Home-grown consulting firms make their mark

Mbugua started a business in 2006 that focused on the provision of premier food supplies to high-end Kenyan resorts. He steadily grew the business to a top-tier provider.

Having transitioned from a purely Nairobi distributor, Mbugua this year extended his reach from Mombasa to Nakuru, Eldoret, Kisumu and other remote areas with niche resorts.

Approaching his 10 year anniversary in the business, Mbugua desired to broaden distribution throughout East Africa and into Ethiopia.

He recognised that as part of the expansion she needed to move beyond hiring only his family and friends and instead retain unrelated professionals at all levels of the business. Mbugua also realised that he required outside assistance in order to push through the evolution.

He drafted an announcement seeking consulting services and placed a brief advertisement. He received a plethora of consulting proposals. Stunned by the high sticker price of the international management consulting conglomerates, he decided to invite three local low-priced bidders for presentations.

Each of the three low-cost consultants pitched their ideas to Mbugua and his team. During the presentations, he went on Google and found much of the content just a few clicks away.

In questioning the firms, he understood clearly that the consultants had just downloaded content the day before and did not truly know the subject matter. So Mbugua switched gears and invited three of the large multinational firms to pitch.

The night and day difference between the two pitches stunned him and, despite the price tag, Mbugua went with one of the large entities.

However, the proposed solution by the large multinational consulting firm did not meet with Mbugua’s expectations. He felt that the firm tried to fit his situation into the consultant’s standard model and could not make the local context come alive in the solution. Stuck with no workable solution, what should Mbuguua do next?

Those of us from Kenya or who have lived here for any amount of time know that our nation stands out as one of the most densely populated with consultants in the world.

Kenya holds self-purported experts in every possible discipline. So the wary business owner must spend considerable time separating the wheat from the chaff.

Kenya hosts the big four accounting and audit firms that also retain consulting divisions: PricewaterhouseCoopers, Ernst and Young, KPMG, and Deloitte thrive as market leaders. Global management consulting giants McKinsey & Company now operate a Nairobi office.

Many of the colossal international consulting firms grew out of partnering with leading local entities or buying out Kenyan firms as well as consolidating globally.

Kenya struggled with a void by missing strong middle-tier consulting firms that could move beyond one-man shows, develop their own brand and structures, and create strong content to rival the large international partnerships.

Organisational behaviour research conducted at the world’s leading universities clearly shows the importance of local context, customs and culture in the success of consulting interventions.

Cultural context serves as a mediating variable to many positive work outcomes including work performance, job satisfaction, organisation commitment, among dozens of others.

The days that celebrated the parachuting in consultant from abroad are long gone. Business professionals remember humourous and tragic consulting debacles at the hands of parachuted consultants in the past five years.

Interestingly, a new crop of ambitious local firms emerged over recent years and built innovative practices and began to rival the big four. Fascinating creative and deeply knowledgeable local management consulting companies provide business, Government, NGO, and bilateral donor executives with uniquely Kenyan and quality services.

Let us focus on the following seven leading Kenyan homegrown consulting firms.

Enreal boasts clients that would historically have chosen one of the big four multinational consulting firms. WYLDE International creates unique Kenyan programmes and solutions for entrepreneurs and growing businesses from SMEs all the way up to international conglomerates.

Viva Africa specialises in tax and legal consulting with in-depth local knowledge. Altima Africa provides powerful strategy consulting and Kenyan-centric recruitment.

A former big four Kenyan superstar formed Nexus Africa that now shines in tax consulting. Kimani Kerrets, traditionally an audit firm, now diversifies into management consulting areas.

Finally, inspiring Kenyan women formed Lattice Consulting that addresses corporate finance issues. The leading seven Kenyan middle tier firms report record business growth as clients develop and quality increases.

Likewise with a Kenyanisation trend, the large multinational management consulting firms now strive to indigenise and retain high percentages of Kenyan talent as opposed to expatriate staff.

Universities also nowadays step into the consulting space to, in theory, provide coverage between gaps in what science research shows for business performance and human motivation with what businesses actually do in the Kenyan context.

So the business owner desiring quality growth is now spoiled for choice from the local universities, international-quality local firms as well as multinational conglomerates that now recognise the importance of local Kenyan knowledge.

The infusion of global best practices tested and tweaked for Kenya bolsters our booming economy as among the top five growth countries in the world.

You no longer must decide between a laughable briefcase consultant who discovers his ideas through Google or expensive parachuting foreigners with little to no local knowledge. Discuss your consulting successes and failures with other Business Daily readers on Twitter through #KenyaExecutives.

Professor Scott serves as the director of the New Economy Venture Accelerator (Neva) at USIU’s Chandaria School of Business, www.ScottProfessor.com, and may be reached on: [email protected] or Twitter: @ScottProfessor .