February 9, 2025

When companies rent consultants to assist implement an AI or information modernization challenge, their fundamental purpose is to attain no matter outcomes they hope to appreciate through the challenge.

However that doesn’t imply guide merely completes the challenge and delivers the outcomes. Quite the opposite, profitable AI and information system modernization initiatives contain intensive transparency and reporting between consultants and clients.

And I’m not speaking right here about periodic verify ins or updates. I imply establishing a scientific strategy to protecting clients knowledgeable in any respect phases of the challenge – and being open with them when challenges come up, as they inevitably will.

Permit me to elucidate, drawing on my expertise serving to handle advanced AI and information science initiatives for Indicium, a knowledge modernization consultancy.

Why information initiatives require transparency

When my staff begins an AI or information modernization challenge, the shopper sometimes is aware of what they need the deliverable to be – similar to a knowledge analytics system that lets their enterprise make data-driven choices, or an AI device skilled on their customized information.

What they don’t know is tips on how to get to that deliverable. In any case, in the event that they’ve employed consultants, it’s often as a result of they need assistance turning their imaginative and prescient right into a actuality.

To be extra particular, clients sometimes don’t know:

  • How lengthy the challenge is more likely to take to finish. Will it take weeks, months or years? With out the requisite in-house expertise, companies often haven’t any approach of creating an anticipated timeline.
  • Which assets the challenge requires. Prospects typically don’t know which varieties of information property, instruments, processes and personnel are obligatory to finish the challenge.
  • Which challenges could come up. When you’ve by no means accomplished a fancy information modernization challenge earlier than, you in all probability aren’t certain which varieties of points could come up in the middle of the challenge that, if not correctly managed, might ship it sideways.
  • What the dangers of failure are. Prospects often have little sense of how a lot threat they’re enterprise to pursue a challenge, or what the possibilities are that the challenge is not going to work out.

In brief, clients face quite a lot of uncertainty. This typically interprets to anxiousness as properly.

To mitigate these challenges and instill confidence, it’s essential for consultants to function in a clear, well-organized vogue. Far more than merely giving lip service to buyer communication, consultants want to offer detailed, step-by-step plans to clients, and stay in fixed communication with them as a challenge unfolds.

A scientific strategy to challenge transparency

How do you do this? What does being clear with the shopper truly appear like in apply?

At my agency, it hinges on systematically implementing every of the next key options as a part of each challenge.

  • Set up a transparent roadmap

First, after assembly with the shopper to grasp their desired deliverables, the guide ought to lay out a transparent and detailed roadmap. The roadmap ought to break the challenge into phases – together with giant ones, like epics (to make use of agile challenge administration terminology), and smaller ones, like sprints – and supply an estimated timeline for every one.

With these insights, the shopper can start to grasp what the challenge will appear like on a day-by-day, week-by-week and month-by-month foundation. In flip, the shopper can set up confidence that the staff has an in depth plan for finishing the challenge, and that it is going to be doable to trace progress repeatedly as soon as work is underway.

  • Establish dangers and roadblocks

You may’t predict each potential problem which will come up as soon as a challenge begins, however you’ll be able to typically predict a lot of them. For example, chances are you’ll know {that a} sure information useful resource could also be tough to entry, or that information high quality challenges might decelerate a part of an epic.

As a guide, you have to be upfront about these anticipated challenges along with your buyer and what your plans are for dealing with them. Proactive communication is one other technique to set up confidence on the shopper’s half.

  • Talk about surprising issues

Along with getting forward of potential issues you anticipate, be clear with clients when unanticipated issues come up – as they inevitably do in advanced information modernization initiatives.

Whereas it could be tempting to maintain the difficulty to your self and work by it, it’s higher to inform clients about it, and the way you’re addressing it, proactively. Being secretive units you up for failure within the occasion the shopper finds out in regards to the problem and assumes you had been making an attempt to cover it.

  • Generate dash abstract reviews

Every time you full a dash (that means a unit of labor that takes place over a preplanned time frame), ship a report back to the shopper about what passed off, in addition to what the subsequent dash will entail.

By offering detailed reviews like these frequently, you preserve an open communication channel with the shopper. Systematic reporting is far more efficient at protecting the shopper within the loop than periodic check-ins or mere guarantees to be out there upon request to debate challenge progress.

  • Lead with challenge outcomes

Lastly, consultants ought to undertake a apply that I prefer to name “main with outcomes.” What I imply is emphasizing at each step of the challenge what the final word consequence is. The challenge kickoff ought to embody a presentation of what the shopper will obtain when work is full, and the abstract reviews must also clarify how progress inside every dash maps onto the final word deliverable.

Main with the outcomes is effective for 2 fundamental causes. One is that it provides clients confidence that you just stay centered on the objectives they employed you to attain, even once you’re deep within the muck of day-to-day work the place it could turn out to be simple to lose sight of the ultimate deliverable.

And second, giving clients a concrete sense of what you’ll ship helps them talk  the challenge’s worth clearly to different stakeholders contained in the enterprise. That is particularly necessary within the occasion that initiatives come up or that some enterprise customers start questioning why a knowledge modernization challenge is taking so lengthy. When the shopper can articulate clearly what the end result shall be and the way it advantages the enterprise, they’re within the strongest place to “promote” the challenge to inner stakeholders.

Transparency as the important thing to information modernization success

For consultants who spend their days “within the trenches” of advanced information modernization initiatives, it may be simple to need to concentrate on technical processes and keep away from serious about the shopper till it’s time at hand off the deliverable. However the actuality is that the extra visibility the shopper has into what you’re doing at each step of the method, and the higher the shopper’s confidence within the worth of what you’re doing, the extra probably the challenge is to succeed. Transparency vis-à-vis clients is vital, even when it’s not all the time simple.

By Gabriel Klock is Challenge Administration Coordinator at Indicium.