Significant is an independent consultancy and research agency, active in:

• Developing and evaluating policy and strategy related to social themes. We focus on aspects such as Market Mechanisms in Healthcare, Public Order and Safety, Welfare, and Socially Responsible Business Practices
• The translation of organisational policy and strategy into optimum operational management, centred on the themes of Strategy and Management, Organising Operational Management, and Purchasing and Supplier Management

The types of project we are typically involved in are:

• Improving care purchasing for various health insurers
• Evaluation of the new gratiewet (Pardons Act) for the Ministry of Justice
• Advising local government on the content of WMO policy (the Social Support Act) and implementing tenders
• Support for a long-term purchasing process improvement programme at Rijkswaterstaat (Department of Public Works and Water Management)
• Development and realisation of a Shared Services Center for Albeda College
• Advising BHP Billiton on integrated facility management (maincontracting)
• Leading the European tender process for helicopters for the Dienst Luchtvaartpolitie (Airborne Police Service)

Within the markets in which we are active, we can see a young and highly educated generation of self-confident customers on the rise, with a fresh and self-aware view of how organisations work and what support they do and do not require. This generation is not so impressed by status that has been acquired or ‘results obtained in the past’ and would rather have honest and authentic support provided here and now by people they can trust.

We are seeing a re-evaluation of tailored advice at the top levels, in which templates and methods or techniques that have been tried and tested elsewhere have at most a merely supporting role in answering the customer’s specific questions.

We also observe that customers want consultants with a thorough understanding of the market and developments in their market or professional field. Market knowledge – the principle underlying the competencies and consultancy products – is a cast-iron requirement. Woolly and generalised narratives do no have any effect.

Customers do not even want just concrete and realistic advice based on thorough analysis of the question being tackled: they are also increasingly demanding that the consultant can help them with the practical implementation of that advice and the accompanying changes.