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Publication Date: 14 Jun 2010 | Series: Economist (Book 77)
This book is based on four premises:·Public and private sector organisations are spending huge amounts of money buying professional services, and most are doing it badly, without strong procurement processes or an adequate understanding of the marketplace, resulting in wasted money and disappointing outcomes.·Even among those organisations that do use formal procurement processes and techniques, many are applying them inappropriately and therefore achieve similarly poor results.·Many professional services firms don't understand how the increasing application of professional procurement processes could affect their business model, client engagement and ultimately their profitability.·While they are working together, both professional services providers and their clients too often behave in ways that reduce the potential benefits to both parties.Using real examples from a range of private sector firms, government departments and from the professional services firms themselves, this book explores the world of professional services procurement. Aimed at a broad audience which includes all those who both use and provide professional services, it sets out to show how they can work together much more effectively to their mutual benefit.
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Fiona Czerniawska is a leading commentator on the consulting industry, and the managing director of Source (www.sourceforconsulting.com), which provides information about the management consulting market. She spent more than 15 years as a management consultant, primarily working in the areas of marketing and strategy, and now speaks, lectures and writes extensively on the consulting industry and related issues. After Oxford University, she obtained a PhD from the University of London, and an MBA (with distinction) from Kingston Business School. Her books include The Intelligent Client and Management Consulting in Practice: Award-Winning International Case Studies. She is also theco-author of Business Consulting: A Guide to How it Works, also published by The Economist.Peter Smith is an expert on purchasing and supply chain issues, and Managing Director of procurement Excellence, a specialist consulting firm. He has advised UK public sector organisations such as the Treasury and the Ministry of Defence, and international businesses such as Barclays and Reuters. Before moving into consultancy, he was Procurement Director for the UK's Department of Social Security and the NatWest Group, as well as holding senior purchasing positions at Dun & Bradstreet and Mars. He studied Maths at Cambridge University, and is a Fellow and past Presidentof the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply.
Lawyers, consultants and marketeers have long traded on high margins due to their specialist knowledge and capabilities and the challenge in compartmentalising what they deliver.
Procurement professionals have found it difficult to break into this area, therefore this is a timely publication for them and all those who wish to get the most effective return for the money they spend on such services.
This book has a good level of depth but stays practical and useful, and a number of the chapters conclude with interviews with real practitioners, keeping it firmly rooted in the real world. It is certainly more approachable than Sammons' book on the same subject (and a lot cheaper). Recommended.
Having recently taken on the challenge of managing this category of spend on behalf of our organisation, i found this book extremely useful in understanding the mind-set of both our suppliers and internal stakeholders. This book also had some useful tools for classifying sub-categories of consultancy services. I had expected the book to cover services provided by Recruitment Agencies under the emerging trend of Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO).