У яких випадках клієнти звертаються по допомогу в консалтингову компанію?

Згідно з поширеною думкою, до послуг зовнішніх консультантів звертаються в основному в першу чергу ті організації, які опинилися в критичному положенні. Проте допомога в критичних ситуаціях - зовсім не основна функція консалтингу. Хто і чому звертається по допомогу в консалтингову компанію?

1. По-перше, в тих випадках, коли підприємство, що має статус надійного, намічає перебудову всієї системи, пов'язану або з розширенням, або із зміною форми власності, або до корінною зміною спектру діяльності підприємства і переорієнтацією її на перспективніші і/або вигідніші напрями бізнесу.

2. По-друге, у випадках, коли підприємство, що має статус надійного, з метою затвердження своїх позицій на ринку і створення необхідного іміджу в очах потенційних партнерів, звертається до послуг консультанта (наприклад, аудитора), проводить ревізію своєї діяльності (наприклад, аудиторську перевірку) і потім робить її результати надбанням гласності.

3. І, нарешті, по-третє, в тих випадках, коли підприємство знаходиться в критичному положенні (або навіть на межі краху) і своїми силами з цього положення вибратися не в змозі зважаючи на відсутність досвіду і внутрішніх ресурсів для адекватної і своєчасної реакції на ситуацію, що створилася. Послуги консультанта (консалтингової фірми) в цьому випадку носять характер криза - консалтингу.

UNIT 5

CONSULTANCY

TRANSLATION AND INTERPRETATION

PART II

MANAGEMENT CONSULTANCY

I. Before you read, answer the questions:

• Free advice costs nothing unfit you act upon it. What do you think this joke about consultants means?

II. Reading

Read this article and fulfill the tasks below.

A TOUGHER OUTLOOK FOR BRITAIN

1 American management consultants may he upbeat, but the UK industry has less reason to he cheerful. British consultants’ fee income rose only 4 per cent to £10.lbn ($19.2bn) last year and much of the growth came from outsourcing work rather than the dispensing of advice to senior managers. According to a report by the Management Consultancies Association, about 40 per cent of its members’ income now comes from outsourcing. That includes providing advice on how to outsource, but much of the work consists of consultants providing the outsourced service themselves.

2 Many of the consultants not involved in outsourcing are putting together computer systems. Information-technology-related consulting and systems development accounted for about 25 per cent of MCA members’ fee income. Traditional management consulting made up only 33 per cent and has fallen for two successive years. The MCA said its monitors saw fees for traditional consulting fall 8 per cent last year. Not all management consultants are members of the MCA. The association estimates that its members account for 65 per cent of the UK industry’s fees. Among the notable absentees are the large strategy consultants. But MCA members make up the majority of UK management consultants, and what happens to them is an indication of wider industry trends.

3 Does it matter that their business has moved away from old-fashioned consulting towards outsourcing and IT? Outsourcing has grown quickly, and consultants would have been foolish not to have grabbed the opportunity to be part of it. The problem is that growth in outsourcing appears to have peaked. The MCA says that outsourcing fee income increased by 18 per cent last year. In 2003, it grew by 46 per cent.

4 Much of the new spending on management consultancy is coming from government rather than from the private sector. The MCA said that its members’ fee income from public-sector consulting rose 42 per cent last year, compared with an increase of only 4 per cent from the private sector. Large projects, such as building a modem IT system for the National Health Service, have provided consultants with valuable work. The problem is that many public-sector consulting projects haw been controversial, and there is some public and press resistance to the government spending too much on consultancy.

5 What has gone wrong for UK consultants? First, clients are becoming much more sophisticated. They understand the consulting business far better than they did - partly because so many of the client managers are former consultants themselves. Bruce Tindale, chief executive of PA Consulting, says around 30 per cent of the client managers his firm deals with are former consultants.

6 The reason so many consultants now work for clients companies should worry the industry: the consultants who leave for clients do so because they find the demands of consulting, and the toll on family life, too heavy. There are problems with recruitment and retention,’ Mr. Tindale says. ‘We are noticing push hack from consultants, who are saying: ‘I'm not prepared to subsume my life any more,’ We’re losing people to clients because clients offer stability. That has not stopped consultancies from recruiting. MCA member firms employed more than 45,000 people in 2004, an increase of 9 per cent over 2003. At the same lime, revenue per consultant fell more steeply last year than in any other recent year down 11 per cent to £167,000.

7 Fiona Czerniawska, who wrote the MCA report, suggests several reasons why revenue per consultant might have fallen. Changes in MCA membership, particularly the increase in the number of smaller firms, may have depressed the figure, as smaller consultancies tend to charge less. ‘It’s also possible that the changing mix of services provided by the MCA member firms has had an impact. The growth in outsourcing and IT-related consulting, both of which have lower figures than traditional management consulting services, certainly accounts for part of the drop,’ Ms Czerniawska says.

8 But the likeliest explanation for the fall is the increase in the number of consultants. Why have firms been hiring if that has been depressing revenues per head? Because so many consultants, inveterate optimists, believe sales are about to increase. Many consultants over-recruited during the Internet boom at the beginning of the decade, and Ms Czerniawska says: ‘Consulting firms have perhaps not entirely learnt the lessons of 2001.’

9 Mr. Tindale, who insists his own firm’s revenues and profits showed healthy growth last year, says consultants need to provide their clients with a better value-for-money service than they did in the past. ‘It’s a matter of keeping and sustaining trust among clients- it’s very difficult because they look at those bills and say: “'What are we getting for this?”