In a world where the only thing moving faster than technology is consumer expectations, having the right tools at your disposal can make all the difference. Sogolytics is proud to serve our consulting partners around the world to deliver research power, flexible customization, and the capacity to scale with growth. For many consultants, especially those just starting out, investing in the right tools is one of the make-or-break decisions that will determine future success.
Who benefits from reading this article?
If you advise clients in any area where expertise improves performance, this article is for you. Whether you are a one-person operation, or you have a small team, thus reaching agency status, you’ve got a lot to take care of. If all’s well, the business has grown fast with projects coming at you left, right, and center. Coordinating actions, meeting deadlines, keeping clients abreast of progress, justifying fees, deciding on fair value fixed fees (or cost per hour), recording project content, and more are constant headaches.
To thrive today, advisors working alone or within small agencies must quickly learn how to resolve severely pressurized bandwidth (i.e., a primary pain point). Thus, deciding on the right business consultant software to streamline operations is crucial, although finding the best business plan tool for consultants isn’t straightforward. This article will create helpful insights, demonstrating how proven and reputable CRM software (i.e., dedicated tools for business consultants) can help one function faster with improved recommendations.
Strategic planning, financial data, and writing a business plan revolve around a challenging software package selection process aimed at assessing which features best suit your client’s needs and the technologies you can trust for accuracy and reliability. Getting it right puts the five Ps of professional consulting under the spotlight, establishing them as yardsticks for appraising software parameters and capabilities.
What are the 5 P’s of consulting?
There are five “must-have” work qualities that every successful management consultant in every walk of life shares. Indeed, they’re the foundation of the top business tools for consultants (see below), sharing extraordinary client advice delivery as the primary objective. The 5 Ps are:
1. Purpose: There’s no substitute for defining the consultation objectives in meaningful terms to the client before you begin. It may be anything from creating a business plan to financial projections.
2. Planning: Streamlining your work process is vital to meeting deadlines without sacrificing the quality of expected deliverables. It requires digitally organizing your business and strategic plan templates, appreciating how much time free trials eat into your revenue-earning potential, and structuring your consulting business protocols to accommodate work pressures.
3. Perseverance: The most scathing criticism leveled at business consultants arises when they fail to complete the job – a “not infrequent” occurrence. Why does that happen? Project complexity overwhelms advisors, or clients step over the brief limits mid-stream, demanding more. Any number of issues can derail an otherwise controlled consultation. So, staying with a client from end to end – relying on top business tools for consultants to keep things on track – enhances your brand immeasurably.
4. Positioning: Don’t transition out of your lanes. What does this mean? There are several routes business consultants can travel, from sales and marketing to personal finance, real estate lending, VC fundraising, human resource structuring, cybersecurity compliance, customer or employee experience, and more. Sometimes, there’s overlap in areas you’re unfamiliar with. However, AI-driven software functioning as dedicated tools for business consultants can close many gaps if or when you venture away from your mainstream expertise.
5. Pricing: This is always a head-scratcher, sometimes a client turnoff. Decide whether your client base accepts an hourly or fixed-fee working basis. Fixed fees generally leave little room for adjustment once set (being their most significant downside), while hourly charges may result in client dissatisfaction with your invoiced hours. In this regard, finding the best business plan tool for consultants is front and center of your focus. Why? It helps you estimate projects’ time and effort with vastly improved accuracy and generates reports that establish essential transparency around client relationships.
Is the best business plan tool for consultants effective in every type of business?
What types of business fit into the consultancy culture best? Here are a few that are primary candidates for such services:
- Start-ups
- Entities consistently suffering severe cash flow situations
- Companies considering a merger, acquisition, or putting themselves up for purchase
- Any company transitioning from a brick-and-mortar position to digital, eCommerce, online, and omnichannel operations
- Businesses grappling with in-office, hybrid, and remote work employee demands
- Marketing divisions frustrated with excessive customer churn
- HR departments trying to resolve extraordinary employee churn
- Fundraising via structured pitch decks
- Businesses experiencing cybersecurity lapses and actual or potential data theft
- eCommerce companies wanting SEO-centric content
- Any scenario where training and on-the-job learning are in the mix
- Negotiations with banks or real estate lenders
Keep in mind: This list is just the tip of a massive “clients seeking advice” iceberg.
What are the 10 best software tools for business consultants?
The list we recommend for evaluation includes the following:
- Bonsai: Some say it’s the best business plan tool for consultants. This all-in-one software package meets consultants’ small business needs from every angle, helping them stay on the same wavelength as their clients. The features define it as setting the consultancy industry standard of excellence.
- A Time Tracking Tool: This multi-dimensional one-click virtual resource allows business consultants to coordinate several client projects simultaneously, generating invoices as you complete work and keeping your tasks in order. Moreover, you can insert consultation inputs related to hours worked manually or automatically to ensure that nothing falls through the cracks.
- Project Management Algorithms: Obtain clarity on project stages or steps within the latter (and visualized phases) to conclude the projects running in parallel or following sequentially. Obtain a bird’s eye view of the overall project scenario within the business, or zone in, project by project, reviewing progress versus deadlines. Make sure to satisfy clients on any time-related aspect of the job with this Bonsai tool in your armory.
- An Accounting Tool: Advanced analytics with ML-driven technologies track expenses, monitor taxes, and create cumulative P&L statements by client—it even monitors and controls cash flow.
