It almost seems as if eight different professions are emerging,” Scheer adds. “Firms competing on price are really struggling because the world is getting smaller.”

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The dynamics of the consulting profession seem less foreign to utilities today than they were in preceding years, thanks to the significant number of consultants who have joined electric companies.

“More often, we’re sitting across the table from a former consultant on the client side,” Maschoff reports. “That was not the case a number of years ago.” That “been-there, done-that” perspective has helped many, but not all, utilities hold consulting firms more accountable for delivering value and better rates, according to many consultants.

“Purchasers of strategic consulting seem less interested in theory,” notes Omar Abbosh, Accenture’s Londonbased global managing director for utilities. “They really want tangible examples, metrics, and demonstrable benefits.” Buyers of IT services also expect more accountability up front and prefer customized offerings rather than cookie-cutter 32M Pen Recorder approaches because the latter, which were popular during the late 1990s until the recession, are generally perceived as adding questionable value if not as outright failures. In the operations consulting area, Abbosh notes that clients want “a deep, proven track record and genuine commitments in the contract to deliver outcomes that they can measure.”

Former consultants have increased the rigor of selecting, hiring, and managing external consultants, but their outside perspectives tend to fade over time. According to George Rickus, a long-time consultant with executive search firm Preng & Associates, former consultants can bring several assets to electric companies, including expertise in addressing the same problem within many different organizations and, often, a healthy breadth of experience. The downside, he adds, is if their background is strictly consulting, they may not have had to live with their decisions and recommendations.

Rickus has witnessed a shift in how utility clients work with external services providers. Generally, utilities are looking for more measurable results earlier in the consulting process and are looking to pay in stages, he explains, noting that many clients currently treat retained search services in a similar fashion. 128M Pen Recorder “Clients are saying, ‘Rather than paying your fee up front, I want to pay one-third initially, onethird after you give me a qualified list of candidates, and one-third after acceptance,’” Rickus says. “The emphasis is on paying for tangible results.”