There were over 259,000 consultant associates working across around 176,000 consultancies in the UK in 2025, and the sector grew by 2.7% between 2019 and 2024 to reach £20 billion in value. Much of the business was focused on helping organisations reassess their digital transformation and sustainability initiatives, indicating heightened attention to these areas. Larger consultancies continue to dominate the market. With flattening demand and increased competition, many clients are now rethinking what they want from their consultancy partners and asking whether the accountability, quality, and impact they receive for their money from large-scale firms are a good investment.
Consequently, many organisations are now looking to boutique consultancy firms whose focus is less on overheads and more on outcomes. By trusting the skills and expertise that specialist associates bring to projects, firms like Brighter can offer clients leaner, more focused, expert-led services that deliver higher accountability and better value for money. This shift has coincided with an increasing number of experienced consultants leaving larger firms in favour of boutique firms, leading to more associate-led consultation processes and improving the delivery model.
In the third of our series focusing on consultant-led transformation programmes, we look at why top consultants prefer working with Brighter and why that benefits our clients.
We asked some of our recent senior consultant hires what they enjoyed about their previous employment with large-scale firms, and why they left. The former included the prestige of working for a top-ten firm, the global opportunities available, and the advancement structure in place. The latter included rigid hierarchies, layers of bureaucracy and assignments based on availability rather than expertise.
They noticed that engagements were often secured by senior partners pitching the proposal, managers designing the process, and junior teams delivering it, with less-experienced team members assigned to a project based on their availability rather than their capability – a common process in larger-scale firms, where the utilisation model is paramount. And while this can yield adequate results, it doesn’t always deliver in a focused or accountable way.
The associates we’ve recently welcomed want to do things differently. They want greater autonomy, the ability to deliver real impact and the opportunity to work on projects that demonstrate their strengths and expertise, rather than having to hit set targets.
And for our clients, this difference means that they’re not being assigned generalists from a bench of waiting consultants; they’re getting specialists in their specific area of need who are invested in outcomes and can focus on aligning their expertise with delivering the best possible outcome.
Let’s examine the issue in more detail.
Many large consultancies operate a utilisation model in which clients are billed based on the percentage of time that consultants are deployed. It’s in the firm’s best interest, therefore, to deploy consultants on the first available project, regardless of their experience or expertise, simply to maintain a level of billable hours. Commercially, it maximises revenue, but in reality, it can reduce trust between clients and consultancies and lead to clients paying junior staff to work on critical programmes rather than the experienced consultants needed, simply because they’re cheaper. There’s also the potential for workstreams to expand in scope to increase the consultancy's billable hours, not because it’s necessary.
At Brighter, we operate differently. We don’t maintain a ‘bench’ from which we draw consultants as and when they’re needed. We’ve built our model on deploying associates whose experience matches the client’s requirements, who are highly experienced within their specialisation and who have the credentials to effect worthwhile change. We deliver effective outcomes through ‘intentional’ staffing, enabling our associates to choose the assignments where they believe they can add the greatest value and creating an environment of direct accountability where the outcome reflects their commitment and professionalism.
Many of our clients are also realising that effective transformation doesn’t always require a top-ten scale. What they want is sector expertise, guidance that’s strategic and focused and execution that’s structured and considered. This, combined with agile and responsive delivery, puts us in the ‘sweet spot’ where we can bring the depth required to deal with complex change while remaining agile enough to adapt and respond quickly.
This means that the associates we deploy can make faster decisions, are available to the client when an issue needs clarification, and, most importantly, are accountable for creating a true partnership to achieve the desired outcomes.
Large-scale firms charge large-scale fees because they have to cover large-scale overheads. These include maintaining a brand and presence in the market, the office infrastructure needed to accommodate large numbers of staff and their support teams and the ever-widening expenses that multi-nationals incur. These costs mean that the business is able to operate on a massive scale but only by having pricing structures that reflect their outgoings.
In our associate-led model, our costs are strictly aligned to our expertise and delivery outcomes that deliver value to boards and stakeholders. Our leaner structure means that we can offer our clients a return on their investment that includes capability, specialist expertise and measurable outcomes rather than maintaining an expensive internal system. Our associates practice ownership and autonomy in projects that reflect their strengths and achieve the outcomes that clients pay for.
The evolution of consulting in the UK has led to the point where many clients are rethinking their partnerships with top-ten firms and seeking more accountability, insight and expertise. The associate model, which we here at Brighter operate, offers an attractive alternative to larger firms’ traditional methods, and allows experienced professionals the autonomy, specialisation and clarity they need to focus on adding value to outcomes.
This freedom also benefits clients by giving them access to motivated and engaged specialists who are invested in a project's success and want to create true, long-term partnerships.
Our associate model demonstrates how we believe consultation processes should be achieved, with experts leading them, with full accountability and with the outcome being at the focus of everything.
If you want to work with consultants who care as much about the result as you do, let’s talk.