The Managing Consultant's Blog (3/01/2010)
Well, the festivities are over, and we've had our usual glut of invitations to tender dumped on our desks the day before the Christmas break! At least it makes sure we don't over-indulge over the festive period!
With 2009 behind us now, the figures for the year are looking very positive indeed - judging by our turnover and profit, there is no indication at all of there being a recession. But it's hardly surprising - councils and other public sector bodies are now clearly focused on how to achieve more from less, and most have realised that they can't do it on their own. Many councils have a tranformation team, or business improvement team, in place, but all too often, all they're doing is minor improvements and savings - down at the 2-3% level, whereas the level of saving that needs to be made is 20% and above - and that cannot be achieved by the level of effort usually deployed in a transformation team.
That's why we developed the framework of the "Council of the Future" in 2009 - to provide a framework for councils to work to, to enable them to achieve the 20%+ savings they need to make, and that is now taking off in terms of new work opportunities and real savings for the councils we work with.
2010 will be bringing a number of new changes - we already launched our own website in 2009, and we will be launching the new Learning website in January, with new courses focused on the Council of the FutureTM. We will also be looking at our marketing approaches this year, to try to make sure that a more consistent message is delivered to the various groups we target, and that individuals were not overly burdened with material from us. From the feedback we get, it seems that most people value the materials we send out - the joint briefings between ourselves and Socitm Insight (monthly) and the weekly mailshots on subjects of interest. It seems that reciptients like the fact that they deal with topics of relevance and interest, and are not overly commercial - no "hard sell". But then, that's what we're about - we're not as directly commercial as our competitors, because of the important link with Socitm - and the fact that one of the reasons for our existence is to provide value for money consultancy to our members, and contribute over half of the income needed by the Society to meet the needs of its members.