Can you buy a service without a supplier?

Our latest survey of buying trends among clients has a curious anomaly in it.
When we ask people which consulting services they’re planning to purchase, we get a broadly, though not massively, positive response. Technology is high on the agenda as organisations move beyond the cost-cutting and regulatory change that dominated the consulting industry during the recession and its immediate aftermath. Outsourcing consulting, too, appears to be making something of a comeback after two very lacklustre years.

So far, so good: the problem starts when we ask the same clients to talk about which types of firms they intend to buy from. At the moment, the Big Four dominate: clients say that around a third of their overall expenditure on consulting is going to these firms, pushing systems integrators into second place (22% of the total). Ask them which firms they’re planning to spend with over the next six months, and 44% say they expect to spend less with the Big Four, compared to 22% who think they’ll spend more. The picture is similar when it comes to their views on systems integrators, strategy, HR and operational consultancies; in fact, the only type of firm clients are not negative about is the niche specialist. Moreover, if you add up the responses to this question and compare them to those about services, clients are twice as likely to be negative about a type of consulting firm as they are about a consulting service.

In other words, there’s demand out there for consulting services, but not necessarily for consulting firms. This has to be more proof, if we needed it, of the cynicism with which many clients regard consulting firms. What’s interesting is that it doesn’t appear to extend to consulting services. Clients recognise the need, but they don’t want it to be met by their traditional suppliers (and that might partly explain why niche firms score comparatively well). That chimes with research I did some years ago which almost in passing looked at the language clients use to describe the negative and positive aspects of consulting. The negative aspects tend to be attributed to the firm – an indistinct “they” who swap junior people in for senior ones or continually try and sell more services – and the positive to the individual consultant.

Joe the consultant is a great guy, but Joe & Associates, the firm, is a thorn in the corporate back.