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Procurement
What do 400+ consulting clients have to say about procurement?
Not much. As I mentioned earlier in the week, we’ve spent the last few months talking to more than 400 senior executives who use consulting services on a regular basis. Almost all work in big organisations most of which have preferred supplier lists which should – in theory – govern their choice of consultants. In [...]
Is there a glass ceiling in the procurement of consulting services?
Let’s start with what has been achieved. Buying and selling consulting services is a vastly different process now to what it was ten years ago. More rigorous, disciplined and transparent, this new approach has encouraged (or forced, depending on your perspective) consulting firms to put more effort into articulating their expertise and demonstrating their track [...]
Re-inventing public sector consulting
The fall in public sector expenditure on consultants in the UK since June’s election has been steeper and sharper than anyone expected. And it’s not stopping there: two thirds of senior public sector managers expect it to continue falling over the next year, our research has found. But what should really be giving consulting firms [...]
The consulting gamble
Speaking to a senior executive within the pharmaceutical industry about the value consultants deliver recently, I was struck by one particular comment: ‘Everyone knows that half of consulting works and that the other half doesn’t’, he said. ‘The trouble is, you never know which half you’re going to get.’ Bearing in mind how much his [...]
Consulting bulimia
A very good friend of mine recently admitted to a rather strange affliction. She calls it shopping bulimia, and it manifests itself as a desire to buy items (particularly shoes) and then return them. The idea is that she gets to enjoy all the pleasures of retail therapy without the lasting guilt of having spent [...]
The shrewdness of the consultant
One of my favourite quotes is Machiavelli: “A prince who is not himself wise cannot be wisely advised… Good advice depends on the shrewdness of the prince who seeks it, and not the shrewdness of the prince on the good advice.” I’ve used it often when lecturing about consultants to explain to the students (and [...]
Can hedgehogs make love?
Well, they can certainly breed. If my experience in college, where my second year room backed onto a rambling garden, is anything to go by, mating hedgehogs make quite a racket – a point I vividly recalled when talking to a client about his organisation’s use of operational improvement consultants for our forthcoming report on [...]
Interventionism: the fourth way
Increasingly high-profile concerns over the difficulty of valuing the benefits of consulting services is putting pressure on the industry to provide tangible proof of its impact. At the same time, procurement people, whose focus on daily rates has blurred the distinction between consultants and contractors, are waking up to the need to build consulting projects [...]
Is it true? Was Beatrix Potter really anti-consultant?
Like me, you’re no doubt reeling from the revelation that Beatrix Potter’s “The Tale of Mrs Tittlemouse” is actually a diatribe against consultants. According to the FT, she eventually narrows the door so that Mr Jackson, a toad, cannot get in, a strategy Greg Dyke, former Director General of the BBC, says is the ideal [...]
Top 10 ways consulting firms come unstuck when bidding into a large organisation
During my corporate career I have had the relatively unique experience of operating as a Buyer, User, Approver and Supplier of consultancy services – so I have acquired quite a good insight into the buying decision process. Over the years I have seen many different scenarios play out and there are a number of factors [...]
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