My Education in Corruption by the Major Consulting Firms in SAP Services

Working in large consulting companies is a boot camp corruption. Working for Accenture, KPMG and Deloitte I received the most up to date training on how to lie, and how to justify lying the clients. In the large consulting firms, this is required to fit in with the culture. Interestingly, I am relatively frequently asked why I won’t work as a sub-contractor for them.

What This Article Covers

• What did I learn working for large consulting companies? 
• Why do consulting companies in technology persistently mislead clients about what functionality they can access? 
• What type of training are the large consulting companies actually offering their consultants? 
• How do the large consulting companies corrupt the practice of consulting generally? 

Background

In my career I have spent time in them major consulting companies before becoming an independent consultant. What is interesting that my time in these organizations was marked by an attempt by those higher than me in the company to impart to me the concept that there was one best way to approach to consulting. Each of these individuals, spread out across different consulting companies and different countries proposed essentially the same concept. This concept is that it was completely acceptable and even necessary to frequently lie to clients in order to meet the objectives of the consulting firm. The individuals who tried to mentor me and train me in dishonesty might be surprised to find that I have had good success in following the opposite approach as an independent consultant. Without a hierarchy above me that is dedicated to unrealistic financial goals (in order to bring in a large pool of money that is primarily aggregated to the top of the organization) I have been free to do a number of things that clients tend to appreciate. One is to tell clients the facts about functionality that works in various software vs. functionality that does not work. This type of information is very hard for companies to obtain because consulting companies do not provide an advisory function, but choose solutions that maximize their revenues. In fact, providing accurate appraisals of software capabilities would be impossible to do working for a large consulting firm because the messaging about functionality capability is simply not open for debate. In order to maximize revenues, the consulting firm needs the client to believe that they can access all the functionality, no matter how incapable, that is promised by vendors with which they have the most profitable partnerships. This maximizes the billing hours on the account both during the implementation, but then after the project has problems and more billing hours are necessary to recover it. This corruption of the basic advisory function means that consulting companies to keep recommending things they can’t actually pull off. In fact the list of things the major consulting firms can’t do is long.

• They can’t select the best software for clients because of their pre-existing relationships with the biggest vendors.
• They can’t give their employees any freedom of expression to make the best recommendations because all decisions are centralized and not based upon facts, but on revenue maximizing objectives.
• They can’t tell clients which functionality works and which doesn’t (reduces billing hours).
• They have a hard time managing projects because the leadership is primarily selected for their ability to sell work.

These topics are described in more detail in the posts below:

http://www.scmfocus.com/demandplanning/2010/09/why-companies-are-selecting-the-wrong-supply-chain-demand-planning-systems/

http://www.scmfocus.com/sapprojectmanagement/2010/04/why-big-consulting-firms-cannot-do-software-selection/

http://www.scmfocus.com/sapprojectmanagement/2010/02/why-deloitte-has-problems-implementing-sap/

Having worked with them off and on for 15 years, I question the value of the large consulting companies to their clients and to the overall economy.

Accepted Standards of Practice

The interesting thing about all the individuals that I worked with at large consulting firms is that they had no ability to connect the micro behaviors that they promote to the implications of the overall economy and society. This is supposed to be taught by the classes which take a broader approach and is part of the field of economics. However, economics has lost any moral foundation and is now primarily oriented around enabling the financialization of the economy. Companies and the economy generally is well served when consultants give companies correct information. That is in fact the central hypothesis of why consulting exits. That the consultant is adding value to the company by providing information and skills that the company not posses. However, the large consulting companies turn this concept on its head. They sell out the interests of the client in order to maximize their billing on the account, and those that rise to control these organizations are expert at extracting the most billing hours from their clients.

The Un-fashion-ability of the Truth

If the large consulting companies told the truth to their clients, the consulting firm’s revenues would be smaller, however, their value-add to the economy would be larger. Clearly, they vastly prefer the former to the latter. Any consulting organization must make a determination of what it is trying to accomplish, and attempting to continually grow will drive the company to reduce their quality in order to obtain financial objectives. This is where the major consulting companies have been for some time. No information that comes from them is trustworthy. Their senior members live in a bubble and spend so much time massaging the truth, and are so disconnected from reality don’t know what is real and what is fantasy. This is how completely technically false papers can be produced by senior members of firms like Accenture and Booz Allen Hamilton can be written and distributed on the internet. The senior members of these companies don’t even know what they don’t know.

Leaving a Trail of Unhappy Clients Behind

There are too many consultants giving poor quality information to too many companies, and too many senior members of these companies who are overpaid vs. their contribution to the economy. It is now at the point where very close to every company I consult with, the previous large consulting company that worked there has damaged its reputation to the point there they are routinely ridiculed by the employees. There are often disparaging plays on their name. I often hear “Deloitte and Touche” altered to “De-toilette and Douche.” There are statements like “they took our money and left us to deal with their mistakes.” “they did not seem to know what they were doing” are simply common. This problem is referred to as one of agency and is not unique to consulting. Recently the entire financial system has been rocked by scandals related to trusted advisors who have sold out the interests of their clients. When trusted advisors lie to clients in order to maximize their own financial goals, bad things begin to happen.

Working as a Subcontractor to Big Evil

When I have worked briefly as a sub-contractor to major consulting companies, the same expectation of compliance to their consulting approach is expected. I once worked as a sub-contractor for a major consulting company for a month, and the company continually misrepresented the capability of the software. I asked to leave after a week, and was required to serve out the final three weeks based upon the obligations of the contract that I signed. The client was never to be told that a solution should not be used to do XYZ, but that it can be “enhanced” to absolutely meet the customer requirements. These companies want to use experienced resources as contractors to fill gaps in their knowledge and to gain credibility with their clients, but they want to control the information given to them so that it meets with the internal revenue objectives of the consulting firm. Therefore, they want the credibility of the expert, but want to massage their advice to suit their needs.

Conclusion

The advice I received when working for large consulting companies was essentially an attempt to incorporate me into a corrupt scheme that is the standard operating procedure of these companies. None of these companies discussed an alternative approach and it is remarkable how consistent the approach was between these different companies I have been exposed to either as an employee or as an independent consultant working on projects with them. Within the constructs of the large consulting model, there is no other way. However, the senior individuals in these companies overstated their expertise to me. These techniques are necessary if you are dedicated to the principle of continually increasing revenues at a low information quality and cheating your clients. However, if these presuppositions are not accepted, then an honest approach to consulting is possible. Unfortunately, the vast majority of individuals working in consulting are working for the large companies will follow their instructions. Secondly, most are not overly concerned with the ethics of their employer, and lack the ability to question any institutional authority, much less their employer.

I never agreed with this model, even though it was presented to me repeatedly by individuals who were 30 years my senior in some cases and had significant consulting experience. However, I have now become so comfortable telling clients fact without the necessity of massaging the truth that it is now impossible to work under a construct where information must be hidden from your own client because it does not meet with the internal financial objectives of the prime contractor. Hopefully, this goes a good way to explains why I do not take sub-contract work from the major consulting firms.

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