Using a major consultancy

Many organisations use third party consultancies to undertake projects that they don't have the time, skills or resources to run themselves. However, many organisations also report poor experiences with using consultancies and avoid them as a result. When used properly an external company can provide extra capacity and specialist skills on demand, which means that the host organisation can be agile and able respond to changing market conditions much faster. In these difficult times this enables host organisations to run lean and to gain advantage over the competition.

The bad experiences with consultants are usually due to not understanding the differing objectives of the two organisations. The host organisation simply wants to be able to hand off a job to the consultancy, trust them to deliver it on time and then go away. The consultancy however wants to extract the maximum value from placing its staff and to keep them in work for a long as possible. They will be focused on achieving this for themselves above and beyond the needs  of their clients. There are plenty of horror stories about this type of behaviour. "Plundering the Public Sector", (David Craig with Richard Brooks, 2006) and "Dangerous Company", (James O'Shea and Charles Madigan) give dozens of examples of consultancies taking their clients to the cleaners.

These issues however can be avoided. The horror stories invariably happen because the host organisation is too distracted to manage the consultancies closely enough. What is needed is a gamekeeper to ensure that the consultancy quotes properly for the job initially and doesn't try to "buy" the work by suggesting a low price but narrowly scoped delivery and then manages the delivery of the work over the life of the project.

The nature of this type of interim appointment doesn't necessarily require a full time resource, but it does require someone who has experience of managing consultants and ensuring that they deliver to your needs and not just their own.

If your company is considering using an external consultancy and you have reservations about costs and delivery you may want to give me a call. You can reach me here or by calling 01420 588172.