| | By Mick James
Methods Consulting
has been with us since
1988 and since then has
grown, without much
fanfare, to a £50m-plus
business, offering a
range of programme
management and
consultancy services to
mainly public sector
clients. It is part of
two intriguing new
trends in consultancy:
one is the increasing
willingness of smaller
consultancies to deliver
quite large and complex
projects. The other, as
the name suggests, is
the increasing adoption
of common, “open”
methodologies to deliver
projects. And there are
some subtle but highly
reinforcing links
between the two, as I
found out when I
interviewed Methods
Consulting director Mark
Thompson.
“Methods Consulting
was formed in response
to the perception that
people were beginning to
question the Big Four
‘leveraged’ consulting
model of delivering
projects with lots of
22-year-old graduates on
often very high
charge-out rates,” he
says. Having worked at
Andersen Consulting he’d
seen some of the
strengths of that model | |
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| | as well as its
weaknesses.
“There is a
continuing and important
place in the market for
that – especially when
you need to buy scale,”
he says. “But what you
can often see is the ‘A
team’ selling the work
and less experienced
people handling the
delivery side. We’re an
alternative to that
model.”
Initially, Methods
Consulting was purely
associate-based, and
still staffs most of its
projects from a pool of
highly experienced,
long-term associates.
“Because we
predominantly use
associates it’s not only
very cost-effective but
I can put my hand on my
heart when I go to
clients and say that the
people we propose are
the very best available
and I’m under no
pressure to sell a
square peg for a round
hole,” he says. “It also
gives us access more
readily to more
specialist skills – even
large consulting firms
with permanent staff
can’t have one of
everything.”
Although Methods
Consulting’s associates
are not employed
directly, Thompson | |
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| | insists that the
relationship is anything
but casual: “We have
people who’ve worked for
us virtually
continuously for 15
years,” he says. “It
does mean we have to
work harder at getting
to know them, but we
play as much of an
advisory role in
developing their careers
as any consultancy firm
would do with its
permanent staff.”
The other strand that
binds Methods Consulting
together with its
associates – and indeed
underpins the whole
philosophy of the
consultancy – is the use
of common methodologies
and ways of working. The
firm’s founder (now
chairman) Tony Webb
formerly worked for
LBMS, where many of the
methodologies and
structured development
methods that were
adopted as standard by
the UK government were
developed.
“He was very clued up
politically and saw the
emerging role of best
practice, of common ways
of doing things,” says
Thompson. “There’s a
general shift away from
proprietary
methodologies which is,
for example, happening
in IT with open source | |
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| | movement. It’s exactly
the same in the public
sector – we cottoned on
to this quite quickly
and much of our success
is due to this.”
For Methods
Consulting this means a
slightly different sales
story when it comes to
talking about
“intellectual property”.
“Our IP is in the
ability and experience
of our people, who can
take things like Prince
2 and tailor them to the
needs of the client,”
says Thompson. “That
takes people who not
only have ‘miles on the
clock’ but can also be
flexible.”
This ability is
proving to be a key
differentiator in the
era of “joined-up
government” and the need
to work
cross-departmentally:
“We can bring people
together from different
areas and dovetail
them,” says Thompson.
The “open” approach also
facilitates working
together in mixed teams
with clients: “It takes
undeniable skill to work
in mixed teams but
clients are becoming
increasingly vocal about
this in requirements,”
says Thompson. “We often
work as a builder of
consensus between | |
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| | different parts of
organisations with
different agenda, and
that links back to the
use of common
methodologies.”
Outside the public
sector work that makes
up 80% of its business,
Methods Consulting also
has a solid business in
financial services as
well as clients in
utilities and retail.
Now the firm believes
that it can use the
success of its
methods-based approach
in the public sector to
build on that –
financial services firms
for example, are
increasingly keen to
hear about the
successful adoption of
shared services and
service-oriented
architectures in the
delivery of public
services.
“It’s very different
from five years ago when
you wouldn’t get a look
in,” says Thompson. “Now
the idea of best
practice has opened up
the market to these
methods and that’s how
we’ve positioned
ourselves.”
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