How to find the right business process consultant

Studies have shown that businesses lose massive amounts of money owing to poor business processes. Even if you're running a fairly tight ship, have hard-working employees, pay close attention to important details, are conscientious, painstaking, and untiring when it comes to the dry difficult work of financial reports and quarterly assessments, money could be pouring out of your business like sand through a sieve or through the empty sockets of skull as it sits year after year in its glittering pirate's cave waiting to be avenged.
The problem is that business is a complicated, fast paced, constantly changing process that keeps you always on your toes, always on the phone, always talking with a client, attracting new ones, training workers and management, and so forth; there just isn't time enough and hands enough and eyes enough and mouths enough and brains enough to do all that needs to be done in a given day and, what's more, to do it flawlessly. And so tiny, unnoticeable things start to slip, or perhaps they were never shored up in the first place and so continue to be a problem you're unaware of. These problems are like tiny wounds that trickle blood in such insignificant amounts that you pay no attention to them until suddenly you're pale, exhausted, and, unless you get help and get it fast, dead.

Of course, what we're talking about isn't generally a matter of life and death. But it is a matter of your success and the success of your employees. It is a matter of putting food on the table and paying the utility bill on time. Life is expensive enough, you don't want to be losing money because something's broken that could be fixed with a little care and attention. And that's where the business process consultant steps in.
Finding the right business process consultant may be the most important step in the history of your company. Finding the right business consultant often means the difference between a good business and a great one. Finding the right business consultant makes the burdens of running a company significantly lighter. Finding the right business consultant is like turning on a light in a room that you've only seen by the tiny flames of a match until now. Shadowy areas will be illuminated. What appeared to be a menacing, sizeable problem will reveal itself to be a thing of minor importance, while what appeared to be a thing of minor importance will reveal itself to be a menacing, sizeable problem that requires your immediate attention.
If so much depends on finding the right business process consultant, how should you go about doing it? How do you know a great business process consultant from a good one and a good business process consultant from a bad one?
Expense, obviously, will play a part in your decisions regarding which business process consultant to hire. The best, as they say, don't come cheap. Hiring the best business process consultant possible is probably worth the cost, but it's always possible to find a real bargain if you're willing to look long and hard for it. Research, then, is the most important key when it comes to hiring the right business process consultant. Find out which business process consultants your competitors have hired, and learn what they thought of the experience. Learn about the business process consultants that assist the top companies in your fields and other fields. When you think you've found a business process consultant that will work for you, contact the businesses he has worked with in the past and ask the right questions, including:
How helpful was he to the increased effectiveness of your business? What kind of a teacher was he? How did he relate to the employees? Did he seem like he wanted to take advantage of every minute of his time with you, or did he cut corners here and there?
These sorts of questions should lead you, in time, to the right business process consultant for your company. And then, who knows? Perhaps you'll be on the road to successes beyond your wildest dreams.