| | By Mick James
Having acquired
consulting units of both
Andersen and KPMG, the
firm has had to grow
from scratch in other
geographies such as the
UK. Turning their backs
on outsourcing work and
hiring entrepreneurial
types into the business
are just two of the
things BearingPoint
differentiate themselves
on.
Not many people get
to build a top-tier
consulting firm from
scratch, but
BearingPoint’s Gerald
Fox is in that lucky
position. When KPMG’s
former consulting units
went their various ways
BearingPoint, the
successor firm to KPMG
Consulting in the US,
was left with a major
gap in its network in
the UK. Fox, originally
from the UK but working
on the West Coast with
the high tech sector,
was brought back a year
ago to ramp up
BearingPoint’s British
presence.
“We’d acquired 17 of
the Andersen Business
Consulting units in the
Far East, and also their
Nordic and French
businesses,” he says.
“That left us with two
gaps, Germany and the
UK. We approached KPMG
in both and bought
Germany but lost out to
a competitive bid in the
UK to Atos.”
Fox’s mission to
build BearingPoint in
the UK has already seen | |
| |
| | for us is not to be
diluted, we have such a
huge amount of IP to tap
into,” he says. “High
tech’s not such a huge
market in the UK, so we
centre on consumer,
communications and
content, life sciences,
financial services and
public sector.”
Having chosen not to
grow by acquisition,
recruitment has become
the key to
BearingPoint’s growth:
“What’s particularly
attractive about us is
the startup mentality,”
he says. “It’s a chance
to get involved in a
start up for the bright
motivated individual who
wants to build a career
but with some of the
risk taken out of
that—because you’re also
part of a 17,000 strong
firm that has a hundred
year heritage as an
audit/consultancy firm
behind it. It brings the
fun back into
consultancy.”
Fox says what he is
looking for is not
“square pegs looking for
a square hole” but
people who have the
potential to grow into
leadership roles in
three to four years
time. We're not looking
for people who are
necessarily long term
consultants but for
fresh blood that we can
bring in, such as
bringing entrepreneurs
out of industry. What we
are doing now is very
targeted and we will
make a ‘no hire’ | |
|
| | decision in preference
to hiring the wrong
person.”
Fox says the firm is
also getting a lot of
interest from the larger
consultancy groups:
“We are getting a lot
of interest from people
who joined large
organisations wanting to
be management
consultants but find
themselves in the
position of being seen
as the front end of a
channel which drives
into an outsourcing deal
or some other solution
or hardware sale,” he
says. “What these people
hold paramount is the
client relationship and
they are finding it’s
being compromised by
other pressures and
other metrics which are
driving a different kind
of relationship.”
Fox believes that the
seismic shift in the
consultancy market
towards outsourcing and
off shoring has left a
gap in the market which
BearingPoint can move
into:
“Our CEO has said we
are not in the
outsourcing business
which sets us apart from
Accenture and IBM
etcetera,” he says. “We
believe that there’s a
clear benefit and real
value in
operationalising
strategy. We’re
primarily a business
advisory and systems
integration company with
a strong emphasis on
business advisory work.” | |
|
| | Fox believes this focus
has helped in rebuilding
the UK client portfolio.
“It’s not been difficult
to get on people’s
agendas,” he says. “They
tell us that the
conversations they’d
traditionally have had
with a consulting
partner, about what’s
going on in the business
and so on—they’ve not
been happening
recently.”
Fox believes that by
exploiting the
lucrative, but
time-bounded opportunity
offered by outsourcing,
many consultancies have
failed to invest in what
he calls the “value gap”
- the gap between where
clients want to be and
where they can get to on
their own.
“The thing we've
brought through from our
past and which stays in
place is that you have
to have a point of view
and thought leadership,
a selling point and IP
that adds value to the
client,” he says. “It’s
insufficient to have a
‘me too’ message.”
All views expressed
in this article are
those of Mick James and
do not necessarily
reflect the views of
Top-Consultant.com and
Consulting-Times.com
Contact Mick with
your views or
suggestions at:
mick.james@top-consultan
t.com | |
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