Struggling to shake off its sector’s hard-earned and some say deserved reputation for high bills and low value, can IT consultancy yet provide some real value add or is it too little far too late, asks Mark Dye?



Never what you’d call one of the stand out favourites in the popularity stakes, your average IT consultant is – in business terms – right up there alongside Robert Mugabe, Pol Pot, estate agents, and root canal treatment in most people’s affections. A case of 1,001 times bitten, forever shy you might say.

But, as countless embittered CIOs will tell you, you needn’t feel too sorry for the poor old IT consulting sector. Because, in many ways, it really has only itself to blame for the scepticism (and sometimes out and out hostility) with which it is viewed by a good many businesses.
Just about everyone can relate a story or two – as many real as apocryphal – about a company they know that sank £millions into a consultancy project only to end up (very) short changed with a system that failed to meet expectations, deadlines, and budgets. Indeed, there was a time when enterprise toolset roll-outs from the likes of SAP and Oracle were as synonymous with lengthy cost, time, and consulting overruns as the software itself.

It still rankles in many quarters and this, coupled with current economic pessimism, has seen the reluctance to green light consultancy-based projects become more stubborn than ever. Phil Howarth, chief executive of SAP specialists Bluefish, believes that this reticence stems predominately from an “old school” belief that consultants don’t add value; that they cost a fortune, and that they eventually simply tell you something you already know.

Martin O'Neal, CEO of IT security consultants Corsaire puts it a little more unequivocally however, describing many of the consultants he meets out in the field as offering “very little in the way of tangible value” and as “the embodiment of a person that will borrow your watch, tell you the time, and then walk off with the watch.” Part of the problem, he says, is that some consultants aren’t necessarily any more skilled than the internal staff that they are being brought in to work alongside. What’s more, he argues, many don’t take the time or trouble to understand the internal political and cultural drivers, which means they’re even less likely to deliver anything of any tangible value.

Often driven by suspicion and insecurity, internal resistance among the client organisation’s people is also still a major factor in many cases, says Howarth. There remains a mostly (but not always) misplaced belief that consultants will expose the business’s (and by implication its staff’s) shortcomings and deficiencies, bringing jobs under closer scrutiny and threat. It is certainly true that while some staff will see consultants as a necessary evil and perhaps even a useful scapegoat, others will have a rather less positive view, says Clive Longbottom, service director with analyst Quocirca.

And with some employees dismissing consultants as “overpaid, ivory-tower arrogant parasites; as people who give you what they want, not what you need”, and as “a threat to jobs”, such resentment can run damagingly deep. Another common concern is knowledge transfer, or more specifically that there won’t be any; that when the consultant leaves, they’ll take the knowledge they’ve gleaned with them. Then there’s the nagging suspicion that the consultant won’t deliver any fresh insight at all; merely a set of conclusions based on existing wisdom and expertise.

This according to Paul Offord, founder of Advance7, which works with government organisations and blue-chips on IT performance and stability issues. He also cites perhaps the biggest anti-consultancy complaint of all. That by the time you’ve reached the end of a lengthy consulting engagement, the problems you set out to remedy back then have been replaced with a set of brand new ones.

It’s enough to make you wonder how IT consultancy grew into a global, multi-billion dollar sector in the first place. The thing is though, it did. The truth, though many are loathe to admit it, is that there is still a great deal to recommend external consultancy – strategic thinking, specialist expertise, multiple economies of scale, the ability to push through measures that might otherwise be delayed or shelved through fear or internal objections. And yes, even value for money.

Either way there is little doubt that the IT consultant is here to stay and there’s every chance you’ll be engaging with one in some way, shape, or form in the not too distant future. It is a decision that, in the end, comes down to a trade off between the potential for gaining real control over a particular area of the business and getting your strategy right, and the fear of losing control and getting things expensively wrong: an equation for which O’Neal offers up an interesting analogy. “IT consultancy is not unlike sex”, he laughs. “We tend to remember the awesome and awful experiences in glorious technicolor, but the rest just blurs into indifference. An indifference that makes you wonder what all the fuss was about in the first place.”

For companies that do chance to embark down the consulting route, there are a few useful rules of thumb that can help make the relationship a closer, more rewarding one. According to Mike Gillespie, MD of Advent IM, properly integrating the consulting team with the client organisation’s own people, rather than having the former operate on the periphery in apparent isolation, will help the consultancy better understand the customer need and to build a better rapport with internal stakeholders.  Also essential, he says, are appropriate qualifications and training, as well as the ability to digest and advise upon standards such as ISO27001. “By proving they have the appropriate certifications they can guarantee they’re approaching the customer’s site equipped with the promised skill-set rather than treating it as a training ground.”

Accordingly, firms should shop around and be as choosy about their consultants as they are about selecting their own staff, says Lee Ayling, MD of IT Advisory Services in the UK at EquaTerra. “You will often find that (this will) shape your requirements. Just be up front with them about what you are doing, and where they have done this before they will respond with pragmatic yet flexible approaches to solve your problem. This process will in itself help you pre-qualify the consultants.”

“Good consultancy firms will listen and explore the situation with the client and build a good understanding of the business context”, agrees Nick Fitzhugh, MD at IT Effectiveness Solutions. “They’ll then use their experience to help scope the requirement and approaches before even proposing solutions.” A high-level, outline business case to quantify the business benefit and the likely cost should follow, he says. This will allow the client to make a rational judgement as to whether the initiative in question is worthwhile.

The best firms will bring the best practices plus real-world knowledge, exceptional technical skills, and valuable contacts, as well as insights into what will work best for particular kinds of organisation, says Longbottom. Though he warns that there can be no up-front guarantees. “All you can do is to tie down a firm specification for the work and try and stick to it.”

This, of course, is where consultants really have gotten a bad name in the past. Change generally means additional cost – often significant additional cost – and shifting deadlines and timescales. As such, a degree of flexibility will be essential in ensuring that any change requests are dealt with sensibly and correctly, and that any issues that ought to have been identified up-front by the consultant are dealt with at their expense, not yours. This is a tricky area and can prove a contractual sticking point according to Longbottom, as while some consultants will go for a degree of shared risk based on ongoing results, such deals tend to be more expensive in the long run.

Most consulting firms just want a fixed price plus change costs. This is where Service Level Agreements come into play, but it’s actually more a question of service level management, argues Longbottom. “The consulting company should be pressed to present a range of offers that the business can take in to account against its risk profile so that costs and risk can be better aligned.” It may seem an obvious point, but payment should also be back-end loaded wherever possible, says Gillespie, as paying on project completion will quite naturally encourage smoother, speedier mutually agreeable outcome to the job. This – the mutually agreeable outcome – is ultimately what a good consultancy engagement is all about of course.

Beware the caveats and consultancy really can deliver the goods in this regard – and the ‘C’ word need no longer be taboo in your business.