| | By Mick James
One is so used to
thinking of consultancy
as a “young” industry
that it comes as
something of a shock to
learn that the
Management Consultancies
Association is
celebrating its 50th
anniversary. Perhaps
this is a tribute to the
fact that whenever I
encounter the MCA it
seems to be in a
near-continuous process
of reinvention. This is
not a criticism—I feel
this is the only
appropriate mode for the
trade association of the
consultancy industry,
which itself has roughly
the same ability to sit
still as a six-year old
who’s been told it’s
snowing outside.
When the MCA was
founded in 1956, the UK
consultancy industry was
a very different beast.
The four founding firms,
PA, Urwick Orr, P-E
International and
Inbucon, between them
represented 75% of a UK
consultancy industry
that was still three
years away from seeing
its first McKinsey
consultant and in which
accountancy firms, let
alone IT specialists,
had yet to make a mark.
Nowadays the MCA is a
different organisation
for a different
industry. McKinsey may
still have yet to darken
its doors but, despite
the twists and turns of
the industry, it has
always managed to | |
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| | balancing act for the
MCA to achieve, given
the lop-sidedness of an
industry which has
always been polarised by
large numbers of small
firms and small numbers
of very large firms with
precious little in
between. If the MCA
becomes just a club for
the big boys then the
smaller consultancies
will drift away, while
if the concerns of
smaller firms dominate
then it runs the risk of
alienating the core of
the industry.
“The MCA has grown
significantly over the
last two years, and
growth is not
necessarily the name of
the game now in the
organisation,” says
Hill. “Growth is still
on the agenda but it
won’t be the 50%
expansion of the last
couple of years.”
Not that there aren’t
big fish out there for
the MCA to net. The
strategy houses are
still playing hard to
get, there’s the newly
independent AT Kearney
and, of course,
re-emerging “Big Four”
firms KPMG and Ernst &
Young. PwC,
interestingly enough,
has maintained its MCA
membership throughout
all the upheavals in the
sector as, less
surprisingly, has
Deloitte.
Although the MCA has
strict membership
criteria, it has always
been clear that these | |
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| | should be dictated by
the market. It has
revised its rules to
recognise the emergence
of the IT and
outsourcing industries
and to recognise that a
lot of management
consultancy these days
is delivered by
consultancy arms that
are subsidiaries of
broader groups.
“No matter what
happens to an
organisation, the sort
of organisations we want
to buy into are high
quality deliverers of
consultancy,” says Hill.
The next area for
change for the MCA is to
look at what’s happening
to the bottom end of the
market. The basic
criteria for entry to
the MCA are: employing a
minimum of 10
consultants; having
three years of operating
accounts; and having at
least five client
references. Nowadays a
“small” firm might
employ over 30
consultants, and the MCA
is considering raising
the bar to take account
of this shift in the
market.
This does not meant
the MCA is turning in on
itself. If anything it
is more expansive than
ever. The Young MCA
initiative, for example,
has been a roaring
success, encouraging
networking and
socialising between new
entrants to consulting
and creating a sense of
community in the | |
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| | industry. The MCA is
also actively reaching
out to other institutes
and institutions.
“We are developing a
relationship with CIPS
(the Chartered Institute
of Purchasing and
Supply), the people who
are purchasing
consultancy services,”
says Hill. “We’re also
in dialogue with the IMC
(the Institute of
Management Consultants)
to see if we can have a
triple branded approach
to procurement.”
Government is also
another long-standing
area of, if not outright
lobbying, then advice
and influence, and the
MCA is making slow but
steady headway in
getting the good news
about consultancy out to
the media. Its recent
survey (carried out by
Metra Martech), which
found that 90% of
private and public
sector managers were
satisfied with their
consultants, was picked
up by many of the
nationals.
One of the most
exciting proposals that
the MCA is looking into
is creating an alumni
network of former MCA
consultants who have
left the industry. If
only a fraction of the
potential candidates
joined up, that could a
very extraordinary
network indeed.
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| | represent the lion’s
share of UK consultancy
revenues. In recent
years the MCA has been
on a rapid growth track,
growing over 50% in the
last two years, from 42
members at the end of
2003 to 65 today.
Last year the MCA’s
long-serving executive
director, Bruce Petter
retired, and the MCA
decided that it was now
appropriate for the
association to be headed
by a chief executive.
The original choice for
the post, corporate
lawyer Karen Birch left
after a short tenure,
but the MCA now has a
new CEO in the person of
former consultant Peter
Hill. So what does he
think the future might
hold for the MCA?
“I came in with a
sense that there’s been
a lot of chopping and
change in the past year,
so there was a need to
establish some sort of
stability,” he says.
“Now we can look at
things in terms of
defining the MCA as an
organisation, of looking
at its value in
different ways to
different sizes of
organisation.”
One senses that this
will always be a tricky | |
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