Procurement Intelligence Unit

Who manages the management consultants is one of the fundamental questions facing procurement organisations supporting businesses ever-more reliant on the services they offer. Back in 2009 our research suggested that this was a top concern among senior procurement executives and was fast emerging as a priority category for realising potential savings - even though our study appeared to back up the theory that it was one of the 'last bastions' of spend to bring under control.

With this in mind, it seemed natural to make this spend category the major focus of the first in a series of PIU category workshops, which will be hosted both in the UK and Europe throughout 2010.

Management consultancy is expensive and, in many ways, a fundamentally different way of doing things, but, without doubt, under the right conditions it can also deliver massive benefits to clients. What this workshop aimed to identify were those key issues that most affect the value delivered from management consultancy work and what procurement can do to take control of, or at least affect, this process.

Once these issues were identified then those involved were subsequently asked to list the factors that hindered procurement's progress in this area. This innovative way of brain storming threw up a number of issues, all of which were acknowledged as obstacles to procurement gaining full control of the spend category. Issues that, if properly addressed by the function itself, and internal and external stakeholders, could have a major impact on both the management of consultants and the value that they bring.

Stakeholder behaviour and management, for example, was one of the first issues identified by a group that included some of European procurement's leading figures.

An inability to follow internal policies and procedures and, in some cases, the decision to ignore them for short-term gain, were just three of the stumbling blocks recognised by those involved. In addition, a lack of a strong supplier management process and, consequently, failure to gain the necessary control over the consultancies and the way they deal and engage with internal stakeholders, was seen as another area of concern.

Those who have experienced the frustration of trying to manage this category of spend in the past will not be surprised to hear that a failure to bring procurement in at the earliest possible stage also ranked highly as a key obstacle to success.

In all, 14 headline issues were raised and graded by importance, and enabled those involved in the workshop to narrow down the areas that really needed addressing.

Of course, simply identifying the problems that exist and their interdependencies doesn't make those problems go away. What it does do, though, is bring a clarity that might otherwise be lacking and provide procurement with a clear idea of where these issues lie and what can be done to solve them.

These workshops are about more than just bringing people together for a single day - procurement is constantly evolving and, as it does, then so do the issues it faces. With that in mind, the workshop groups are charged with going away and putting these new ideas and potential solutions into practice over the next six to nine months. After that, they will share what worked, what didn't, and what might take more time to implement.

It's an organic process, and one that should reap rich rewards for those involved - both now and in the future.