MCN Direct Newswire

Vol. 2 No. 13, 31 March 2003

This issue is sponsored by:

Annual Consultants' Forum 2003 and Gold and Silver Sponsors

This issue news

1. Annual Consultants' Forum 2003
2. Annual Consultants' Forum - keynote speakers
3. Deloitte Consulting fails to leave audit parent
4. Accenture head elected president of MCA
5. NHS seeks five supplier groups for $8bn programme
6. Further information - feedback/forward to a colleague/unsubscribe

1. ANNUAL CONSULTANTS' FORUM 2003

The third MCA/PMP Annual Consultants' Forum is being held on Tuesday 29th April at the Olympia Conference Centre in London.

The forum is being organised by MCN Direct publisher PMP in association with the Management Consultancies Association and The Guardian newspaper.

The theme of the forum is 'Consultancy Grows Up?', reflecting the challenges faced as the industry moves out of economic downturn and restructuring. Over 350 consultants attended the 2002 event, with over 80% of delegates rating it good or excellent.

This year's forum is free to consultants courtesy of the event sponsors - who represent the world's leading IT partnering organisations and who are all listed on the web page sponsors list: click here

* For more details and to register for the forum, please visit our web page click here

Sponsor

Annual Consultants' Forum 2003

The Annual Consultants' Forum (see news story above) features a number of sponsored elective sessions.

Among them, Platinum Sponsor Oracle will be presenting two sessions: Keynote session - Consultants, vendors and the UK, presented by UK managing director Ian Smith; and Elective session - Spend less, do more, getting more value for your clients' investment.

Gold Sponsor elective sessions include: Workstyle of the future: a legal requirement from April 6th 2003 - BT; Does your client's CIO know what his 10 best and least effective projects are?- Lawson; HP/Compaq merger: how do consultants benefit? - Hewlett-Packard; Creating the intelligent organisation through corporate performance management - Cognos; Meeting the client's ROI criteria: making IT project proposals financially viable - InterSystems.

To find out more about the forum and the Platinum and Gold Sponsors please click here

2. ANNUAL CONSULTANTS' FORUM - KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

MCN Direct publisher PMP together with the MCA have organised a powerful line-up of keynote speakers for the forthcoming Annual Consultants' Forum (see story above).

Speakers include:

* Sir John Bourn, KCB, comptroller and auditor general at the National Audit Office.

* Duncan Boyle, UK chief executive of Royal & SunAlliance.

* Jeremy Anderson, CEO of Atos Origin and Atos KPMG Consulting.

* Norman Savigar, business development director at LogicaCMG.

* Peter Osborne, managing partner with The French Thornton Partnership.

* Alan Matthews, director of strategic consulting at Fujitsu Consulting.

* Andy Chestnutt of Compass Management Consulting.

* Ian Blair, deputy commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service.

A full copy of the event agenda is available on the forum web page: click here

Sponsor

Silver Sponsors

Silver Sponsors of the Annual Consultants' Forum include AT&T, Alcatel, SAP, FormScape, Planview, CODA, Crown Computing, Ascertus and Casewise. More information about these sponsors can be found on the sponsor web page: click here

3. DELOITTE CONSULTING FAILS TO LEAVE AUDIT PARENT

Deloitte Consulting has failed to separate from its accounting parent firm Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, citing an uncertain economy, a tight credit market and the war with Iraq.

The decision comes more than a year after the audit firm first announced its intention to separate its consulting business in pursuit of perceived independence. Deloitte Consulting was planning a management buyout and a rebranding as 'Braxton'.

But having failed to meet self-imposed separation deadlines in September 2002, January 2003 and at the end of March 2003, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu CEO Jim Copeland admitted: "We gave this our very best efforts, but concluded, with advice from our outside legal and financial advisors, that it is just not prudent to complete this transaction in this environment. We began this process at a time of more robust consulting, capital and credit markets - all of which have deteriorated in the past 14 months."

Copeland acknowledged that the move to separate had wasted "tens of millions of dollars", but did not say whether the consultancy would be put up for sale. Instead, he said the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was not insisting on the separation and that Deloitte Consulting will continue "to comply with the form and substance of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, the SEC's independence rules in the US and with all regulatory and legislative requirements in other countries".

While the falling market damaged Deloitte Consulting's prospects as separation talks dragged on, it was Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu that eventually pulled the plug. Internal agreement on the organisational and financial terms of the separation had been reached, but Deloitte Touche Tohamatsu said: "Deloitte enjoys a strong capital structure, a position that is necessary to be able to continually invest in initiatives to enhance the quality of audits. In an uncertain economic environment, financial terms of the proposed transaction that might have weakened this position were unacceptable to both groups of partners."

In the UK, Deloitte Touche maintains substantial HR and business consulting services that were augmented by last April's acquisition of Andersen's former business consulting unit and its 600 consultants (MCN Direct 21, 29).

4. ACCENTURE HEAD ELECTED PRESIDENT OF MCA

Ian Watmore, managing director of Accenture's UK operations, has been elected president of the Management Consultancies Association (MCA). Following the annual presidential election process, he replaces Tony Smith, UK managing director of Kurt Salmon Associates.

Watmore commented: "This is a critical year for the consulting industry as it emerges from the economic downturn, faces ongoing consolidation and looks to thrive as the internet revolution sees further growth." He will be supported in the president's role by three newly-elected vice presidents: David Bailey, joint managing director of Impact Plus; Lynton Barker, chairman of Hedra; and Mary Cockroft, managing director of Pagoda Consulting.

Watmore joined Accenture in 1980 and in 1990 became a partner in its government market unit. He has client responsibility for Sainsbury's and the London Stock Exchange, and oversees large IT projects, transformational outsourcing and new ventures within Accenture's UK operations.

5. NHS SEEKS FIVE SUPPLIER GROUPS FOR $8BN PROGRAMME

The $8 billion National Health service IT transformation programme is to be split into five major contracts in an effort to cut short the procurement process, make the contracts large enough to attract major suppliers and ensure competition.

In a bid to rein in the chaos usually associated with UK public sector projects, NHS IT director general Richard Granger has chosen US engineering and construction firm Kellogg Brown & Root for a three-year, $58 million contract to oversee the project planning, procurement support and implementation of the NHS's IT programme.

Kellogg Brown & Root was selected above Bechtel, Booz Allen Hamilton, McKinsey and PA Consulting.

Following his decision to split the budget across five regions and five supplier groups, Granger confirmed that the first two "local service provider" contracts are expected to be awarded in October, with the remainder being secured by the end of this year (MCN Direct Vol. 2 No. 12).

The contract winners will install end-to-end technology solutions for single health authorities and clusters of them, offering functions such as electronic patient records, e-prescribing and booked appointments. They will also install and run infrastructure services such as high-speed broadband internet connectivity.

To date, IBM and Atos Origin have stated their intention to work together in the bidding process (MCN Direct Vol. 2 No. 10). Other potential suppliers - including consultancies, system integrators and software suppliers - are now deep in talks to finalise the consortia that will bid for slices of the NHS IT budget.

Granger said that any selected consortia that fail to meet annual milestones will have business taken away.

6. FURTHER INFORMATION - FEEDBACK/FORWARD TO A COLLEAGUE/UNSUBSCRIBE

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