In her July 27 article in The Sunday Times entitled “Small Consultants thrive as firms tire of big agencies” (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/0,,1-528-757615,00.html), reporter Kemeny notes that “(many companies) are disillusioned with the way that traditional consultants have worked”.

Seems that there´s limited demand for the seven-figure ‘body shop´ consulting project, sold by a slick senior who is never seen again. Burdened by an albatross-like business model that calls for keeping an army of junior consultants fully billed AND at exorbitant rates, such ‘pyramidal´ consulting firms understandably are drawn to large-scale systems projects or equally grand company-wide process exercises.

But IT consultancy has suffered ever worse than IT hardware and software purchasing in the tech downturn following the collapse of the Dot-Com bubble (predicted in VBM Consulting´s best-seller, Net Value).

The other types of Gallactical Total Company Projects that Kemeny mocks tend to focus on an oh-so-proprietary metric and or process. The CONsultants´ trick is to push the dross as highly valuable and complex to an easily impressed junior client, while keeping the real basics of the process simple enough to be executed by interchangeable kiddie consultants.

Value creation for the client? Maybe a bean or two after the value-destroying consultants´ fees are deducted. Value-creating for the CONsultant? Definitely.

Look once again at that proprietary three-letter magic metric or equally vaunted Total Company Process. Legends in their originators´ minds, only.

What´s there is not that much better (and sometimes worse) than what´s available in the public domain already. This is one of the reasons why Luehrmann´s CVA article from Harvard Business Review is replicated with publisher´s permission in an appendix of VBM Consulting´s other recent book, The Value Mandate (Clark & Neill, New York Amacom, 2000).

Kemeny goes on to describe the slow but undeniable groundswell is emerging as companies look for middle size consultancies with superior performance, better value prices and senior consultants who don´t require a nanny. And who can deliver the goods in months rather than quarters and years.

Maximizing value OF THE CLIENT COMPANY? What a unique concept!
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