These issues were voiced by a panel of speakers, which included Dr Uddesh Kohli, CMD, Power Finance Corporation Ltd, Gautam Thapar, MD, Ballarpur Industries Ltd, R Bhoothalingam, president, The Oberoi Group of Hotels, Dr R M Pandia, MD, Herdillia Chemicals Ltd, Ashok Khanna, executive director, Whirlpool. They were sharing their experiences of working with consultants at a seminar on `Consultants as Catalysts for Corporate Transformation: Towards India Inc,' organised by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI).

Sharing his experience, Pandia of Herdillia Chemicals, said that since his company's products were characterised by price volatility, forecasting was crucial to a restructuring exercise. ``However, in our case, market projections were off by about 60 per cent while price forecast was totally off the mark,'' he said.

``We also overestimated the market size. Apart from that, the general experience has been good,'' said Ashok Khanna of Whirlpool, while outlining how they had used consultants in the investment phase, restructuring phase and currently in the growth phase.

Pandia recommended a blueprint for a successful client-consultant relationship: ``It should be ethically mandatory for consultants to draw out a blueprint before the actual work begins,'' he said.

Gautam Thapar of Ballarpur Industries, exhorted Indian companies to ``Clean up your own house first, don't expect them (consulting firms) to do it for you.'' According to him, organisations are ill-prepared to deal with change. ``The presence of consultants makes them uncomfortable.'' To overcome this, Thapar said the top management should communicate within the organisation. ``Most of the time employees are not even aware of the company's state of affairs. Even before the consultant starts his work, it's our job to remove all misconceptions and tell them the reality,'' he added.

According to Bhoothalingam of the Oberoi Group, two areas - employee security and secrecy of data - needed to be tackled from a legislative front. The Group's relationship with several consultancies such as McKinsey, Gallup and others had borne fruit. The important fallout included a global network of suppliers, alliances and partners; people effectiveness and service level efficiency.

Speaking up for consultants was a lone speaker -- Rohit Sehgal, associate partner, Andersen Consulting. According to him, consultants did not have a magic wand, but all that was needed for a successful client-consultant relationship was to have common expectations and goals:``There should be enough pressure for change and a clear shared vision to carry the change through,'' he said.