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Specialist firms

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HR directors’ views on consulting

By ⋅ 19 March 2012 ⋅ One comment

Around a quarter of the 400+ clients we questioned recently were HR directors; most were significant buyers of consulting services.  The striking thing about talking to so many of them is how rarely they voluntarily talk about the big HR consulting firms, even though many use their services. This paradox appears to stem from the [...]

Hyper-specialisation in consulting

By ⋅ 28 September 2011 ⋅ Post a comment

I’ve written a lot in this blog about specialisation, particularly clients’ relentless quest for expertise in a world that has become increasingly flat from a skills point of view. But a recent article in the Harvard Business Review had made me wonder how far it will all go, or – less positively – where it [...]

Lights! Music! Action!

By ⋅ 4 August 2010 ⋅ Post a comment

What on earth does the consulting industry have in common with the golden age of Hollywood? Quite a lot, I think. Today’s big consulting firms are the equivalent of the studios which dominated the film industry. Back in the 1930s, MGM and the other giants of the era owned everything, from the script and the [...]

Who’s eating your lunch?

By ⋅ 2 August 2010 ⋅ Post a comment

It is tempting for large consulting firms to think they are immune from competition from independent consultants. The idea that a firm such as McKinsey might be threatened by a freelancer seems as laughable as a cartoon elephant standing on a chair above a tiny mouse. But the truth is that competition has a domino [...]

Beyond the PSL?

By ⋅ 1 July 2009 ⋅ Post a comment

Chatting to a couple of clients in the last week, a word came up that I hadn’t heard for a while: multi-sourcing. The last time people really talked about this was around the dotcom boom, perhaps because the circumstances required a lot of specialist skills which they didn’t think they’d find in the big generalist [...]

Question: How much can you save by using 2nd tier consultants?

By ⋅ 13 March 2009 ⋅ Post a comment

  Answer: £6 million* *Clearly that’s a dirty big asterisk, right? Well, yes. And no. Here’s how we worked it out: Fees Independent research shows that consulting fees for 2nd tier firms are anywhere from 20% lower (graduate consultants) to 60% lower (partners) and are typically, for junior and senior consultants, 45-50% lower. Let’s be [...]

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