Buying Professional Services: How to Get Value for Money from Consultants and Other Professional Service Providers

Public and private sector organisations are spending huge amounts of money buying professional services, and most are doing it badly, without sufficiently rigorous procurement processes or an adequate understanding of the marketplace, resulting in wasted money and disappointing outcomes.

Even among those organisations with formal procurement processes and techniques, many are applying them inappropriately and therefore acheive similary poor results. On the other side of the fence, many professional services firms don't understand how the increasing application of procurement processes could affect the way they get business and work with clients, the way they charge and, ultimately, their profitability. Furthermore, while they are working together, both professional services providers and their clients too often behave in ways that reduce the potential benefits to both parties.

Using real examples from a range of private sector firms, government departments and the professional services firms themselves, this book explores what users and providers of professional services need to do to ensure that the users' money is well spent and the providers' earnings are well earned.

"A practical and thought provoking guide that gets to the heart of the matter about what differentiates this category of spend."—Helen Wilber FCIPS, Senior Procurement Manager, Professional Services, Group Procurement, Royal Mail

"This insightful book will help buyers and providers of professional services get a better understanding of the issues – and achieve better results."—Lindsay Morgan, Partner and Head of Global Real Estate, Norton Rose LLP and Group