Consulting assessment environment

Abstract

A method, apparatus, and computer program product for providing a consulting assessment environment. Consultants may use the environment to define templates that encode questionnaires and domain knowledge regarding business practices, as well as reporting criteria to specify the content and format of the assessment results. Consultants or their clients may use the environment to automate the process of performing assessments and generating reports from those assessments. These assessments may analyze the current state of the business, compare the business's current state with desired states or with best practices, and perform risk / benefit and / or cost / benefit analyses, according to the specifications made in the templates on a real-time basis for producing immediate assessment results and actions. An information hiding feature is provided to allow sensitive domain knowledge encoded within the templates, such as trade secrets, to be made inaccessible to clients.

Description

technical field [0001] The present invention relates to an improved data processing system. In particular, the present invention relates to a method, apparatus and computer instructions for providing a counseling assessment environment. Background technique [0002] Consulting activities for business assessments are often time-consuming, at least in part because they are primarily discovery-based. The discovery-based approach to conducting assessments uses consulting subject matter experts who are experts in working with customers to understand their business and identify how they can improve it. Consultants who are experts are used in best practice based on a conventional approach and use their experience and knowledge to identify problems in the business and find solutions for correcting these problems. The market is now looking at customary paths based on best practices. Many steps in the act of evaluating a consultation are performed manually, which can make standardi...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

Lack of standardization leads to inconsistent data, which complicates the process of data consolidation (i.e. combining data from different departments or units within an enterprise for summarizing a larger portion of said enterprise)

[0004] Difficult to track results and recommendations

Many clients are reluctant to hire consultants for evaluation projects due to the uncertainty of deliverables and the cost of follow-up evaluations to monitor progress

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