A holistic approach will ensure completeness and scalability in volume, as well as variety, to meet future evolving requirements, and addresses the level of preparedness of the existing system to seamlessly transform to the new system. In this ever increasing complexity of problem situations being encountered, it is expected that the holistic approach will gain considerable attention in the future.

Organizations engage consultants to assist them in coming up with objective solutions for their sporadic and non-repetitive problems. A consultant has the advantage of being an outsider and hence detached about the outcome of his/her involvement in arriving at the problem solution. Real-life organizational problems are not woven around well cut academic disciplines but may overlap several disciplines that may have to be judiciously applied. Consultants follow certain formal methodologies, which have the power of rigor and are time-tested, and, therefore, can foresee problems before they occur and preempt undesirable/ unintended outcomes.

Most engagements between organizations and consultants are driven by a set of defined objectives to be achieved, the scope of the task to be performed and the associated Terms of Reference (ToR) defined by the management. It is generally observed that the problem definition is driven by the management's need to address the most pressing problem confronting it and the management's own perception of the issue, based on what is visible and what they believe could be the solution. Organizational problems are never unidimensional, but are on account of the interplay between a set of multidimensional factors. Therefore, the need for examining the stated problem from a multidimensional perspective is paramount. One such method, the Holistic approach to problem solving, is discussed below.

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