| Consulting: the lifeblood of UK plc |
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| | By Tony Restell,
Founding Director of
Top-Consultant.com
Consulting has
attracted more than its
fair share of criticism
of late. Journalists who
ought to know better
have jumped on the
bandwagon to decry our
industry (“leeches” and
“snake oil salesmen”
being favoured terms)
and to proclaim that
every pound spent on
consulting is a
despicable waste of
public funds. Here I
undertake to set the
record straight and to
restore some pride to
our beleaguered
industry.
The scale of the
public sector deficit
and the discomfort of
the sharp cuts needed to
address it have of
course created a
backdrop in which
consulting spend can be
portrayed as diabolical.
The dafter journalists
have lost no time
dredging up figures for
spend on consultancy and
bemoaning the millions
“wasted”, usually going
on to describe the
number of hospitals that
such a spend would
equate to us being able
to save from ruin.
Unfortunately these
articles invariably have
two common denominators
that create a heady
cocktail for
disbelievers. The first
common denominator is a
headline grabbing
multi-million pound
figure that a public
sector organisation has
been swindled into
spending on consulting.
The second common
denominator is a stream
of quotes from
ex-consultants who have
“spilled the beans” on
the sharp practices
common within the
industry, adding
credibility to the claim
that contracts were
secured through
deception or false
promises – and with
little or no resulting
upside for the British
taxpayer.
Let’s unpick these
two common denominators
in turn and expose them
for the red herrings
that they most certainly
are. Firstly the huge | |
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| | headline grabbing
figures that have been
“wasted”. In no other
area that I can think of
would a journalist be
able to claim that
governments should cut
back on spending without
at least a cursory
discussion of the
implications of those
cutbacks. A significant
cut in university
funding would never be
advocated by a
journalist without some
further commentary on
the ramifications of
those cutbacks. What
would be the impact on
society, on economic
growth, youth
unemployment… the list
goes on.
Yet consulting spend
is never afforded the
same treatment. £300m
not spent on consultants
is £300m saved, end of
story. That this
consulting spend may
have been producing
benefits that the
country will be
foregoing is never
allowed to rear its head
as a possibility. Yet
every year the
Management Consultancies
Association (MCA) hosts
an awards banquet at
which clients of
consulting firms –
including a huge array
of public sector
organisations – share
the huge positive
returns their engagement
of consultants has
delivered. Journalists
avoid any reference to
these successes,
probably justifying this
to themselves with the
thought that these are
not representative of
the wider market for
consulting.
Yet dig a little
deeper and any
self-respecting
journalist will come
across the MCA’s recent
report ‘The Value of
Consulting’, based on
pioneering research
involving analysis of
1,800 consulting
projects. Read this
report and you’ll find
that 58% of clients said
they were very satisfied
with the work their
consultants do and
indicated that their
consulting assignments
produced a return ten
times the actual spend
on the consulting team. | |
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| | So spend £1m on a team
of consultants and a
successful project
outcome will see a
client recoup £10m of
financial return from
the investment. Well on
these figures I for one
will be championing the
use of consultants –
most notably in the
public sector – for as
long as there are such
significant gains being
made.
At this point it must
be said that a team of
consulting staff is no
different to any other
collection of bright
business executives. In
any given year they will
make a number of calls.
The majority will be
good calls but a few
will disappoint. This
happens every day up and
down the boardrooms of
UK plc, irrespective of
whether consulting firms
were involved in the
decision-making. Which
of course means that
there will always be
failed projects that a
wilful journalist can
choose to report as the
norm. What you will
never see the detractors
report is that for every
failed project there are
dozens of successful
projects. Aggregate the
total spend on
consulting services and
you will find that the
successes more than pay
for the failures.
This brings me to the
second common
denominator of these
shabby journalistic
rants. They invariably
call upon the testimony
of ex-consultants
prepared to spill the
beans on what really
happens in the industry.
The reliance on these
witnesses is flawed on
so many counts, but
allow me just to expose
one. These experts are
consultants turned
authors, who now ply a
very lucrative trade in
publishing
scaremongering tomes
about the horrors of the
consulting industry.
Their very livelihoods
depend on the public
gorging themselves on
tales of consultants’
cheating, deception and
lies.
Continued on page 15 | |
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