Choosing a business continuity consultant: avoiding being sold snake oil
Snake oil is applied metaphorically to any product with exaggerated marketing but questionable and/or unverifiable quality or benefit. For the consultant, selling business continuity can be the ultimate snake oil.
Often, the potential client has been told to implement business continuity and doesn’t know where to start. Along comes the consultant, offering to take all the potential client’s pain away. They make all the right noises about BIAs, MTPD, plans and RTOs but the client is never sure whether they are being sold the snake oil or a genuine cure. With other types of consultancy there is often a ‘cost benefit’, where the consultant will be able to show demonstrable changes or cost savings to the client.
The purpose of this article is to give potential purchasers some ideas on what to look for in choosing a business continuity consultant, which will hopefully ensure that you get the services at the quality you require. By using the ideas within this article you should hopefully avoid the purveyors of snake oil and employ someone who will give you a genuine cure for your business continuity problems.
See Choosing a business continuity consultant: avoiding being sold snake oil, by Charlie Maclean-Bristol for Continuity Central.
Tags: consultant, consulting, vendor evaluation
