I have been a passive user of this forum for a while now. I work in industry and have been contemplating a move into consulting for about a year.Having been bombarded by the media with negative consulting stories (NHS IT system etc...), I would be very interested to here about some success stories - pls be as specific as you can.Also, what proportion of projects are, in your own honest opinion, successful. How many of them leave you genuinely thinking "We delivered tangible improvements to organisation x, improvements which will give them a competitive advantage..."?

I’d think that a good proportion, say 60-70% of my consulting projects over the years could be termed a success and the client was left in a better state than before we started. Sure, sometimes the monetary or other benefits don’t quite match the heights you showed in your beautifully crafted project summary to the board, but certainly a good proportion are delivered. The main reasons I’d say for project failure are:-Improperly scoped to begin with so no-one knew what would be delivered – often the case with the big government IT failures you see in the news-Projects that are “political” i.e. you come in the middle of a power struggle and consultants were only brought in as the sponsor couldn’t push it through internally so by paying a fortune for 3rd party advice they believe everyone else will have to listen to them. They invariably don’t.-Low client contact throughout the project, or “buy-in” to give it another term, so when you go they either can’t see the value of delivering what you say or can’t be bothered.To paint a VERY generalised assumption, I’d say reason 1 is most common in IT consulting, reason 2 in operations consulting, and reason 3 in strategy consulting.

Sometimes the smaller jobs are the most rewarding, I recently undertook a two week departmental strategy review for a public sector client and found (and proved) that they could save £250k per year and capitalise on some multi £m assets.I heard yesterday that they've put it into practise and are delighted with the results.

Well done bingobango! Must give you a great feeling to know you made a significant contribution that is really appreciated. Makes the job so worthwhile and is exactly what this profession is all about (hopefully). :-)

I think it was the cleanliness of the process, the result didn't change the world but between long and complicated engagements it's so enjoyable to have a quick run through the process and end up at a positive result.

I also have recommendations which could save the government billions. For starters, they could abolish the DTI. Next, I would take a look at their website - I'm sure at least 50% of the departments listed could be eliminated without anybody noticing the difference.

...maybe media talk only about negative consulting stories.Good performing or fair performing projects are not news for media.Anyway, the percentage in my opinion is 70% of successful projects.