. This is a valuable exercise because it can help find places where the company is losing time, money, product (e.g., via wastage), resources (e.g., also via wastage, such as longer routes for transport, so wasted petrol), or even customers (e.g., via poor retail training resulting in poor customer service).
This type of consulting can look at everything from logistics and supply chain management to training delivery and staff induction processes. Consultants in this space will often help streamline processes, create new processes, and sometimes even deploy new processes.
Again, it’s important to note that while this type of consulting is strongly associated with business and corporations, it can be applied to many settings. Even big science labs are subject to specialist operational audits and reviews to ensure processes are safe, reliable, and efficient.
Technological Consulting
Technological consulting is about the implementation of technology. This can be simple or complex, including everything from setting up new computers in an office through to bespoke software development and roll out. Many technology consultants are brought on board to help:
- upgrade systems
- identify potential security breaches
- suggest ways to improve productivity via technology
- explore potential new software options
- solve problems – not just something not working but look for a technological solution to an existing problem, such as how to manage some kinds of data or improve an existing process.
Business and Management Consulting
This is perhaps the most familiar kind of consulting for most people. It is a very broad category that really covers any type of consulting that looks at ways to improve a business’ practices and/or its management, i.e., the management processes that make the business run. It can include financial consulting and elements of operational and strategic consulting.
WHO IS THIS COURSE FOR?
- Anyone with a passion for business
- 'Anyone operating their own business who wants to do better
- Those with an ambition to start their own business at some point in the future
