Why we need to break the traditional consultant stereotype

By Kasper Tomsh?j, CEO at PrintVis

When asked to write about my thoughts on “Women in Dynamics” my immediate reaction was - aren’t we beyond those days? I thought about the number of women working at our headquarters today and over the past 25 years – it’s really been 50/50 balance of women and men - and on more than one occasion women have been the majority in our small company.?

Then of course I had to rethink... and I appreciate that challenge. I asked myself the question why don’t we see more women in our industry??

The fact is that there are much fewer women than men in IT overall. Women are less likely to choose an education in tech. If we look at software developers the proportion of women is minimal, whereas it’s probably a bit better in business consulting.

To be a good software architect in Business Central takes business knowledge, structure and a talent for architectural software design. However, most development work is on customer projects, and this involves more people skills, communication skills and the ability to deliver concrete work. These skills I generally find equally as much in my female employees and all the skilled career women I am lucky to count as friends.

In our company women dominate in administration, marketing, and project management - but when it comes to the “nitty gritty” production of IT consultancy and software development, the truth is we have had very few women over the years. One of our most experienced business consultants just happens to be my wife. So, she and I discussed this over dinner. Why do so few women choose this career path?

If we try to describe what are the main qualifications to be a good business consultant, the university training is far down the list after things such as:

• analytical skills
• product knowledge
• the ability to listen beyond the customer expression of the requirement
• self-drive
• empathy
• truthfulness
• not minding asking simple or stupid questions
• diligence?
• understanding when the customer thinks that the job is done.?

In my own staff I have just a few technical university graduates but some really good consultants who are printers (our industry vertical is for printing and packaging companies) and people from entirely other business types. The most important factor here is probably experience from working in a business.

So why do we not see more women in this industry? Are they put off when they join our nerd-herd conferences the first time? (My wife is now grinning at me across the table). Maybe they are expecting things to be more technical than they really are, and don’t even consider going in.

Why?it?is time to leave stereotypes behind????

What is even more confounding is that there are lots of women in the customer landscape, all mastering Dynamics, BC, NAV or whatever their current version is. They are very skilled users – yet they rarely consider ever coming over to us on “the dark consultancy side”. It frequently happens that men make this move. Perhaps they are also expecting that the required skills are different than my list above or that the personality should be different.?

An archetypical ERP consultant is ‘a lone wolf’. He is the sole authority; he doesn’t doubt his own abilities. Anything that’s not working simply means he hasn’t finished the task yet. It’s his way or the highway and in the meanwhile he’s quite content to take his time and issue a lot of very fat invoices. If a client is unhappy, they are in the wrong because they are simply behind the new learning curve.?

This may seem like a stark caricature, but hopefully you get the picture, and I am sure a lot of customers would recognize elements of this. At any rate, this type of work attitude takes a certain personality which is not often a dominating personality trait in most women (and luckily not in many of the people we are working with). If people think that this is how it is supposed to be, then of course most would turn away.?

The reality is that as consultants we can only offer our best advice and pursue well-founded ideas, but we can never be 100% sure not to make mistakes. We must reject the stereotypical zero-mistake culture of the lone wolf consultant. Because the fact is we do make mistakes - and then we fix them.

Build inclusive teams and deliver better customer experience

A good consultant is not a know-it-all oracle, but rather a systematic, analytic creature who applies hard-won knowledge and experience to improve clients’ processes and problems. By building inclusive teams, we deliver a better customer experience and create the culture we should pursue - in our communication with customers as well as internally.?

We could stop selling hours and move to fixed-fee projects - perhaps a range of fixed-fee tasks. This could leave room for a perfection driven consultant to revisit a setup/advice/procedure and fix or fine tune. It would also ensure better quality for the customer, without a narrow-minded focus on the invoicing rate. Whatever extra time you might spend on one fixed-fee task will supplement the next. This measure may help create a more comfortable working environment for women too.

If you are vertically focused, like we are for printing companies, your consultants will build reusable knowledge, project by project.?It also increases stamina and self-confidence in the staff and is certainly a major strength in our company.?

Competence, collaboration, communication – as a Dynamics consultant, your customers will look to you for these attributes.?These are skills that come naturally to most women I know!