MCA Management Awards celebrate excellence in UK consulting

Last night (27th April 2009), consulting firms were awarded accolades at the 13th annual MCA Management Awards, which recognise the best management consulting projects from the last year.

The MCA Management Awards identify the best case studies in each of 12 categories, where organisations, in the private or public sector, have achieved a significant improvement in performance with the assistance of management consultants. Four additional categories are awarded to best overall projects.

These were awarded to:

Overall Platinum Award: Deloitte/Transport for London

Overall Best Small Firm: Propaganda/Seabrook Crisps

Overall Best Public Sector Project: Atos Consulting/NHS South Central

Overall Best Private Sector Project: KPMG/Apacs

The category winners were:

Change Management (Public Sector): Hay Group/General Teaching Council
Established alternative funding structure for Teacher Learning Academy, saving GTC significant sums than if it was self-funded (which was considered the only option prior to Hay Group’s input.)

Change Management (Private Sector): KPMG/Apacs
Apacs, the trade association for payments services, called in KPMG to help stakeholders meet the Treasury’s demand for same day cash transfers.

Operational Performance (Public Sector): Atos Consulting/NHS South Central
Patient waiting times were reduced by an average of 14 weeks (some by 25 weeks-50%), plus a 50% reduction in missed appointments. No increased funding was necessary: sustainable improvements were made which released capacity.

Operational Performance (Private Sector): Trinity Horne/Eircom
Within 9 months, provision of high speed IP data services improved by 97% plus an increase in productivity amongst Core Network Services (CNS) staff of 12% was achieved.

Environment: Deloitte/Transport for London
Provided programme management and technical expertise to implement Low Emission Zone in London; within 4 months, 95% of vehicles entering London were compliant.

Outsourcing: Deloitte/Unilever
Deal to sell Unilever’s Shared Service Centres in Brazil generated immediate cash benefits and ongoing cost reductions. The deal was completed within 12 weeks.

Customer Engagement: Propaganda/Seabrook Crisps
Strategic marketing project which has delivered sales uplift of 15% year on year plus projected yearly turnover increase of 37%.

Technology: Arup/BAA
Shared infrastructure implemented to provide mobile communications in Terminal 5 at Heathrow. This had never been applied on such a large scale before. The project resulted in reduced costs for BAA, terminal wide coverage, simplified costs and improved management of mobile communications.

International: CSC/UK Border Agency
Set up 30 Visa Application Centres in 14 countries with 3.2m biometrics enrolled, 20,000 visa applicants connected to earlier immigration cases and 4,500 ID-swapping cases detected.

Business Strategy: Navigant Consulting/Tesco Personal Finance
Launch of UK’s first new major retail bank since dot-com era; financial services expertise used so that Royal Bank of Scotland moved from both shareholder and supplier of Tesco Personal Finance to simply a supplier within 12 weeks.

Human Resources: Deloitte/Thomson Reuters
Created a “company within a year”: Thomson Reuters (newly merged) arrived on ‘Day One’ with corporate values defined, 500 Senior Managers appointed, line managers equipped to manage change along with HR systems integrated and a fully operat