Does size matter?
From “We don’t need people who don’t know our business coming in here and telling us to rearrange the furniture!” to “I’d never looked at it that way, that’s really interesting”. We’ve all seen and heard the usual suspects of pro and anti ‘outsider’ comments which explain why consultancy can have a very mixed reputation.
Now, we would say this, wouldn’t we, but consultancy services can add value and insight to otherwise tried and tested environments and provide, sometimes painful, experience-based guidance for the less informed and less battle hardened. But why bother? And if you do bother, why pick one consultancy over another? And if you are looking for a consulting partner, why choose a smaller, client focused team rather than a large brand name with ‘hundreds of years’ experience’ in telling you how to rearrange the furniture?
We suspect that the majority of our readers have experienced the dread of reading that email. You know the one, the one entitled “Management Review” or “External Operational Assessment” or whichever other buzz phrase the powers that be want to use to preface the news that, yet again, some third-party is coming in to tell us what we’re doing wrong.
Well, here’s the thing. We’re not all the same. Some consultancies, and we can think of one in particular, take pride in understanding the actual needs of their clients and don’t just adopt a template, billable hours-based approach to telling their clients what to change.
But if the big names are so big, surely they are good at doing this stuff or they wouldn’t be so successful? Hmmmm... Well, if size did actually matter, then this would be correct. But what you gain on one hand you lose with the other. Large consultancies employ hundreds of individual consultants who are very highly qualified and very highly certified but, even if they do have real life experience behind them, quickly become focused on the ‘standardised approach that large consultancy X adopts’, or their percentage of billable hours issue, and can lose touch with the actual coal face intricacies of the operational world.
Where large consultancies can give you a name to quote and a flag to wave, surely the focus should be on the benefits realised? And by benefits, we don’t just mean the usual suspects of ‘efficiency’, ‘time to market’ or ‘ROI’ etc. but real customer benefits. The sort that positively impacts customers or makes dealing with customers easier, both of which should make customers happier and more likely to return.
So why do smaller consultancy companies shine here? Well, to say the least, it’s far more personal. Smaller organisations not only have resources that are more ‘real life’ based, but also have far more skin in the game, far more interest in making stuff better. That being the case, if you are looking at getting independent, third-party guidance, general consultancy or more official review and audit work done, as well as the lists of qualifications and certifications being proffered, consider asking the organisations sitting in front of you the following questions:
How many years have the consultants who will be working with us spent doing the jobs they will be reviewing?
How many regulatory reviews or investigations have they endured, ahem… we mean, attended?
How many face to face discussions have they had with the authorities?
How many industry forums and trade bodies have the consultants worked with?
When is the last time the consultant sat in front of a regulator and ‘debated’ the intricacies of the use of the word “should” in any regulation?
And lastly, how many times have the companies the consultants previously worked for, been fined?
And if you’re wondering about that last point, let’s put it this way. “You'll come to see that a man learns nothing from winning. The act of losing, however, can elicit great wisdom…”
(Free packet of plain chocolate digestives next time we see you for the first person to identify where that quote comes from WITHOUT using Google!!!)
Written by Andrew Mason
If you are looking for compliance consultancy support from a perfectly sized and highly experienced client focused team, contact Betsmart today. We work with online and land-based gambling operators and local authorities. We offer a full suite of compliance and AML services to cater to your every need, including; regulatory assessment preparation and follow up support; automation and commercialisation of compliance processes; provision of interim compliance resource, plus many more.