25 August 2010 | Lindsay Clark
Businesses are not preparing well for the procurement of consultancy services, research firm Orbys believes.
A survey of senior managers in 250 global organisations found that around 60 per cent do not plan for the use of consultants.
“Forward planning of spend on third-party consulting is in its infancy,” said Samad Masood, principal analyst for Orbys. “Only a third of respondents plan all engagements fully, or on a regular basis, and while almost half ‘try’ to prepare in advance. This is obviously not as good as actually achieving forward planning of consultancy spend.”
The survey also suggests the use of market intelligence to help select suppliers is only used in an ad hoc way.
Furthermore, businesses do not use all their available data on consultancy spend and departments can approach procurement in this area in different ways without standard processes throughout the company. This led to budget overruns and poor project scoping, Orbys found.
Overall, the research revealed that organisations approach procurement of consultancy services in an inconsistent and fragmented manner.
The firm surveyed chief procurement officers and market sector managers, as well as senior financial personnel and project managers responsible for contracting consultants.
