The Outsourcing Dilemma - The Search for Competitiveness.pdf

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way that consultants carry out their work.
Prior to the late 1970s most consultants carried out what is often now referred to as
theoretical consulting. Depending to a large extent on the function under investigation,
the consultant would concentrate on understanding what was required of the service and
then produce a report outlining new and hopefully better ways of doing the work. With
theoretical consulting the emphasis was on the report and the client was left alone to
carry out the practical effort necessary to bring about the change. The consultant was
therefore rarely in a position where blame or criticism was likely to stick.
These days most consultancy assignments are of a practical nature. The consultant is
engaged to provide specialist advice and then work with the client’s staff to make the necessary
changes.
The gradual movement in emphasis from theoretical to practical consultancy was triggered
by technology developments. Practical consultancy would have been possible
without these developments but, in the event, technology provided the spur. The extent
of the change towards practical consulting can be judged from the fact that many of the
large consultancies derived from an auditing base now describe themselves in terms that
emphasize the practical systems development nature of their services.
Consultants are bound to be better advisers if they have past experience of implementing
change and, in practical consulting, they are forced to accept responsibility for their
ideas. This means there can be few clients who would prefer to employ consultants on a
theoretical basis.
Nevertheless, there was one advantage in theoretical consultancy that to a large degree
has been lost. A consultant asked to study a business or a function of a business prior to
the mid 1970s, did so without the pressure of ready-made software solutions piling up
daily in front of the team members. Often the theoretical consultant was the only person
ever to have both the time and inclination to look for an ideal solution since the organization
was founded. Frequently, the consultant had no idea what the solution was until
the ‘main findings’ were finally submitted to paper after which the answer often became
beautifully obvious. The key point here is that the old style consultant could not trust the
client’s staff to give an accurate analysis of what was required from any given process and
was therefore forced to get the answer from ‘the customer’. Now many assignments start
with client and consultant studying the range of ready-made package solutions and conthe
outsourcing dilemma
organizations are
using management
consultants at a
greater rate than
ever before
continuous boom. Admittedly, work that was directly
related to Y2K problems tended to fall away in the latter
half of 1999, but all the indications are that the consultancy
train has started to pick up speed again.
The vast majority of consultancy assignments have
always concentrated on trying to improve a client’s performance
in a function or group of functions. However,
there has been a fundamental change over the years in the