Outsourcing- Outsourcing is a business practice in which a company hires another company or an

individual to perform tasks, handle operations or provide services that are either usually executed or
had previously been done by the company's own employees.

The outside company, which is known as the service provider or a third-party provider, arranges for its
own workers or computer systems to perform the tasks or services either on site at the hiring company's
own facilities or at external locations.

Benefits of Outsourcing

Employees focus on the core business

Releasing resources for strategic developments
Decreasing costs
Increasing productivity
Competitive Advantage
Speed-To-Market
Improved Quality
Overcome cultural barriers to improving methods and processes
Access to skills and resources

Drawbacks of Outsourcing

Loss of control
Loss of a learning source
Loss of knowledge of the software
Dependencies on the supplier
Variations in the product quality
Problems among personnel

Management Consultancy "The services provided by an independent and qualified person or persons in
identifying and investigating problems concerned with policy, organization, procedures and methods,
recommending appropriate action and assistance in implementation"
Skills-set required for Management Consultants.

Listening skills
Analytical skills
Industry knowledge
Effective communication
Leadership
People skills
Creative skills

Performance counseling

• Higher productivity is key to success in any organization specially in business ones.This requires
achieving higher performance by employees.

• Performance counselling is the process of improving employees performance and productivity by

providing employee with feedback regarding areas where he is doing well and areas that may require
improvement.

• The basic purpose of performance counselling is to improve the performance of employees or to

maintain already existing desirable level of performance

• This is achieved thru’appraisal i.e. observation and evaluation of the employee’s performance and
communicating the same to the employee.

• The objective of performance appraisal is to determine accurately the extent to which the emplyee
executes the tasks in comparision to the standard of proficiency set.

Consulting requirement in performance counselling:

• The role of the consultant is very important here as he helps the client to realize that performance
appraisal should be concerned with the actual performance rating.

• On the basis of appraisal conducted,the consultant can counsel the employees as to what they should
do to improve their performance to the desired level , and if required, suggest for or conduct necessary
training programmes.

• In the present context many firms are seeking the assistance of external consultant for performance
counselling.The trend is sure to continue in future.

management consulting -The work done by a consulting firm which focuses on advising
companies on the best ways to manage and operate their business. The firm will give advice on
concepts like their business strategy and operational techniques, and also skills like time
management, depending upon the needs of the company.
MANAGEMENT CONSULTING PROCESS

 Consulting Proposals.
 Identification and Definition of Problem,
 Fact-Finding Leading to Solution Development and Implementation,
 Developing Strategic and Tactical Plans and Subcontracting,
 Pricing of Consultancy,
 Acquiring and Developing Talents for Consulting.

Why a Sense of Skepticism and UneaseTowards Management Consultants

Outsourcing

5 Pros and ConsPros:

Pros

1.Specialized - you can get the best

2.Personal attention from a senior practitioner

3.Each campaign treated uniquely

4.Holistic view - consultant is intimately aware of allaspects of the campaign

5.Relationship - it¶s easier to form a long termrelationship with the owner/operator than anaccount rep
that may change jobs

Cons

1.Specialized - yet another vendor to manage

2.Has to wear many hats (eat what they kill)
3.Physical limitations on number of clients that canbe serviced
4.Can be more expensive per hour
5.Limited in the number of things that can be donewel
Summary of the pros and consof being in-house:

Pros:

Strong connection to the product / serviceoffering and in depth understanding of the industryand top
competitors.

Concentrated focus on servicing just one client insteadof balancing the needs of multiple clients.

It may be less expensive to maintain internalresources, depending on the size and experience of
theteam.

Timely and complete access to forecasts, sales data,inventory, etc.

Better integration and coordination with otherinternal departments, including:

marketing,merchandising, IT, and finance

Cons to being in house:

Many of the best consultants are extremelycompetitive individuals, yet internal positions donot usually
foster this competitive spirit.

There is often a sense of boredom and eventuallack of motivation that comes with continuallyworking
on the same site as opposed to newchallenges and opportunities.

As part of a small internal team there is often alack of informal learning opportunities whichinhibits
professional growth and the ability todeliver in a rapidly changing environment.

With a single in house resource, you will be constrained to a single set of strategies, as opposed to best
of breed solutions that resultfrom an integrated team approach

Professionals are rarely equally trained or experienced in both organic optimization and paid search
marketing

You may be sacrificing by relying on oneresource or investing in a larger team. It isoften difficult to drive
organizationalchange from within.

External resources are needed to justify priorities, directional change, and budgets
COST VS VALUE OF ADVICE

One of the simple unavoidable facts of life is that everything costs money. It can be frustrating spending
your entire paycheck week after week with little to nothing to show for it. Learning to understand cost
vs. value will help you get the most for your weekly checks and make the most of your personal
finances.

Cost is simple to understand. How much money are you going to have to spend for this item? This is
the cost. Value on the other hand is a little more complex. Value can come from many different places.
These three key ideas will help you master the art of determining if the cost of an item is equal to or
lower than the value.

Cost, Value and Where You Live

Think about your house or apartment for a minute. Do you live in the cheapest part of town? Why or
why not? The answer to this question is one of the building blocks for understanding cost vs. value.
Sure, you could probably crash on your mom’s sofa for free but having somewhere else to live has a
value. You may be willing to pay more for a smaller apartment in a good neighborhood. Use this
reasoning to guide all of your purchases. A reliable car has a higher value than one that always breaks
down.

A Premium for Convenience

A candy bar or a bottle of soda is more expensive at the gas station than the grocery store. Why is this?
Gas stations and other locations charge a premium for convenience. Is a gas station candy bar worth
more than one from the store? They have the same ingredients, the same nuts, the same chocolate,
even the same package. The value doesn’t really change but the cost does. Learn to plan ahead and to
ask yourself how to get the best value for your money.

