UXC consolidation pays dividends

Beverley Head
Thursday, 27 October 2011 08:57

IT Industry - Listed Tech

The consolidation of the various consulting practices that listed services business UXC had acquired over the years has been completed, and seems to be paying dividends with the announcement that Gartner has judged UXC to be the second largest provider of consulting services in Asia Pacific behind only IBM, with a market share of 7 per cent.

The company's annual report which was released last week trumpeted the statistic, and also confirmed that revenues in the overall UXC group had grown 11 per cent to $522 million, and that the company would be paying a 2 cents dividend.

Nick Mescher, the CEO of the consulting practice, said that over the last 12 months the consulting group headcount had risen by 35 to 250, but would not be drawn on the revenues from the group. He said that the company which had previously focussed on hiring senior consulting staff, would now add some more mid-range specialists, and was also considering re-igniting its graduate recruitment programme (although not until 2013) which was mothballed when the GFC bit.

Mr Mescher said that his job now was 'Working hard on revenue growth and the quality of the earnings' from the consulting business.

He said that he would release a white paper tomorrow lamenting the lack of project management skills in Australia. Mr Mescher said that cost cutting in large organisations during the economic downturn had led to a deskilling among IT staff.

The white paper is not based on any empirical analysis of the market, rather it is a distillation of Mr Mescher's opinion, and he acknowledged that it could appear self-serving to say that the market was deficient in the very skills that his company sells.

Mr Mescher however argued that companies might not necessarily have to bring in outside help, but should at least identify the erosion of project management skills and introduce more training and mentoring programmes to lift the skills base of existing staff.

UXC Consulting has also announced that it has been appointed a preferred provider of the 4-D team building process which was developed by a team of scientists who emerged from NASA. Two other organisations in Australia also have a 4-D offering. UXC presently has one 4-D trained coach.