Mick James, Top-Consultant.com’s management consultancy columnist, talks with Tony Tarquini, head of financial services at Capita Consulting, about the company’s future plans.

Capita Consulting laying foundations for financial services consultancy business

For many people the name Capita is synonymous with public sector IT and outsourcing, ignoring the company’s deep roots in consultancy (perhaps Capita should consider itself lucky—the Guardian, recently explained to its readers that Atos was a “French IT firm”).

In fact, half of Capita’s income comes from financial services, and it has a strong consultancy arm backing up its public sector offering. The missing part of the puzzle is financial services consulting—a situation Tony Tarquini, appointed earlier this year as head of financial services at Capita Consulting, is keen to redress.

“The consultancy business has in the past been almost entirely pubic sector, with nothing in financial services, apart from the odd bit here and there,” he says. “But we’ve now grown to 40 people in a year, which is pretty good onboarding.”

Tarquini has drawn his team from multiple sources—some have moved within Capita Consulting, while others brought financial services expertise from other parts of the group, and he is also hiring externally.

“My biggest problem is maintaining the quality of the consultants in a time of rapid growth,” he says. “There are plenty of people around, but I’m not interested in having plenty of people, I want quality.”

Although Capita has made one acquisition this year, Tarquini says he was never interested in simply buying a consultancy of the appropriate size to become Capita Consulting’s financial services arm.

“It would have been relatively easy to acquire a business, but we wanted to establish the business organically as something that was Capita home-grown, capable of delivering and growing in its own right,” he says.

He adds it is necessary to be “very careful” when acquiring: “You’ve got to appraise the business—are they on the skids, will all the good people leave? When we acquired Xayce, we had the opportunity to look at the business and look at a small number of very good people—18 consultants came in through that route.”

It’s clearly important to Tarquini that financial services consulting fits in with Capita’s culture, which he describes as “intensely pragmatic.”

“There are very few prima donnas at Capita,” he says. “I tell people the reasons why they shouldn’t join Capita: if you’ve got an ego, if you don’t like to do things for yourself, if you don’t like to roll your sleeves up.”

Tarquini feels that the client base is ready for a cost effective but highly competent alternative to current consultancy offerings.

“Our positioning is slightly different to the idea of the client partner charged out at Big Four rates and in charge of selling and stakeholder management, while delivery is handled by junior people,” he says. “Clients in financial services are very savvy, intelligent buyers: they want a team of people who’ve all got experience, headed by a person with even more experience but not necessarily a client partner.”

For people who join Capita now in these types of roles the opportunity to grow with the firm is immense. Tarquini cannot reveal his precise goal for 2013, although he says that when he was first given it, he though it was “a hell of a stretch target,” but six months on he feels it is entirely possible and has a clear plan to build a “substantially bigger” unit.

This is partly defined by the size of the opportunity: “The two main areas of growth today are financial services and operations, and we are in financial services operations.”

His task is greatly aided by the fact that a significant proportion of the operations of the financial sector have been outsourced to Capita, and his team is currently running transformation projects for Capita Life and Pensions.

“What we are creating is a centre of excellence for transformation for our outsourcing business,” he says. “There’s a £6bn pipeline of outsourcing operations and as these come to fruition, they will need very strong transition skills and also transformation skills.”

But he stresses that the practice is also winning new business outside both the Capita client base and outsourcing-driven change.

“A lot of people who know the brand would think the answer is always outsourcing,” says Tarquini. “But we would lose our credibility if the answer to everything was outsourcing—it takes a lifetime to establish a reputation but 5 minutes to lose it.”

Within financial services, a programme backlog from the “bloodbath” of 2007-8, combined with the new presses from regulators, means there is a vast backlog of the sort of pragmatic, operational projects that fall into Capita Consulting’s sweet spot.

“There’s a lot of regulatory work,” he says. “Companies will have had, say, Ernst & Young in to tell them what the statute means. That will have been translated into a plan and now they need someone to help them implement that—so, for example, looking at data management, the provenance and data, and the flow of data, so that the FSA see it accurate and timely.”

As Tarquini says, Capita’s growth trajectory is mainly constrained by the war for talent in the recruitment market. Long term, though, he would like the firm to have more of a “grow your own” strategy.

“We’ve set up an academy where relatively junior consultants can go through a three-year programme of development,” he says. “After a broad first year, they would come out with a degree in a specialist subject.”

Graduate recruitment is something Capita is also considering. Tarquini says that while he sees financial services growing to match the size of some of Capita’s public sector consultancy practices, he would also like to see the firm punch above its weight in terms of the consultants it develops and who go on to achieve great things in the industry. He points out that in many industries there are firms which, though not the biggest, seem to supply more than their share of senior talent to the industry.

“I want to offer really good training, so that people always speak highly of the business,” he says. “I’d like to think Capita Consulting is a business like that, one with the reputation that a lot of good people started there.”

All views expressed in this article are those of Mick James and do not necessarily reflect the views of Top-Consultant.com and Consultant-News.com

Source:  www.top-consultant.com

Capita Consulting, the management consultancy arm of The Capital Group Plc, has developed an innovative approach to transformation which is founded upon Capita’s experience of hundreds of change programmes.

Lesley Bosworth, Director of Consulting, Capita Consulting said: “Capita Consulting have already found being members of the MCA useful. Our own Academy members have participated as part of the Young MCA group, and have taken their learning to apply it to our growing group of young consultants. We look forward to full and active participation over the course of the coming months.”

Alan Leaman, Chief Executive of the MCA said: “I am delighted to welcome Capita Consulting to the growing membership of the MCA. Their decision to join us underlines the importance of the MCA’s role as a voice for this important industry. These are crucial times for the industry and the wider economy. Management consultancies with a proven commitment to high standards and world class services will play a crucial role in helping Britain to grow again and building future prosperity.”

MCA members represent just under 70% of the UK consulting sector by fee income and membership has become synonymous with quality and professionalism in consulting. All members adhere to the MCA Code of Practice that provides the consultancy buyer with reassurance that MCA firms maintain the highest standards.

The MCA also offers a wide range of activities and member services, and provides a platform for government and industry stakeholders and the media to engage in debate with consultants about wider issues facing the UK economy.

Source:  Top-Consultant

Capita Consulting has acquired Manchester based Xayce, a specialist financial services consultancy. The acquisition will add significant depth of capability and breadth of expertise to Capita Consulting’s existing offering to the financial services market, especially in terms of regulatory compliance and data management.

Xayce is a business transformation consultancy specialising in helping financial services organisations deliver regulatory, risk, operational efficiency and data management change programmes.

Commenting on the acquisition, Tony Tarquini, head of financial services at Capita Consulting, said: “The experience and expertise Xayce brings in the areas of regulatory compliance and data management complements and enhances our current capabilities, making this an ideal acquisition to extend our offering to the financial services market, particularly banking. We have significant growth targets for 2011 and this is a major step towards achieving them.”

Xayce co-founder, Al Ardern, said: “We are delighted and excited to be joining the Capita Consulting team. Capita’s existing footprint and ambitions within the financial services market are significant and we look forward to helping drive these growth plans in the coming years.”

Steve Wright, Xayce co-founder, continued: “We believe this acquisition will also allow us to broaden the scope of services to our clients and provide greater opportunity and challenges for our employees.”

Source: Top-Consultant