How independent do you expect your Management Consultants to be?
Let me explain the background to this question…
I’ve been in Management Consulting now since 1994. And I have run my own consulting business since 1997, that has since developed into a group of businesses. So I think I understand the consulting industry.
But there is one thing I don’t understand, and never have understood.
I have come across management consulting companies that:
- Also sell their own software to their clients.
- In addition to designing warehouses for clients, then sell or rent the client a warehouse.
- Have ‘alliances’ with external software vendors and receive commissions for sales leads.
- Have ‘affiliations’ with suppliers to their client industries that encourage sharing leads and networking.
I’m sure you can see where I’m coming from with this? How on earth can a professional management consulting company offer objective and impartial advice to clients, if they are in some way being rewarded to not be objective and impartial?
How does that work?
Or do the clients of management consulting companies not expect to get objective and impartial advice anyway?
Sorry, but all our clients do expect it, and receive it.
Do please feel free to comment below if you think I’ve somehow got this all wrong.
I’ve lost count, but it would be interesting to know how many times I’ve been approached:
- By a 3PL asking how they get onto our ‘preferred supplier’ list. (Note. has not happened in Australia)
- By a 3PL asking to meet with me, so I can better understand their services, so that I can then promote their services to our clients.
- By a software company asking if we will promote their products to our clients on a sales commission basis (the most frequent request)
- Numerous ‘lame’ sales staff asking to meet so that we can ‘collaborate’ on generating sales leads.
By the way, if you are a supplier to the Supply Chain and Logistics industry, and were planning to contact me with one of the approaches above, please don’t.
Firstly, I will say No.
and secondly, you will be damaging your reputation, in my eyes at least.
If you have something totally ‘left field’ and innovative that you think will pass our ‘ethics committee’, then by all means let me know. Because that would really be innovative.
Best Regards,
Rob O’Byrne
Email: [email protected]
Phone: +61 417 417 307
P.S. Don’t think I am anti collaboration in our industry. But if your ‘job’ is to give objective and impartial advice………make sure you do just that!
P.P.S. This blog post is under the category of ‘opinion’. Please feel free to ‘take a shot’ at mine in the comments below.
P.P.P.S. I’ve had 2 of these calls already today, before midday.
After Note
Having made a statement regarding my view on cosy alliances between consultants and service providers I have received some interesting feedback off-line regarding my thoughts on speaking at sponsored events so I thought I might share them with you.
Those of you who know me well, know I like nothing more than sharing knowledge about Supply Chain and Logistics.
As well as doing this via our consulting businesses and education businesses, I have enjoyed speaking at public and private events for many years. It’s a great opportunity to meet new people in our industry, but mainly, for me at least, it’s about sharing knowledge and helping others do well in their careers and businesses.
A few years ago I was speaking at up to 12 or 15 public and “closed door” events each year, both here in Australia and around our region, many of these “closed door” events being hosted by IT suppliers, 3PLs and a host of other organisations.
I have a very simple and clear view to my public speaking: Speaking at event whether public or private does not imply that I personally, Logistics Bureau or any staff of Logistics Bureau endorse or support the organisation hosting the event. This also applies to any of our Senior Staff and who respond to similar requests.
Business commitments have sadly led to me cutting my event speaking back to 5 or 6 events per year now and you can appreciate that given the number of speaking invitations I get each year it really does depend on work schedule and my travel program.
But if you have an interesting event, and think that I might add value speaking or facilitating a workshop at the event, by all means feel free to contact me (Email), or my PA Rose (Email) knows my availability.
I understand your point of view Rob, and I’ll declare that I work with a software company.
I often approach companies like yours, not with the view of ‘partnering’ or any expectation of assistance in the sales process, but to ensure that consultants who might be advising clients are fully aware of the latest products on the market.
Surely you have an obligation to be ‘up to speed’ for your clients?
Thanks for your comments Tony. You raise a good point of course. Any consultant ‘worth their salt’ needs to be up to date with the products and services in their market. I ensure my team do that via specific research, reading, attending events, industry functions and so on. I suppose it’s a question of where to draw the line. Seriously, if I was to meet every request by an industry supplier to come and ‘present’ their products and services, I would be doing it 2 days a week…every week!
I also don’t want to create the impression that certain suppliers might somehow have a cosy or ‘special’ relationship. A tough call.
Strangely, many suppliers seem to be under the impression that we almost make the buying choices for our clients. We don’t. We just help them, objectively, evaluate suppliers so they can make an informed choice.
Maybe I need to open up a suppliers ‘directory’ on one of our websites, so we and everyone else can see who does what and hear about updates?
Rob, Are you being totally fair? Maybe you are trying to be too ‘whiter than white’ ?
You might also need to consider consulting services that are clearly wrapped around a product or service? This might be consulting support for a software implementation provided by the vendor or in the case of a ‘pure’ Logistics example, what about consulting provided by a 3PL to a potential client, as part of developing a ‘solution’?
And no, I don’t work for a software vendor or 3PL but have seen many examples of the above.
Gerald
Hi Gerald, thanks for your comment. Indeed I often see software vendors and 3PLs provide ‘consulting’ services. The consulting will often be ‘bundled’ with their core products and services as part of an overall package. I think the difference here, is that the client is not expecting ‘objective and impartial’ consulting. It clearly can’t be can it?
Even if the ‘consulting’ is provided by a supplier pre-sales, it is clearly being provided to assist in the sales process and is therefore only focussed on the products and services that the supplier can provide. I think in this case that the client or potential client company would clearly understand this. So it’s often more a pre-sales ‘proof of concept’.