Microconsulting: Food consultants at the disposal of Food SMEs

In this short article, I explain how my food microconsulting concept was developed to provide assistance to Food SMEs

SMEs often have issues

But they do not know where to turn to solve them.

Hiring is not an option for obvious cost reasons and they are not comfortable with traditional consulting due to the high costs (and complexity) involved.

Getting in touch with one food consultant would not entirely solve their problem as their issues are multiple and beyond the capacity of one food consultant alone to solve. 

A human tool box

Having advised Food SMEs as a food consultant myself for some time I realised that sticking to general advice (strategy, business development or organisation matters) was useful but not enough for my clients.

Once trust is established my clients are comfortable in stretching the boundaries of my (humble) core competences. For instance, I recently found myself in the shoes of a head-hunter for a client of mine mainly thanks to his trust in me. Many of my clients require assistance in product development, specifications, HACCP etc. All matters which I know of but am not an expert in.

The future is in “remote”

I have worked in the food industry for the last 28 years. I was lucky enough to use LinkedIn as from the start. Having many food experts in my network would not help if it were not possible to use their competencies for my clients.

The answer came to me (nearly) by chance. I was approached by a South African (food) entrepreneur who needed help. We agreed to try to do the consultancy remotely and both discovered that it worked perfectly. We only exchanged emails and were very comfortable with this way of working.

My solution was obvious: I would use my network of food consultants remotely.

Since then I have been able to propose the full array of food consulting services to my clients. If the request are within my competencies I deal with them directly and whenever they need to be complemented by some specific expertise I then involve my expert connections.

Experts always available

The beauty of the system is that we (my clients and I) have the best possible experts available. By experience I can find the right expertise in less than a week (often a couple of days).

I always manage/supervise the “mission” so that my clients (and the food consultants involved) are comfortable with the process.

There are no areas that we cannot cover. I evaluated that my second level network of potential food consultants is likely to number 300’000 food professionals.

If we need NPD, Marketing, Sales, IT, or finance expertise we can get it. My “experts” like the fact that they can concentrate on the expertise only (no need to manage the client, invoicing, etc.). My clients know that the expert will get the right brief from me and that the admin will be “transparent” as they only deal with my company.

The right (human) Food Toolbox!

I created food microconsulting to provide simple, fast, and affordable help to food SMEs.

You can read more at:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/uber-food-consulting-olivier-goudineau

or visit www.foodmicroconsulting.com