| | By Mick James
RSM Robson Rhodes
Business Consulting is a
name that may not be
immediately familiar to
readers. Earlier this
year, however, our
sister publication
Top-Consultant picked it
as one of 20 firms to
watch back in February.
In two years the firm
has grown to over 70
consultants, and last
year it saw a 400%
growth in revenues. This
year the firm also won a
MCA Gold Award for
Business Strategy for
its work with P&O
Ferries, and plans to
put itself even more
firmly on the consulting
map by adding another 30
to 50 consultants to its
payroll.The consulting
arm is a separate legal
entity within the RSM
Robson Rhodes
accountancy firm, itself
part of RSM
International, the
world’s sixth largest
accountancy firm. As
such it represents
something old and
something new: firstly,
that the logic that
brought the big audit
firms into the
consultancy market in
the first place is still | |
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“If I’ve chosen
consultancy as a career,
I want to know if I’m
just the front end of a
big back-end machine,”
he says. “We pride
ourselves on our
independence, and that
opens a whole market of
larger clients who look
at the Big Four, the
systems integrators and
outsourcers and are
asking where do I go to
get an independent
consultant?”
Benedict says that
when RSM began its push
into consultancy two
years ago questions were
asked internally about
whether it could force
its way into the crowded
consultancy market:
“We were asked if we
could really get into
the business process
side and win some
serious clients,” says
Benedict. “We’ve proved
we can, we saw a real
demand out there fro
some high quality,
independent advisory
services.”
Benedict says that as
a result it has been
surprisingly easy to get
board level meetings
with clients who are
increasingly looking
beyond the “usual | |
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| | suspects”. It’s
important that when they
do, they find not a cut
down version of “big
firm” consultancy aimed
at smaller clients, but
a different way of
working and unique
intellectual property.
RSM is making big
strides into genuinely
linking business
strategy with
research-based insight
into customer needs,
with an offering which
it terms “customer
aligned profit
enhancement” or CAPE. It
has also published major
research on the
telecommunications
industry, showing its
willingness to engage
with even the largest
business entities.
On client projects
the firm works in
heavily integrated,
cross-functional teams,
with perhaps 10 RSM
people to 50 clients.
This not only allows the
firm to punch above its
weight, but greatly
smoothes the political
and emotional aspects of
implementing change.
“Our clients have
said they don’t feel
that it’s ‘us doing it
to them’”, says | |
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| | Benedict. “We don’t just
bring a lot of juniors
in—it’s getting harder
to make that model work
nowadays.”
Benedict says that
RSM will be following
its own advice in what
has become a tough
market to compete in,
not just because of
rival firms but also
increasing client
sophistication.
“Client capability
has gone up
enormously—you can’t
flog general process
consultancy any more,”
he says. “You’ve got to
be very focused on what
you are offering, on
what your customers
value about you.”
With new entrants and
approaches coming in
from all directions, the
consultancy market has
never been more open,
and firms like RSM
Robson Rhodes have the
advantage of speed,
flexibility and
ambition. Over the next
few months we’ll be
watching the progress of
this, and our other
“ones to watch” very
closely indeed. | |
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| | valid, despite
Sarbanes-Oxley, the SEC
and Enron. Secondly, it
shows the increasing
power of the so-called
“second tier”
accountancy firms in
this market, proving
that there is life
outside the Big Four not
just for consultants but
for heavyweight clients
as well.
“RSM is regarded as
having been around for a
long time, perhaps
slightly conservative,
but not tainted like the
Big Four by the whole
SEC affair,” says Eric
Benedict, one of the
consultancy practices
founding partners.”
We’ve grown into a
market that’s been
largely vacated by the
larger independent
firms.”
Benedict believes
that, whether rightly or
wrongly, clients have
become increasingly
skeptical about the
consultancy offerings of
larger firms, and that
this is also affecting
consultants’ career
choices.
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