The Consultant with Pink Hair

It must have been some kind of voodoo or divine intervention that unexpectedly put me in the audience of a presentation by Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles a few years back. It was their presentation that inspired the format of this book and gave me the insight to finally start and complete it.

On Friday June 8, 2012 Friesens Printers of Altona, Canada delivered the first 545 copies of The Consultant with Pink Hair. About 70 are in limited release right now with folks that helped with the production of the book or to whom I promised a copy to at some point over the last 10 years of telling people I was writing a book. Once the new BR website is in place it will be released for sale on Amazon and in select bookstores across North America - likely this September.

The hardcover book is 198 pages and e-versions will be available for most e-readers as well.

In case you're interested the book tells the story of Andrew Braun and Lou Di Angelo partners in a fictional management consulting practice struggling with the real life challenges of being "just another consulting firm" in a crowded market place.

They battle low margins, late nights responding to crazy RFPs, confusing branding advice, and the pressure of too much revenue coming from one big client - and the disaster when that client walks away.

As usual there is plenty of RFP bashing and as promised in an earlier post the bashing isn't limited to the buyer side of that process.

2012 A Shift in Perspective

For almost 25 years I've been beating up on the professional services RFP - the last decade especially.

Writing for anyone that will publish, speaking to anyone that will listen, the message has always been that the typical RFP for consulting services increases purchasing costs and risks for the buyer, while also decreasing selection accuracy.

The target of the message has typically been the large institutional procurement professional with encouragement from the consulting community.

January 1, 2012 I am shifting gears. The target for my message is now the consulting community.

Why? In the last few years I've seen the procurement community pull ahead of the consulting community on this issue.

How? I'll explain that in an upcoming article.

In the mean time enjoy 2012.

Buying Local May Contravene the AIT

An article in the Winnipeg Free Press about a large local government ad account (Travel Manitoba) going to an out-of-province ad agency recently got my attention.

Although noone likes to see good revenue leave their local area, Manitoba is a participant in the Agreement on Internal Trade and had they demanded the work be performed locally they may have been in contravention of that agreement.

But agreements aside - this is one more piece of tangible evidence that the selection of professional services vendors is not a local endeavour. In my opinion, for a professional services firm in a smaller market like Manitoba this represents a greater opportunity than it does a threat.

Exclusionary Clauses and The Supreme Court of Canada

Next week I will be speaking to the Canadian Marketing Association (Manitoba Chapter) and their guests on the subject of procuring professional services. Certain to come up during the discussion is the Tercon decision of the Supreme Court of Canada. To read about their decision around exclusionary clauses click here.

Lisa Stiver, a procurement expert from the law firm Thompson Dorfman Sweatman will be joining me and I'm sure she will provide some good insight into the ruling.

In the article attached, Paul Emanuelli, another RFP legal expert, suggests we "avoid the entire “Contract A” entanglement by using simplified procurement formats".

Sounds good to me.

Applying Category Management to The Procurement Profession

I've recently been introduced to another Australian firm via my colleagues at ifindconsultants.com that is proposing the idea of using the category management structure (so often found in marketing organizations) within the procurement profession.

Overall I would say here in Canada we are still a community of procurement generalists (with some pockets of specialization) but I believe increasing returns from procurement will only be achievable through greater specialization.

As well, as we see the complexity of the procured goods and services increasing (such as with professional services), the procurement professionals here are being challenged to keep up with that complexity and have realized that generalization is not the path to get them there.

Apparently the same is the case in Australian procurement.

More on this category management development as it becomes available to me.

Selling, Service, and Innovation

Kreitner et al (Fundamentals of Organizational Behaviour) discuss three broad types of creativity - creation (making something absolutely new), synthesis (combining existing things), and modification (adjusting some existing thing).

Regardless of the claims of many management innovators that they have "created something new" most have either synthesized or modified existing processes. Try and think of some process or technology developed within the last 20 years that is truly absolutely new and you will soon realize that most are usually an iterative advance over some previous improvement. Even social media which did not exist in it's current form 20 years ago can be argued to be just a different version of the Rotary Club - a place for like-minded individuals to meet and connect.

The purpose of my comment is to not diminish the claims of innovators but to more accurately describe what they have really achieved so we can better understand the value of creativity and innovation.

If your firm is chasing sales, marketing, or customer service innovation in the form of creating new processes or products, maybe it would be better to step back and look at the value and strategic advantage of the synthesis or modification of what already exists.

What's Happening in Australian Procurement

Tuesday February 9th saw James Leathem, Managing Director of Magnetized Markets (Australia) present to dozens of procurement professionals at The Manitoba Club in Winnipeg Canada. James was a guest of Beyond Referrals and had some interesting research to share. The presentation was also broadcast live on Jon Hansen's Procurement Insight's Business Insights Internet Radio Show.

Procurement of professional services is a big beast and James found a way to make it a more manageable challenge. His firm chooses to focus on the middle space of procurement - projects too big for sole sourcing, but not big enough to require a full blown RFP. He called this the "three quotes" space. Typically this space is either under-serviced ("use who you used last time") or over-complicated (ie: a full blown RFP is used where that expense is not required).

There were a few key lessons that we can take away from James' presentation. First, the challenges around the procurement of professional services seem to be consistent between Canada, the US and Australia.

Second, while it may be easy to find vendors, it is very difficult to find the right vendor. Of the almost 300 companies that Magnetized Markets surveyed about their procurement processes, 54% stated that they were not confident in their processes ability to find the best match for vendors.

According to James' research when a tender is not required, 32% chose to simply use someone they, or their colleague, had used before, 50% used Google - which gave them millions of options but with little meaningful information other than poorly constructed web site information - and 18% used an informal EOI (or some watered down, but overly demanding and poorly supported version of an RFP).

And finally, James pointed out, the "three quotes" space is easy to overlook because it is usually a relatively small dollar value per project but when rolled up into annual spend it represents a significant cumulative dollar value.

The solution, according to Mr. Leathem is to help procurement to push down the buying responsibility for smaller "three quotes" projects to the end user - what he calls "the buyer" but to give them good tools so that they can manage the process effectively, and so that procurement can still be confident that there is an audit trail and reasonable compliance to existing procurement policy. This frees up procurement to focus on the big jobs that require a lot of their attention and time.

For more information about Magnetized Markets and their professional services procurement tool visit www.ifindconsultants.com

For a summary, and to listen to Jon Hansen's broadcast of the presentation visit Beyond Referrals.