(Most) Consultants See Growth
By CHRIS CZIBORR
Blame Capgemini for the results of the Business Journal’s debut list of Orange County’s management consulting firms.
The list ranks management consulting firms by OC employees. This is the first year the Business Journal has created a list of management consultants. In previous years, the paper had lumped them together with accounting firms under the “professional services” banner.
The top 11 management consultants reported a 22% decline in Orange County workers to 490, according to the list.
But No. 1 Capgemini in Irvine was responsible for all of the loss. The onetime Ernst & Young LLP consulting unit, which was sold in 2000, reported a 58% decline in OC workers to 106 in the past year.
Factoring out Capgemini, the remaining 10 firms posted a 2% gain in workers.
Capgemini has been consolidating its operations, slashing its total offices from 275 to 72. It closed one of its two offices in Irvine in the past year.
The slowdown in the tech consulting sector hit Capgemini hard.
“While revenue is steadily stabilizing across Europe, it is not yet the case in North America,” the company said in its first quarter earnings report.
At No. 2, the Costa Mesa office of McLean, Va.-based BearingPoint Inc. trimmed its workforce 4% to 65.
BearingPoint was spun off from KPMG LLP in 2002.
The management consulting industry was shaken up a few years ago when the
top accounting firms, such as Ernst &
Young and KPMG, decided to sell their
units.
PricewaterhouseCoopers sold its consulting unit to IBM Corp., which absorbed it into IBM’s tech consulting operations.
At No. 3 was Irvine-based Cerius Consulting Inc., which reported a 9% headcount gain to 60.
Most of Cerius’ clients are small- to medium-sized companies, both publicly and privately held.
“Cerius is becoming better known,branding is helping us and we’re getting more deals,” said President Phil Nasser. “In general, our clients are saying that the economy is no longer bad like it was the past years. But they are still cautious about how they spend money.”
Others adding staff included the Irvine
operations of New York-based No. 6 McKinsey & Co., up 14% to 40; No. 7 Irvine-based Xroads Solutions Group, up 28% to 32 workers; and the Newport Beach office of Sherman Oaks-based No. 8 Management Action Program Inc., which grew staff 15%
to 23.
Those reporting employee declines
included Irvine-based No. 4 Redwitz & Co./The GDR Group, which trimmed its workforce 5% to 53; and the Irvine office of Stamford, Conn.-based No. 5 Towers Perrin, down 10% to 45.
