PA Consulting Group

PA Consulting Group Ltd.

File:Pa logo2.gif
Company type	Employee-owned
Industry	Management Consulting
Founded	1943 (Personnel Administration)
Headquarters	London, UK
Key people	Jon Moynihan, Executive Chairman Alan Middleton, Chief Executive Officer Andrew Hooke, Chief Operating Officer
Number of employees	~3,000 (2006)
Website	www.paconsulting.com

PA Consulting Group (PA) is an international management consulting firm. As of 2007 it operates in more than 35 countries, working in both private and public sectors. It has won independent awards and recognition for its client work in financial services, energy, life sciences and healthcare, government and public services, manufacturing, defence, and telecommunications.PA's Report and Accounts for 2005 defines its services as: helping clients to design strategies for growth, achieve effective IT that improves business performance, mobilise human resources, deliver complex programs and major business transformations, and develop breakthrough products and processes. The latter are created at PA's dedicated applied technology facilities at Melbourn, Cambridgeshire, UK, and Princeton, NJ, USA.

PA is entirely an employee-owned company. PA has no audit practice and does not form exclusive alliances with third-party vendors or service providers. PA does, however, work in non-exclusive alliances on specific programs when it is in the best interests of its clients.

Principal offices

PA operates worldwide in more than 35 countries. Its principal office locations are listed below. Office contact details

• Argentina - Buenos Aires
• Denmark - Copenhagen
• Germany - Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, Munich
• India - Bangalore, New Delhi
• Indonesia - Jakarta
• Ireland - Dublin
• Malaysia - Kuala Lumpur
• Netherlands - Utrecht
• New Zealand - Auckland, Wellington
• Norway - Lysaker
• People's Republic of China - Beijing
• Sweden - Stockholm
• United Arab Emirates - Dubai
• United Kingdom - London, Cambridge, Belfast, Birmingham, Glasgow, Manchester
• United States - Washington, Denver CO, Cambridge MA, Chicago IL, Houston TX, Los Angeles CA, Madison WI, New York NY, Princeton NJ

Second Life

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PA's office in Second Life.

In November 2006, PA Consulting Group became the first management consulting firm to establish a presence in Second Life . PA uses Second Life to host virtual conferences, recruitment events and as a tool for its clients to simulate new product and service offerings

History

1940-1950

Personnel Administration (PA) was founded in 1943 by three Englishmen: Ernest E. Butten, Tom H. Kirkham and Dr David Seymour. Britain's war effort created great demand for munitions and goods, which had to be produced by a relatively unskilled work force. Butten and co formed Personnel Administration Limited to provide advice to industry as to how to improve the productivity of their workers.

Like the other three firms that dominated consulting in the 1940s, 50s and 60s, PA was an offshoot of the pre-war Bedaux Company. Bedaux in turn was descended from the time and motion 'scientific management' theories of Frederick Winslow Taylor and Frank Gilbreth. Butten sought to take the somewhat mechanistic and task-orientated concepts of scientific management and add a human dimension to them. The chief idea, along the lines of McGregor's 'Theory Y', was that by involving the worker in the process of change, greater gains could be made both by the worker and the organisation. To date, time and motion management consultants had been seen as the enemies of the workforce leading to resistance and even violence (see a spoof of the role of a management consultant in the Ealing comedy I'm Alright Jack).

PA's first assignment was to train housewives to assemble the tail gun section for the Lancaster Bomber, as part of Britain's policy of bringing women into the factories in order to free-up male workers for the armed forces. By 1950 the company had 84 consultants.

1950-1970

PA expanded over the next 20 years, and by 1970 it was the largest management consulting firm in the world by headcount (closely followed by Booz Allen and McKinsey). PA had also expanded geographically, mostly along the lines of the British Empire: indeed its operation in Australia provided roughly a third of the firm's revenue.

In the 1960s PA diversified its revenue sources significantly by more or less inventing the 'newspaper box' advertisement for recruitment purposes. This concept spread rapidly across Europe and the Far East: in some countries, during the 60s, the 'PA Supplement' was an extra section of the newspaper filled entirely with advertisements from PA Recruitment.

Butten retired from PA in 1970, having earlier sold his 100% shareholding in PA to the Butten Trust in 1958. The Trust was intended as a long term guardian of PA's fortunes and an assurance that the company would be 'owned by the employees'.

1970-1992

PA's position in the industry deteriorated drastically over the following quarter century, as competitors such as McKinsey and the newer strategy consulting firms (such as Boston Consulting Group and Bain) redefined the concept of management consulting. While there were occasional years with strong revenues, the company was never very profitable. One bright element during this period of general decline was the PA's work advising companies on potential applications of technology to business issues. Arising out of this success, major technology centres were built in Melbourn, UK and Princeton, USA.

Towards the end of the 80s, after an upsurge in the industry, PA's management decided it wished to take the firm public. The Butten Trust, after an application to the courts in the UK, agreed to give 15% of its shares to its employees, as part of a long-term plan to float. However these hopes were dashed in the subsequent consulting industry downturn of 1989 to 1992 and, by the end of that downturn, PA was essentially bankrupt, with some £30 million (US$ 57 million) of debt, significant annual losses and a rapid outflow of staff.

1992-2005

Between 1991 and 1994, PA lost almost half of its people, partly because of its downturn in fortunes, and partly because companies such as IBM and EDS had started to enter the consulting market and were aggressively hiring. During this time, in 1992, Jon Moynihan was appointed as chief executive of PA, with a remit to turn the company around. With a new strategy, aggressive cost-cutting, and an industry upturn, the turn around succeeded and in 1995 PA made record profits. . PA expanded significantly in the United States through the acquisition of Hagler Bailly in 2000. Although PA suffered in the consulting recession of 2001-2004, its revenue and headcount have recovered since then.

Today

2004, 2005 and 2006 were, in turn, record years for PA. In recent years the firm has significantly diversified its activities into ventures and 50% of PA's return to shareholders over the years 2002-2006 came from non-consulting activities.

PA ventures

PA's venture programme (PAGroup Ventures) was established in 2000 to exploit the ideas and intellectual capital generated from its consulting work. This has been highly value generating: for example PA created a third-generation mobile phone business called UbiNetics which was sold in two tranches for a total of $133 million in 2005; and Meridica - a drug delivery system company - was valued at time of sale to Pfizer at $125 million in 2004. Each sale generated a return of many multiples of PA's total investment in its ventures programmes to date.

PA demerged its successful venture arm, Ipex Capital, in June 2008. PA Consulting continues to work closely with Ipex Capital on existing ventures in the Ipex portfolio as well as looking at new opportunities together. www.ipexcap.com

ProcServe continues to be a wholly owned business of PA Consulting Group, providing secure electronic marketplaces with vendor-neutral connectivity and transaction capabilities. www.procserve.com

Awards

Management Consultancies Association (MCA) Management Awards

These awards are organized by the UK's MCA, and run in association with the magazine Management Today. Some 50 firms enter the competition every year, including many of the major global consulting organisations, although the elite strategy firms like McKinsey do not enter. They are independently judged and aim to identify the best case studies in each of 18 categories, where organizations, in the private or public sector, have achieved a significant improvement in performance with the assistance of management consultants, either in-house or external. PA has won many awards, including, in 2006, the overall award for its work with the Georgian Government and US Agency for International Development.

External links

• Official Web site
• Graduate recruitment brochure (PDF file, 267Kb)
• Explanation of PA's Consulting Ranks
• MCA Management Awards Web site - recent Award-winning case studies
• PA's 2006 Award-winning client work summarised on video
• PA's office in Second Life