Consulting is one of the fastest growing occupational groups in business today. For many talented individuals around the world, starting a consulting practice offers great opportunity for income growth and job satisfaction. Yet, consulting does have its unique set of challenges including lack of professional respect from potential clients and a high business failure rate. This book, Building a Successful Consulting Practice, will be helpful to anyone starting down this exciting and challenging road. It presents 12 case studies that analyze the success of consulting organizations. This book focuses particularly on small consulting practices, and specifically on those consulting practices closely related to the field of human resource development. You will find value in this book no matter where you are in the process of starting or running a consulting practice. No matter how you plan to use this book, the impressive group of contributors represented in this collection of case studies will be invaluable as you work to achieve your own level of success in the consulting business.

If your organization is looking for ways to improve performance, here's a source for proven systems, processes, and models from HRD experts. Twelve cases provide practical applications of performance analysis and consulting.

Have you considered how outsourcing can help build your organization’s learning capability? Organizations in search of solutions to a variety of organizational problems have turned their attention more and more toward outsourcing. The workplace learning and performance (WLP) function seems to be among the first functions outsourced when organizations look to new ways of better managing and lowering fixed costs. It is possible to improve learning in an organization with fewer WLP professionals on staff and reduced training budgets. Outsourcing can help. Advantages of outsourcing include having ready access to leadership and practical implementation expertise from a wide variety of vendors reducing dramatically the cycle time for developing learning having access to greater objectivity for understanding the learning needs of the business client and for developing learning that will meet these needs reducing fixed costs. Today, successful organizations use outsourcing to build learning capability while also reducing costs. And, they increase their business value by increasing their ability to learn. ASTD is proud to present the 19th book in the IN ACTION series: 12 cases that provide real-life, cutting-edge lessons from professionals and organizations that have put these truths about outsourcing into practice.

Make Consulting Your Dream Job-On Your Own Terms When you start your own consulting business, you can be your own boss, set your own hours-and make big profits! But that only happens if you're truly prepared. Are you familiar with the biggest consulting myths? Do you know the 12 success factors for consultants? Have you ever owned your own business before? How to Build a Successful Consulting Practice has all these answers and more-distilled by consulting guru Jack Phillips from years spent researching and reviewing successful firms that are still in business today. This essential volume shows how to: Develop a bulletproof business plan Find and keep clients for life Build your brand with magnetic marketing strategies Write spot-on proposals Use the Internet as a secret weapon Become a charismatic public speaker Avoid financial, legal, and ethical pitfalls Adjust to a new work life

Business & Economics/Project Management An exclusive portal to the methods and tools the ROI Institute uses to determine return on investment in project management To survive this modern age of financially skeptical "show me the ROI" investors, it is a crucial step for companies to develop an effective project management strategy in order to stay ahead of the curve and achieve success. Project Management ROI takes the guesswork out of determining how to monetarily value projects by teaching the time-tested Return on Investment (ROI) methodology. It presents these results-based concepts in a methodical, reproducible manner that project managers, executives, and analysts can use as a validated reference for future projects. This book focuses on an array of measures to forecast project value and collect data during and after implementation, including reaction, learning, application and implementation, impact, return on investment, and intangibles. Project Management ROI: Is the first book from the renowned ROI Institute to focus on project management ROI Provides both the tools and methodology for measuring the ROI of project management investments Will help project managers discover the value of specific project management solutions to justify project expenditures

Retention is becoming one of the most pressing concerns of employers worldwide. This book provides an overview of talent retention and defines retention and turnover in very specific measures. It explores the full impact of talent departure and most important it offers proven solutions to talent retention. The book clearly shows how to forecast the ROI of talent retention solutions and how to capture the actual ROI after the solution was implemented. This is a practical book providing an ROI approach to HR managers and practitioners.

This book provides consultants with a career framework to build, grow, and transform their consulting businesses by becoming brilliant at the basics. The Odyssey process challenges current thinking and offers a methodology to help readers rise to the top of the profession by applying leading-edge techniques and methodologies.An ideal companion to t