Is This Actually Worth It?

Next time you go to make a purchase ask yourself, “Is this actually worth it?” Is the cost of the item
relative to the actual value? As you learn to do this you will be able to start differentiating the cost of
an item and its value. In an ideal situation the cost will always be lower than the value received.

A great way to start mastering this skill is to determine the value of an item before you see the price. If
you are considering purchasing a new item, look at it first. What do you think it is worth? Then look at
the price and see how they compare. This can be done with almost any product from shirts to pants to
electronic devices.
SEPARATING CONSULTING SUCCESS FROM DISASTER

Management consulting refers to both the industry of, and the practice of, helping organizations
improve their performance, primarily through the analysis of existing business problems and
development of plans for improvement. From as early as the late 1800s, management consulting firms
have been expanding their influence over the developing world. Today there are many management
consultants at work deep inside many organizations. According to market research, global management
consultancy market is forecast to have a value of over $300 billion by 2012.
Despite consistently high and growing revenues, management consultancy also consistently attracts a
significant amount of criticism. This includes being criticized for overuse of buzzwords, reliance on and
propagation of management fads, and a failure to develop plans that are executable by the client. A
number of critical books about management consulting argue that the mismatch between management
consulting advice and the ability of business executives to actually create the change suggested results
in substantial damages to existing businesses. Although there are elements of truth to some of the
critics, we believe that management consultants can are still crucial resource to deliver benefits and
success for companies, as long as the relationship and expectations are correctly managed. So what
separates a consulting success from a consulting disaster? We believe it is very much the effort of both
the consultants and the clients we serve.

We feel that it is best for companies to engage consultant for a specific task and avoid carte blanche
engagements. This includes setting big objectives like “world class manufacturing” or other paddling
vague concepts that cannot be measured or judged. Outputs ought to be clear and not broad based
diagnostics. Companies will have to remember that consultants are no substitute for vision and good
management. Bringing in consultants without any clear idea of the help that is needed is a waste of time
and money. Many consulting interventions ultimately fail to achieve the ends intended, because they
call for the consultant to make highly subjective judgment about the complexity of the problem to be
addressed before studying the problem itself. To overcome this problem, there has to be strong
dialogues between the consultant and the client. Apart from recognition of the circumstances and the
issues at hand, there has to be conviction from the consultant and management team on the need for
the correct course of action and change. Often this requires the consultant and management team to
look at observable facts and arrive at a set of shared assumptions about the future. There is a need for
executive sponsorship and intimate involvement from the key stakeholders in the entire effort. Firms
should also view the cost of consulting as an investment rather than a period expense.

Achilles believes in maintaining and sustaining long term relationship with our customers so that
sufficient familiarity with each client, industry and history can allow us to make significant contribution.
We do not see our consultancy as a sale, but as an alliance based on long term mutual benefits and
value. We seek to deliver value by successfully achieving results more efficiently than clients would
themselves; with high professional standards, being objective and possessing good domain knowledge.
We advocate using scientific approach and fact driven decision making to meet the demands of each
customer. We adopt a down to earth, hands-on, result oriented and tailor-made approach to our
assignments. Where possible, we bring lateral thinking and creativity to challenge conventional thinking
and test assumptions. Upon completion of assignments, we ensure “transfer” whereby client has
ongoing capability to support the change even after the consultant has gone.

Functions of Organizational Culture

1. Oriented functions – corporate culture can play a guiding role on the value orientation of the
organization as a whole, and each member of the Organization of behavior in line with the goals
established by the organization. Organizational culture is just a soft bound by the shared values
of the organization to the penetration of personal values, enables organizations to automatically
generate a set of self-regulatory mechanism to guide the behavior and activities of the
organization in an adaptive culture.

2. Constraint functions – the role of the enterprise organizational culture constraints and
specifications of each employee’s ideological, psychological and behavior. Constraints of
organizational culture is not system-hard constraints, but a soft constraint, this soft constraints
equal to diffuse organization organizational culture, groups, code of conduct and ethics.

3. Cohesion functions – when one set of values is co-sanctioned by the organization’s staff, it will
become a kind of adhesive to unite its members from all aspects, resulting in a tremendous
solidarity and cohesion. The main reason for the success is organization, cohesion employees
have a common goal and vision together, encourage enterprises to continue to move forward
and development.

4. Excitation functions – the corporate culture has members from the heart to produce a high
emotional and strenuously enterprising spirit of the effects, it can maximize their staff’s
enthusiasm and pioneering spirit. The emphasis on people-centered corporate culture
management methods. Its incentive is not an external impetus, but an inner guidance, it is not a
passive to meet the psychological needs of the people to realize their own values, but through
the shaping of the organizational culture, so that each employee from the heart dedication to
organization combatant.

5. Radiation functions – corporate culture, once formed a fixed pattern, it will not only play a role
within the organization, the impact on the organization’s staff, but will also have an impact on
the community through a variety of channels. The spread of the culture of organizations to
establish the organization’s image in the public and the corporate culture has a great influence
on the development of social culture.

6. Brand functions – enterprise brand image in the minds of the public, is a hardware based
products and services “and a corporate culture based software as consisting of complex.
Excellent corporate culture, enhance the brand image will play a huge role. Excellent unique
corporate culture can produce huge brand such as “Microsoft”, “Ford”, “GE”, “Coca-Cola”, their
unique corporate culture in its brand building process has played a significant role. The brand
value is the accumulation of time, but also the accumulation of corporate culture.