A result for consultants - but at what cost?

The government is making it clear that it expects the private sector to help cut public expenditure. The prize for doing so will be substantial. Capgemini Consulting recently commissioned independent research from Sourceforconsulting.com, which showed that two thirds of senior civil servants expect the private sector to play a greater role in central government during the next five years. Much of this involvement will be in back-office functions such as HR and finance, but more than half think that private companies will be used to deliver frontline services and a quarter even expect them to be involved in policy-related work. However, this research also shows that Whitehall wants to change the rules of engagement. Interim management is out and outsourcing is in. Consulting is down, but demand for collaboration, especially between public, private and voluntary organisations, is up. The ideal venture may well be part owned by its employees, have an enviable record in developing its staff and be connected to social enterprise. The research report, which focuses on the implications of this for the consulting industry, concludes that consulting firms need to reinvent themselves for a new post-CSR world, creating joint public-private ventures focused on results. That's a big leap for an industry whose heritage lies in providing – and being paid for – advice. Traditional consulting stops at the point when recommendations have been made and obstacles to implementation identified. Left to their own devices Beyond that, clients have been left to their own devices. Consultants have focused on inputs (the number of days it takes to do something) rather than the outputs, the measurable benefits actually delivered to organisations. And they've mostly been paid according to the time they put in, not on what they achieve. I believe these three things will have to change if "consulting" is to survive in the public sector. We'll have to advise less and do more; we'll have to deliver results and be paid out of the money we help save. Instead of being the organisations that advise civil servants on how to set up the joint ventures they're clearly looking for, we have to be business partners in those ventures. Capgemini welcomes this challenge and we are already developing these new ways of working with the public sector. For example, we are partners in Working Links, a joint venture which also includes HM Government as a key partner. This is a business which is tightly focused on getting unemployed and disadvantaged people back to work and on cutting the benefits bill as a result. It is successfully pioneering a more collaborative and hands on approach for private sector involvement in the public sector and is paid by its results – in this case 150,000 individuals back to work across the UK to date. This clearly illustrates how private sector organisations have the capacity and imagination to respond to the government's challenge – and we'll increasingly be doing so. Keith Coleman is global head of public sector and head of public sector, UK at Capgemini Consulting