Internal consultants

If you talk to consultants in Germany one of the post-recession trends they’re most likely to mention is the rise of in-house consulting units in multinational companies. Driven by a desire to build internal skills as much as cut the amount of money spent on consultants, these units pose a genuine threat to consulting firms there.

Internal consultants have a chequered history: one minute they are on the up, eager recipients of corporate largesse; the next they are on the down, seen as a luxury the organisation can no longer afford. Lacking the brand and independence of external resources, they have widely been seen as the “poor manager’s consultant”, the people you use only when you don’t have the money for the real thing.