EU Business News February 2018

12 EU BUSINESS NEWS / Q1 2018 , How Technology Will Transform the European Consulting Landscape This month, we selected Enabling Procurement (EP), a young consultancy firm specialised in procurement, as our One toWatch in Procurement Consultancy in Belgium. This is down to their new approach to consulting which seems to have hit a chord withmanymid-size European businesses. Consulting firms are quick to promote change programs that deploy fast- moving digital technology for their clients, but how can technology improve your interactions with your consultants? We asked the question to Enabling Procurement, one of our 2017 Belgian Business Top 100. EP has built and implemented purchasing strategies for multi- cultural and multi-site clients. However, they are not only advising their clients to be more agile, the buzz word for some time now (533 hits on Accenture site search, 916 on McKinsey), but they also believe that agility is the key to their own relationships with their clients. Managing Director of EP, Olivier Durand provides us with his thoughts on the industry at present, and what developments are arising within the sector. “Interestingly, I do not believe that clients will keep asking to implement an ‘agile’ strategy and keep paying their consultants millions of euros over several years to do so. It does not really make sense. Then again at the same time, you cannot build a successful procurement strategy without extensive knowledge and expertise in the category that you are transforming.” 1802EU02 Indeed, for many years, large consulting groups worked on building a very substantial pool of expertise that they could sell at a high mark-up to their clients. Maintaining access to and delivery of this knowledge was anything but agile. Nevertheless, with the help of new technology and ways of working, EP is looking to change that, as Olivier explains. “Essentially, you cannot make a good decision in procurement unless you have the right