A Healthy Mix – Blended Sourcing Strategies

Can you afford not to explore a potential 50% cost saving on your projects?

The final topic I addressed at last months Lean Government conference focused on alternatives to expensive consultancy resource. Consultancy led solutions are often chosen for the wrong reasons and can result in unnecessarily high cost and scope creep.

So, what is the alternative to using expensive consultancy resource?

Businesses like Sanderson have spent a long time developing market knowledge - with a particular focus on skills and capability. As a result we have access to a wide range of niche skills through contractors or smaller niche consultancies. When this experience is drawn together it’s possible to build a solution that offers greater levels of skill, experience and knowledge whilst costing less. More importantly, this type of solution is far more likely to focus entirely on your key deliverables.

What risks are recruitment organisations able to take?

This was a question asked at the Lean Government conference. It led initially to a comparison with the risks taken by consultancies – risks that in reality are minimal…..for them. The consensus view was that consultancies now look to pass risk back to the customer. From my perspective, a recruitment business like ours is less inclined to take financial risk, but is quite willing to share the objectives and deliverables of your project – a partnership approach that is less likely to be taken by a consultancy.

Where has this approach worked?

Sanderson has experience of delivering a range of projects using blended resource. Over the last 12 months, the quotes from bigger consultancies have been anything between 30% and 100% more expensive than ours. Our case study looked at the successful implementation of an Oracle EB-Suite into Surrey Police at 50% of the cost quoted by Oracle.

The reality is that every deliverable, every work-package should be reviewed against a full range of sourcing options. It is all too easy to plump for a consultancy solution, but it is likely to be far more expensive and less focused. The UK’s flexible (i.e. contract) resource market is one of the most mature in the world. By bringing the appropriate skills together in a single package, a decent recruitment organisation can deliver everything that a large consultancy can and more.

But there’s no point pretending that this is a step for the feint hearted – remember the old adage ‘no-one ever got fired for choosing IBM’. Taking this approach means that you’ll need strong stakeholder support and effective governance. That said, a cost cutting agenda is clearly paramount at present and likely to become stronger over the next 12 months – can you afford not to explore a potential 50% cost saving on your projects?