Professional Services

Greetings for a new year!

Wanted to share some thoughts (and invite some as well) on a topic I have long been pondering over. Although being personally involved in a 'professional service' may bias my opinion on the subject, I think explaining the subject from an insider's perspective might lend some insights and credibility into any hypotheses that develop.

As simple as the etymology of the word seems to be, a lookup on the word 'Professional' resulted in the meaning I refer to in this blog - "engaged in one of the learned professions". To keep it simple, let us include medicine, engineering, accounting, law and similar professions requiring some kind of advanced learning - either by study or by vocation.

When i was growing up in India, the clear objective of most children from middle-class families was to be employed as a professional (preferably in a professional services firm). Today, one may add that one of the great Indian dreams is to be an 'IT' professional. However, today - as was the case 5-10 years back - professional services were not a just a good job, they were reputed jobs. To be an auditor, lawyer, consultant etc. with a big multinational gives one access to more respect and admiration from family, peers, friends and acquaintances. This, I deduce, is one part due to the tremendous quality of the select few who succeed against a populous candidate pool and secondly, a result of the value clients give to professional services.

This value for professional services is something I find absent in Singapore. As I mentioned at the start, my opinion may be biased and limited to the perspective of the industry I work within. However, be it audit or consulting, it seems these services are not valuable enough for client organisations. This is reflected in the lower fees that professional service firms can demand from clients in return for meeting not just normal clients needs but tighter deadlines (for audit) and covering larger scope (for consulting) as compared to clients in other countries. I may also find support from professionals in these sectors who have worked in other countries and have worked in Singapore.

On many occasions, I have thought about underlying reasons for this. These include reasons such as the small size of the market, clients being to short-term focused, lack of a truly competitive manpower base and some others which I am either not clear about or I cannot articulate coherently enough. But as I get more entrenched into this business of services, I hope that varied experiences can provide a logical pattern which explains this. And of course, once one can identify that root cause, we can work towards improving the perception of value of professional services.


Will write in more on this as we go along.
Wishing a very Happy Pongal to the Tamil community.

Cheers,
Satish