| | 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 | |
| |
| | 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-consultant
.com | |
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