- Business Plan Templates: Business consultations drive forward, energized by its component parts entering the picture at various stages. Well-structured digital templates can save you time, especially if you can customize them with selected additions. For example:
- When submitting proposals.
- Following up with contracts and invoices.
- Stops and starts and other time-consuming activities.
- Task Management: Transparency significantly bolsters a consultant’s approach, accelerating efficiency, particularly when multi-person project teams are in the mix. Moreover, advisors sharing information with managers in the clients’ business is commonplace. For example, a web content consultant developing landing pages for a client may have to share work in progress with site designers, SM promotions managers, and stakeholders. Bonsai’s task management software keeps everyone up to speed, allowing them to reach a consensus quicker to improve productivity. CRM Software: This is vital to maintaining harmonious client relationships. It helps you manage correspondence, contact clients promptly, share files, and more. By streamlining technical details, you improve the rapport between consultants and clients. Payment Integration: Invoicing clients ready and willing to pay is one thing; getting the money into your bank account is quite another. So, the Bonsai software provides a multiple-option payment channel that covers debit and credit cards, ACH bank transfers, PayPal, Stripe, wire transfers, and a Bonsai business account option that consultants can use to send or receive payment anytime.
- Qwilr: Those looking for comprehensive proposal software should try Qwirl for a close fit. One of its most compelling features is developing personalized proposals and reviewing clients’ interactions with them. For example, you’ll know if they bounced quickly or spent substantial time perusing the details. Also, you can seamlessly integrate Qwirl with third-party applications (such as an expense management program).
- Avaza focuses on the SMB sector, which traditionally shies away from complex algorithms. Small business owners want a business planning tool that automatically converts emails into tasks and assigns the latter to relevant team players, saving much time. Avaza syncs with virtual templates and calendars to create seamless process solutions and accessibility.
- Asana is an excellent time-tracker for every task, delegating sub-activities and integrating the team members.
- Salesforce is everything you want in CRM software, with various extensions to monitor and evaluate performance, manage customer experiences, and enhance team collaboration. It also provides a structured survey tool for consulting business applications to obtain client feedback. As one of the foremost public companies in the US today, Salesforce is at the forefront of cloud-based projects. They famously use cutting-edge technology and in-depth reporting tools to penetrate clients’ most hidden pain points, with 24/7 consultant support.
- PandaDoc aims to jet-propel business consultants into the digital era with omnichannel device communications and advanced AI-driven data analytics. Moreover, it plays into the genuine meaning of team collaboration so that several employees can coordinate their advisory efforts around the clients’ most pressing requirements. You can also monitor how targeted clients are interacting with your proposals.
- Proposify (as the name suggests) is cutting-edge software that delivers customized proposals with visual elements, time tracking, and team collaboration tools to improve communication.
- Kantata provides software that consultancy businesses use to improve margins with deep insights into consultancy service value. The executive dashboard gives you clear insights into your resources and what improvements you can make, emphasizing employee time management.
- Bidsketch saves on proposal time, leveraging automatic high-tech settings and templates to create compelling proposals, monitoring your clients’ actions, and seamlessly integrating with relevant Bonsai or Salesforce software programs, suitable for multiple apps and managed projects.
- Workfront helps business consulting professionals scale up their businesses by focusing on state-of-the-art collaboration tools, ensuring no process gaps and that all employees are involved in the processes with complete transparency. Its “memory application” is a unique feature that stores your preferences and settings to drive an automatic workflow feature to create a streamlined experience.
What features count in consultancy software?
Flexible customization: Software is not a “one shoe fits all” sort of thing. However, many developers recognize that and offer built-in capacity, moving things around to meet different client situations. Sometimes, the software is activity-centric (e.g., a survey tool for consulting business teams converging on how to derive the best feedback). In other cases, it’s industry-specific, offering customized options within that narrow channel. The idea is to know your customer base and identify the precise software options to do more for you.
Scalability: The top business tools for consultants typically contain the capacity to align with the growth of your company and client base, capable of multiple tasks across numerous clients simultaneously. It doesn’t follow that a consultancy practice for small businesses must only deploy software tools capable of SMB-size tasks. In short, they must possess sufficient scalability to meet the consultancy’s growth path, even when the accumulation of customers revolves around small business needs.
End-to-end customer support: Salesforce and others listed above as our favorite tools for business consultants provide seamless, easy-to-contact, 24/7/365 consultant support on all verticals within the SaaS products. A yellow light on any option in the arena of choice flashes, when you discover support, is iffy or challenging to access.
Usability: The dashboard must be intuitively easy for the leader and all team members. Finding and storing essential information without hassle are important aspects of a versatile software package.
Speed, Automation, and Reporting: Business consultants are unlikely to accept stodgy or cumbersome options without AI in the technology. Our ten “best business plan tool for consultants” choices function at multiple times human speed. With automation features (plus fast and transparent results), the sophistication level has escalated quickly alongside improved affordability—a double-whammy benefit.
The bottom line
While each consultancy is unique, the key goals outlined above are nearly universally important. Because each decision (and investment) can have a significant impact on your future success, take the time you need to explore your options. If the tool you’re considering offers a free trial, check it out! A trial can be a smart way to get your team into a tool and understand its capabilities. Beyond the basics, though, make time to book a full demo with the provider so that you can ask questions and better understand how the tool can serve your consultancy use cases.
Sogolytics is the customer and employee experience entity you want in your corner to yield maximum mileage for your consultation setup. Want to see more for yourself? Get started with a free trial of our consumer tools and then connect with our team to learn more from our own consultants. 😉
