RSS feedsWith the consulting market hotting up it is only natural that the Big Four accounting firms are beginning to re-emerge and open their files on the ‘advisory’ work they are carrying out alongside their usual remit of tax, audit and insolvency.
However, one mid-tier accounting firm has already been operating in the business consulting and strategy space for more than two years and is planning to build on its early successes.
That business is RSM Robson Rhodes, and one of the three founders (in May 2003) of its consulting division, which has grown from scratch to 70 staff, is Malcolm McKenzie, a partner at the London-based firm.
Back in late 2002, McKenzie, alongside Eric Benedict and Donald Morris, wanted to break away from large multiple services players and form a consultancy that offered, promoted and integrated ‘truly independent, professional board-level advice around strategy and change’.
‘At the time I was at the strategy group at Cap and I’d come to the realisation that this philosophy of putting board-level consulting alongside technology companies just didn’t work’, says McKenzie.
‘There was an opportunity in the market for truly independent professional advice around strategy and change, so I got together with two colleagues who had also been partners at Ernst & Young in the 1990s and set the wheels in motion.’
The trio entered into discussions with RSM Robson Rhodes, which wanted, according to McKenzie, ‘to complement financial advice with business and board-level strategy advice.
‘RSM Robson Rhodes had been growing the financial advisory business very successfully for a number of years and wanted a strategy consulting element, so we got talking to each other and decided it would be a great fit.’
Drawn-out contracts prevented McKenzie and his colleagues from leaving Capgemini until March 2003 but they had already sown the seeds for the strategy side of RSM Robson Rhodes to grow and deliver customer value.
All three partners are well versed in strategy and change work and have years of experience in building strategy teams and developing projects. McKenzie, formerly responsible for the strategy practice at Capgemini and previously strategy consulting partner at Ernst & Young before the two firms merged (they subsequently split), took much of what he had learned into the new business.
‘Within E&Y I had played a major part of building a number of key teams. Both Eric and I built up from scratch a strategy capability in E&Y which went by the infamous name of SAS Strategic Advisory Services to around 70 people which was very successful in the late 1990s.
‘One of the most valuable things I got out of it was the Gemini Consulting side, which was very strong on change. Gemini had truly joint teams working with clients to build change capability and also some approaches on how you get a client to that tipping point from just talking about things on PowerPoint to making a business decision.’
In just over two years the business has made great strides both in terms of its own figures and those of its clients. It has worked with numerous private and public sector clients, and won a gold award from the Management Consultancies Association for its business strategy work on a project at P& O Ferries.
After a business review it advised P&O on how to operate more flexibly and cost-effectively; when the ferry company announced the review to the City, its shares rose by 5%.
RSM Robson Rhodes’ accounting and tax figures have been steadily increasing
with audit seeing a 16% change last year, but it is the firm’s consulting
division that has experienced the biggest change. In 2003/04 its revenues hit
£2.53m, in 2004/05
£6.26m, and in 2005/06 it projects around £10m a figure McKenzie is keen to
build on.
‘I think the issue of how boards can be more effective is key to how we are building on the business and a question we can firmly answer when advising any client we’re dealing with.’
