In Vietnam, MPDF carried out an in-depth study of the supply side of management consulting services and set up a Consultant Development Program, which provides training and technical assistance to consultants who wish to improve their skills and access the SME market. Although there is no such program currently within sight in Cambodia, we believe that there is enough demand for information on consulting services to warrant a study of the supply side of core BDS. Our study are trying to covers all important background information such as the number of players (consulting firms and individual consultants), their services, clients, capacity, and needs, with specific reference to their provision of services to SMEs in Cambodia. This will help MPDF identify potential BDS partners, provide SMEs with a list of service providers and services available, and share information on the industry with other donors/development partners. It may also feed into any consultant development program that MPDF might undertake in the future.
In general, the consulting market in Cambodia is young and underdeveloped. Management consulting as a profession started to emerge only in the early 1990s when a Cambodian returnee set up a business to provide corporate services to foreign investors wishing to start businesses in Cambodia and two “big players” of international consulting, PwC and KPMG, established offices here. While other Cambodian-owned and foreign-owned consulting firms followed after that, these firms are relatively small and (with the exception of a few) offer operational business services, rather than strategic consulting. These low-end firms cover what are traditionally functional areas: General/Strategic Management, Accounting and Finance, Marketing and Advertising, IT, and Legal services.
The rather simplistic nature of consulting services being offered reflects less on the qualifications of consultants than on the demand for consulting services in Cambodia. Existing demand for high-end (strategic) services come mainly from foreign-owned and joint venture enterprises, donors or donor-funded projects, and NGOs. In the supply side, especially the upper end, the market is also dominated by foreign firms. As the underdeveloped consulting market in Cambodia is a product of the country’s relatively young economy, we are suggesting the possible interventions to promote the growth of a BDS market by: 1) encouraging demand and raising SMEs’ awareness of the benefits of using BDS; 2) helping consultants to form a network to expose local consultants to new ideas and practices in business consulting, and to share experience among themselves; and 3) training consultants in how to articulate the value of consulting services to prospective clients, above all for those consultants working with SMEs.
March 2005
Full report English 
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