| Mick James says consultants' award-winning work should be recognised in the wider business world.
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| No prizes outside the industry
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| | By Mick James
Further evidence of
the (re-)emerging
strength of the "Big
Four" in consultancy
came with an
extraordinary result at
the recent MCA
Consultant of the Year
Awards. No less than
five of the nine prizes
on offer were won by Big
Four firms, and by just
two of them at that,
Deloitte snaffling three
gongs to Ernst & Young's
two. Now it's easy to be
cynical about awards –
there's a lot of them
about, and some people
seem to put themselves
up for so many that one
wonders when they get
the time to do all that
award-winning work. But
the simple fact of
awards is that if you
don't ask you don't get,
and these firms have
scored something of a
coup by their efforts,
demonstrating to the
market that they are
succeeding in attracting
top talent in today's
enduringly tight
recruitment market.
The only problem with
the MCA awards schemes –
and this applies to many
awards schemes – is that | |
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| | levels of technical
skills, we remain deeply
sceptical about
technology, particularly
in the application of IT
to business. But just
look at some of the
entrants.
The eventual winners,
North Wales Police,
managed to integrate the
information in 40 or 50
databases and
effectively take it out
on the road with the
clever use of BlackBerry
technology. My back of
the envelope calculation
suggests that, apart
from making beat
officers more effective,
if the new system saves
the average copper just
an hour a week that’s
the equivalent of hiring
another 80 police
officers.
Not a winner but a
personal favourite
(because it could end up
saving you money) was
Norwich Union's
Pay-as-You-Drive
insurance – using GPS
technology, it not only
ensures you only pay
insurance when you're
actually driving, but
offers a sliding scale
according to both the
time of day and type of | |
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| | road you're using.
Texperts have managed
to make money out of the
ubiquitous SMS message
by offering to text you
the answer to any query
for a pound. I could go
on – the point is that
these are precisely the
sort of projects that
consultants deliver on a
daily basis, and if
their clients are not
putting case studies
forward for these kind
of awards, they should
be pushing them to do
so.
Of course we then
come to the eternally
tricky question of
whether or not the
consultancy fades into
the background or not.
Many consultants still
think it both courteous
and appropriate to let
their clients take all
the kudos attached to a
project. I can sort of
see this, but I think
it's time that credit
was given where credit
is due. For a start, we
need to acknowledge the
significant achievement
of those companies that
really are able to come
up with significant
innovations and engineer
them into their business | |
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| | without outside
assistance. That's
impressive. But we also
need to acknowledge that
those clients that
achieve a significant
business improvement
that would have been
impossible using
internal resources
deserve credit for their
skilful use of outside
expertise.
Perhaps it's
unreasonable to expect
clients to share their
moments in the spotlight
too much. It's also
important when you're
setting out on a new
path that the message to
the market is clear and
univocal. But is it too
much to ask that one day
the National Business
Awards might feature a
Business Consultancy of
the Year category? And
that these particular
prophets should, once in
a while, be honoured
outside their own
country?
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| | they operate internally
within the industries
concerned. Consultancy
in particular tends to
disappear in the outside
world. Look at the
recent National Business
Awards: categories
included topics as dear
to a consultant's heart
as "business innovation
of the year", "growth
strategy of the year"
and "best use of
technology". "Innovation
of the year" is crying
out, I would have
thought, for a
consultancy to sponsor
it, while "growth" and
"technology" were
sponsored by 3i and
Orange (also the overall
sponsor of the awards)
respectively.
I was lucky enough to
get a look at some of
the entrants of the
technology award and was
very impressed: the UK
is a paradoxical country
– despite our high | |
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