| | By Mick James
There are many ways to
cut the consultancy cake,
and many of them have
more to do with
historical than any sane
approach to the market.
I’ve yet to see a
stand-alone consulting
firm try to buy a chip
manufacturing plant or
set up an audit division,
for instance.
PA Consulting Group
has one of the more
unusual takes on the
market, with a consulting
front end backed up by a
substantial technology
and innovation
capability. This strategy
has worked for 25 years
and it remains a crucial
part of PA’s market
strategy, as Nick Hughes,
PA’s global head of Life
Sciences and Healthcare,
explains:
“PA is not an
accidental construct,
it’s the result of an act
of will to operate in
particular marketplaces,”
he says. “PA’s genesis in
the 1940s was in the
organisation and methods
techniques which later
translated into much more
sophisticated tools. Now
we provide a complete set
of consulting services
from the boardroom to the
factory floor.”
This unique take,
Hughes believes, puts PA
into the “sweet spot of
strategy and business
consulting. We describe
ourselves as a
management, systems and
technology consultancy,”
he says. “We know enough
about technology to
create solutions that | |
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| | avoidance of dispensing
errors. The technology is
being developed by a
venture subsidiary,
Aegate. A previous
venture, the drug
delivery technology
company Meridica, was
sold to Pfizer last year
for $125m.
“PA has a very
risk-hungry view on the
market; we’re taking bets
and investing not
inconsiderable sums in
our ventures portfolio,”
says Hughes.
The confidence with
which these bets are
placed stems not just
from PA’s technological
resources but also the
much wider view it takes
of the global pressures
on the pharmaceutical
industries. These feed,
not just into the detail
of areas such as supply
chain, drug discovery and
diagnosis, but also into
much wider projects.
“For example, we’re
involved in healthcare
reform in Eastern Europe
and for that you don’t
need to know science, you
need to understand the
geopolitical landscape.
Increasingly, PA is
working in integrated
teams where consultants
from multiple practices
are seconded to work in a
“virtual sector practice”
with industry
specialists.
“We have access to a
huge conflation of
talents and many of these
skills are eminently
portable from sector to
sector,” says Hughes.
PA’s current focus is
as much the result of | |
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| | recent history as its
early roots:
“We survived the
recession because we were
– relative to the big 5 –
smaller and more agile
with top quality
consultants” says Hughes.
“Building on these
foundations, our ambition
is now to take on work of
strategic and national
importance in the pharma
and healthcare sectors,
amongst others.”
“We have learnt a huge
amount from our
colleagues working in the
government sector, where
they are leading the
way.” Their approach has
taken PA from being a
mid-tier player in the
government sector (“Then
- if we won a £1m
contract we’d bring out
the bubbly” says Hughes),
to being the largest
operator in that sphere.
Increasingly it means
that PA is also getting
the pivotal programme
management roles in the
consortia that public
sector clients now
demand.
“Our programme
management and change
management work has given
us a reputation for
delivering challenging
projects under difficult
conditions. Where we’re
different in the
marketplace is that we’re
more than capable of
delivering a gold-plated
SAP solution but where we
tend to excel is in the
delivery of complex
programmes rather than
simply packaged
solutions.”
One area that PA | |
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| | steers clear of is the
provision of outsourced
IT services, preferring
instead to advise on, and
run, the outsourcing and
change management
process, and manage the
subsequent supplier
relationship in order to
ensure the business
benefits for clients.
“That’s partly because
we don’t have the
appetite or the balance
sheet but partly because
of the ethical conflict,”
says Hughes. “We won’t
buy someone’s IT and sell
it back to them because
of the impact on the
client-consultant
relationship.”
The importance of
relationship-building
means that PA looks for
what Hughes calls
“T-shaped” consultants:
“The leg of the T is
that deep knowledge, the
bar of the T is all the
other things that they
bring to the party, such
as interpersonal skills,”
he says. “The best
consulting is done with
clients, not to clients.
They want to know you
have an opinion—they
don’t want it rammed down
their throats.”
Related link:
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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 | |
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| | really work as our
clients need them to. If
you can’t make things
fast enough or cheaply
enough we can understand
what you’re trying to do
and say, let’s build it
together from a blank
sheet.”
This “real tangible
consultancy” often goes
beyond simply reacting to
client needs into taking
leadership positions in
research and development.
“We’re a little ‘R’,
big ‘D’ organisation; we
combine emerging and
existing technologies in
extremely creative and
pragmatic ways to deliver
novel client solutions ”
says Hughes. “PA also
takes innovative
positions to address
unmet market needs.”
One example is in the
life sciences area, where
PA has taken its own line
on the use of RFID chips
and barcodes to counter
drug counterfeiting.
Rather than attempt to
use RFID to track the
entire supply chain, PA
has created a system
where drugs are given
unique identifiers and
registered with a PA
database. Then these
drugs are dispensed, in
the pharmacy or hospital,
and scanned using
PA-designed technology,
to confirm their
authenticity. This system
also facilitates other
opportunities such as
manufacture recalls or | |
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