Have you ever wondered if there is a difference between “advisory services” and “consulting services”? We often get asked to do both. And we recognized that a lot of customers get confused by these two areas, and sometimes ask for consulting when they actually need some business advisory. Therefore, we decided to explain these two terms.
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Advisory Services
As you probably already know, both “Advisory Services” and “Consulting Services” help companies to solve problems that hinder business development and growth. When we get asked for advisory services, we offer practical advice and solutions. We provide actionable items that a customer needs to do on his own, in order to make their business processes more effective. Basically, we simply direct our customers on where to go and what to do to solve the problem on their own.
Business advisory services are mostly based on the ongoing challenges that arise in business. By providing them, we assist our customers on how the business can be improved. Customers turn to us for advisory because they know that we are experts in the OpenText product area. We have a wider view, and therefore, we are able to provide a better picture of their options.
Mostly, business advisory stays for a longer time and assists in ongoing challenges that the business faces. Business advisory services tackle all aspects of the business from managing in-house OpenText systems, to the strategy of implementing new products and/or services, to improving your overall operations.
Consulting Services
When we are asked to provide consulting services, our experts provide a solution to a specific problem (e.g. company is running on unsupported products – we do an upgrade to the latest supported version; company bought product and does not know how to adapt it to their needs – we install and customize it; company needs to reduce the amount of manual and error-prone steps – we automate a specific business process, lack of in-house resources to do a specific project – we provide resources).
Overall, consulting projects tend to be better defined as advisory projects. During consulting projects, we work on finding the root cause of the problems that arise in business and then work on solving the issues completely.
Ecodocx’s OpenText advisory and consulting services
We at Ecodocx decided to offer the best of both worlds and came up with a hybrid service model, which combines both, advisory and consulting services. There are two main reasons why we decided to go with a hybrid model. First, we wanted to make sure we help our customers to get the most out of their time and resources.
And second, most of our knowledge about OpenText products is based on our experience providing consulting services. We have a practical understanding of the OpenText products potential, customers daily challenges and real business needs. We also know the latest information about products, upgrades, offerings from OpenText, as we are an authorized partner.
During our advisory and consulting sessions, we talk about issues and concerns customers have. As our team works in this industry for almost two decades, we are able to look at the customer’s daily issues and future concerns from another perspective.
Based on the given information, our team provides practical tips and actionable items they need to follow in order to improve their business. In case the customer doesn’t have enough in-house resources, one or more of our experts can join the customer’s team, and provide the missing expertise and man-power.