ABSTRACT
The professional services sector is facing major changes now and in the years ahead. For firms to succeed under these new market conditions, they must improve their value proposition to clients and significantly improve their efficiency with which they deliver it. It is clear that most UK professional service firms are well behind other business sectors in business process management and improvement. Therefore, in most firms there is substantial cost being wasted day-by-day, hour-by-hour, on client work and administration that could be converted to margin and also provide an improved client service. There are decades of experience in business process re-engineering in other business sectors which professional service firms can learn from and proven tools and methods which they can apply. Therefore the only real barriers lie in the firms themselves – in their openness to new ideas, their will to act and their courage to execute.
