Research report: Consultant Value Add: Maximising Value from your Management Consultant
We are proud to present our latest report Consultant Value Add: Maximising Value from your Management Consultant, launched at our Showcase event in March 2021.
The key conclusion emerging from the research we conducted is that consultants do not always deliver the value that they are capable of delivering, and the report sets out a number of suggested actions for clients and consultants to address this.
As our findings show, the clients responding to the survey do not always engage consultants to provide the services that they consider can provide most value. There was strong agreement between the clients and consultants who completed the survey that the best way for consultants to add value was to transfer skills and experience and to support business adoption of their solutions and recommendations. However, these were not the services that clients who responded were most likely to engage consultants to provide, nor those that consultants who responded were most likely to propose to provide.
This does not indicate that transferring skills and experience or supporting business adoption are always the best ways for a consultant to add value, but it does highlight that clients should be clear about how the consultant will add value. Clients should reflect this in the scope of services to be provided, and monitor that the consultant is on track in delivering the anticipated value throughout the consulting engagement. Consultants should also challenge whether the services that they are asked to provide will deliver the value that they are capable of delivering.
Our research also found that, although clients still have a strong preference to engage larger, established consulting firms to provide consulting services, independent consultants had an as good, if not better, understanding as the respondents from consulting firms of what clients consider value adding.
Although there are more situations where larger, established consulting firms are a more suitable choice to deliver services, clients should be more open to consider using independent consultants, either engaged directly or through the increasing number of organisations that provide teams of independent consultants. Equally, independent consultants should find ways of working in teams to provide clients with an acceptable alternative to a consulting firm.
The survey revealed that consulting firm staff whose roles combined responsibility for both delivery and sales of consulting services were more aligned to the clients’ views of what added value, compared to those whose roles were exclusively in sales.
Consulting firms should take account of this in creating sales teams, ensuring that these teams include individuals with responsibility for delivering the consulting services that the firms are proposing to deliver to clients.
Although the project provides some important insights into how clients and consultants can maximise the value provided by consultants, there are a number of areas in which we consider further study would be helpful.
The project did not take into account the specific characteristics of a consulting engagement which may influence the selection of a consultant and how value is to be delivered. These characteristics could include the type and range of consulting services required, engagement size, business risk, and business impact.
Therefore, we propose to undertake two further research projects which we consider will give important insights into how consultants can maximise the value provided to their clients. These will focus on the:
- Factors to be taken into account when selecting a consultant to provide different types of consulting services.
- Characteristics of a consulting engagement for which a client would consider using independent consultants.
The report was based on responses to an online survey and a number of follow up interviews conducted in October and November 2019. Respondents to the survey included buyers and users of consulting services, consulting firm representatives responsible for selling and delivering consulting services, and independent consultants. Survey questions were tailored to the role indicated by each respondent.
Jim Foster
Author of the Consultant Value Add: Maximising Value from your Management Consultant report