Adding value in a team of 200 consultants? It’s no mean feat

Here are two striking statistics.

Forty-nine percent of clients globally say they get the value they pay for from consulting firms. Their experience is a transaction—nothing more, nothing less.

Fifty percent of clients say their use of consulting is mostly driven by a shortage of internal capacity.

The two are connected. When a consulting firm sells in 200 staff for six months on a large regulatory programme, say, it’s difficult to believe they’re all there for their specific expertise and experience. Whatever consulting firms tell their clients about its incredible track record in this area, clients are really buying people to solve a capacity problem.

This is not to say there’s no value in meeting a compliance deadline, avoiding a major fine, or getting a particular project over the line with a few additional troops—clearly, there is. The problem is that when a consultant comes in to do a job that’s mostly about capacity augmentation, they’re doing a job that could be done more cheaply by an internal resource or contractor. To add value in a role that’s essentially overpriced to start with is a very tricky ask, and to do so in a way that stands out when there are hundreds of consultants swimming around a client organisation is even harder.

Unfortunately for consultants, there are no hard and fast rules about which consulting services clients see as mostly driven by capacity, and which are driven by a need for specific capability. Consulting support around business strategy, a service which used to be synonymous with expertise, is mostly driven by the need for capacity these days (55% of clients globally say this). Even digital, the fuel of growth and best-thing-since-sliced-bread in the consulting industry right now, is considered to be a matter of capacity more than anything else by clients in the TMT and pharma industries.

All of which serves to highlight how important the type of work a firm takes on is to perceptions of value. While selling those 200 resources may guarantee revenues for six months, clients may be inclined to think of the firm as firmly in the commoditised end of the market. But then, sometimes, that’s all they’re after.