Our new report, published today and based on the views of more than 400 C-suite and director-level private sector clients, finds The Boston Consulting Group best positioned for growth. 

Despite the tough market for European consulting firms, our new report – Part 2 of our Client Research Programme for 2012 – has found that the majority of clients have either no plans to reduce the level of consulting they buy, or to increase it significantly.

The expected increase in demand is being driven by clients keeping a check on the permanent headcount and, as a result, redrawing the line between what’s done internally, and what’s done externally.

But, says the report, consulting firms will have to be prepared to rethink not only the services they offer, but the role they play in implementation and even the model by which they deliver their services.

Throughout the course of researching the report, clients mentioned 11 consulting firms more than any others, and for each of these we look at how well positioned they are to take advantage of the new opportunities for growth.

Top of the pile is The Boston Consulting Group, now almost as frequently mentioned as McKinsey, and with a growing reputation for its ability to redefine the role it plays. It sits ahead of PwC, the best positioned of the Big Four if only marginally ahead of Deloitte.

There’s also evidence that about a sixth of all consulting is driven by the need, amongst clients, to validate decisions they’re taking internally. Indeed this is something with which the most senior clients are very comfortable, seeing it simply as a part of doing business. As one strategy director commented:

“One of the main reasons why we’d bring in one the well-known strategy firms is if there’s a difficult, even contentious, message we need to get across internally and/or externally. These people can articulate it better than we can – and they’re also more likely to be believed because they’re independent outsiders. 50% of this work is genuinely helpful; 50% is just to make us look better.”

A new form of collaboration

One the most significant changes to the way clients are using consultants comes in the way they expect to use external help for implementation. Despite virtually every consulting firm laying claim to its unique ability to bridge the gap between advice and implementation, the report suggests that clients remain unconvinced. Indeed they appear to have very sophisticated views about the role they want consultants to play, something which is informed by the increasing access many clients now have to internal consulting resources. Four-fifths now expect consultants to work in collaboration with internal consulting units while about two-fifths expect them to manage internal teams of people. These shifting needs don’t simply affect the amount of money organisations spend with external consulting firms, they also go a long way to determining the types of firms they use in the first place.

For information about how to get access to this report, please contact Julie Ahadi by email or on +44 (0)20 3178 6445.

About the report

This 240 page report entitled ‘What clients think and why it matters’ forms the second part of Source’s Client Research Programme for 2012.  It is based on the views of 400 senior people within multinational organisations who have extensive use of using consultants.  Data was collected in two ways: firstly, and predominantly, Source conducted in-depth telephone or face-to-face interviews. Where that wasn’t possible, for whatever reason, clients were asked to complete an online survey which was based around a similar set of questions to those asked in interviews.  

• Sectors include: financial services, resources (including primary industries, energy and utilities), services (including telecoms, media, high tech, healthcare, retail and distribution) and manufacturing.
• Geographies include: UK and Benelux; Scandinavia; France, Italy, Spain; Middle East; Germany; Switzerland.
• Functional areas of clients include: HR directors, IT directors, finance directors, strategy and operations directors (including many of the CEOs and Managing Directors surveyed),

• The eleven firms examined in detail (in alphabetical order): Accenture, Bain & Company, Booz & Company, Boston Consulting Group, Capgemini Consulting, Deloitte, Ernst & Young, IBM, KPMG, McKinsey & Company, PricewaterhouseCoopers,

Part 1 of the Client Research Programme, published in January 2012, provided a quantitative overview of the market, based on a survey of procurement managers in large multinational companies across Europe and the Middle East. Part 3, planned for publication in June 2012, will update Part 1, providing a snapshot of the market midway through 2012. Finally, Part 4, due for publication in September 2012, will offer a view of the consulting market from the public sector only.