Here’s A Great New Year’s Resolution: Quit Body Shopping!
According to Wikipedia, Body Shopping is the practice of consultancy firms recruiting workers (generally in information technology sector) in order to contract their services out on tactical short to mid-term basis. Well…, truth is, it doesn’t really have anything to do with tactics...
Body Shopping fuels the cashflow that pays the wages of the consultants the firm has set out to work as much billable time as possible for one ore multiple “clients”.
You see that’s exactly where the problem starts… If people are allocated fulltime towards client’s; how can they be acquire the knowledge that is needed to become a better problem solver? Do they even have what it takes to solve a client’s problem? That’s what it is about right? Solving problems? Co-thinking, Co-acting and Co-creating, … or are they just sent out to follow a script and cash-in big-time for their employer?
As Karim Vaes once said, there is a clear difference between Consultancy and Body Shopping, yet the line separating the two is quite thin, but still obvious when you start paying attention! In case you like to find out more about where and how the line is drawn, check out Karim’s blog here!
Our company, ARQS, is anything but focused on Body Shopping…, in our opinion, that is exactly whats wrong with the entire industry.
Nowadays, larger consultancy firms are selling people like they’re products…, brainless robots repeating a predefined scenario. Billable Time Generation Machines (BTGM’s)is what we call it.
However, they aren’t really solving any real problems for their clients. They’re good at patching things up for while, but in the long term, it almost always turns sour. Problems just keep on reoccurring and they just keep the consultants coming like Vodka shots in a Russian bar.
Before you know it, it’s an invasion. They overcharge you, and most of the time, there is little or no return on that investment for the client. So we thought:
How can we tackle that dysfunctional system?
So when we started ARQS, we have made it our mission to turn real problem solving into our core business. We solve problems, step by step, proactive, using our client’s current resources. That also applies to people.
We streamline organisations towards a first-time-right mindset, educating, supporting and elevating their own people.
Why? First of all, it’s just more efficient for us to work with people who actually know the company and breathe its culture. Secondly, it’s a pretty low cost approach that often leads to magnificent results! You could compare with Growth Hacking, a process of rapid experimentation where you achieve great results with little or non-existing resources.
Resources are often misleading…, lots of companies think they need a lot of external knowledge to solve complex internal problems, not knowing that the only real solution to the problem is amongst themselves.
We help them recognise to root cause of a given situation and coach them into finding and implementing a proper sustainable solution.
As soon as the snowball is rolling and is picking up more snow as it goes, we consistently lower our own presence and steer them towards self-sustainability. Isn’t this the core of consultancy?
We shed light on the endless opportunities one has, charging them a fair price compared to the value we help them obtain.
It’s about turning our clients into real winners.
In case you would like to know more about our way of working, our philosophy and core values, don’t hesitate to pay us a visit on our website, or just shoot a direct message to either Sammy or myself!
#staysharp
Dean.
