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Press & publications
“Payment by Outcome”: Can management consultancy survive the challenge?"
“Payment by outcome”:
Can management consultancy survive the challenge? October 2006 Amid the growing chorus of doubt about the real value of many management consultancy projects, a new London-based firm has launched with a radical business model that explicitly challenges entrenched practices in consultancy firms.
The new firm, Resultancy®, is based around a simple-sounding idea: that clients should only have to pay when a consultancy project delivers the benefits it promises.
Or as Resultancy’s founder Dr Matthew Barekat puts it more pointedly, “A strategy without an outcome is literally worthless.”
In this new model the desired outcome (and how its worth can be measured) must be agreed at the project’s inception. Barekat however insists that this is not the “shared risk” model being explored by advertising and other marketing communications agencies, but is more about minimising risk all round.
The origins of Resultancy lie in Barekat’s own extensive experience as an engineer and management consultant. In 1997 he applied some strategic thinking to management consultancy itself and became convinced that the fee and incentive structures used by most consulting firms were encouraging unethical practices and breeding client dissatisfaction. He began to research how you could create a consulting firm that was always strictly aligned with its clients’ interests (or more particularly the interests of enlightened shareholders), and would support work by management to create rather than destroy long term value.
Barekat calls the resulting philosophy Resultsmanship, and his new venture is designed to put it in practice. He has gathered round him a group of highly experienced professionals, reflecting another distinguishing feature of Resultancy: there are no juniors in this firm, and Barekat has designed a reward structure for his consultants that encourages collaboration rather than internal empire-building.
This collaborative ethos also informs client relationships. Resultancy’s consultants are experienced enough to understand that most client organisations already have experts in what they do, and that the consultancy’s job is to help them do those things better, rather than re-inventing wheels they already own. The intention is to maximise value by working closely and as far as possible with a client’s existing resources, helping to ensure that projects remain pragmatic and embedded in the realities of the client business.
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