Helene LAFFITTE

I’m the founder and CEO of Consulting Quest, a global leader in consulting sourcing and performance improvement, and I’m on a mission to make intellectual services procurement smarter, leaner, and future-ready. 

An engineer by training, I found my calling in management consulting. I’ve recently expanded into the SaaS world to help digitalize and elevate consulting procurement to the next level. 

Over the past decade, I’ve helped organizations navigate complex sourcing decisions, optimize spend, and elevate the way they engage with consulting across multiple sectors—chemicals, manufacturing, the public sector, and more. 

Along the way, I’ve helped clients save millions, upskill their procurement teams, and implement digital solutions to make their sourcing more efficient, faster, and more predictable. On average, I’ve enabled organizations to cut 30–50% of their consulting spend without compromising on quality. 

My work spans the full spectrum of the consulting procurement lifecycle: 

- Crafting RFPs and project scoping 
- Make-or-buy analysis 
- Implementing demand management practices 
- Market landscaping and benchmarking 
- Tailoring sourcing strategies to business needs 
- Evaluating and selecting the right providers 
- Leading contracting and negotiation processes 
- Project management and value tracking 
- Assessing consulting performance 
- Conducting procurement maturity assessments 

I'm not one of those "advise and vanish" consultants. I roll up my sleeves and work alongside my clients, making sure the expertise they invest in is embedded—creating lasting impact and long-term value for their organizations. 

Curious how this could apply to your team? Always open to exploring what’s possible.

Consulting Procurement Expert | Author | Founder | CEO

Consulting Quest helps companies to better use, buy and manage consulting services.
Leveraging proprietary methodologies, digital tools and databanks, we help companies generate more value through consulting. Spend on the right projects, work with the right consultants and get the best possible outcomes for their projects at the right cost. 
On average our customers save 30-50% of their consulting costs while working with high-quality consulting firms.

Key Activities: Consulting Sourcing

Learn more at https://consultingquest.com or feel free to say hello at Helene.laffitte@consultingquest.com

Dear fellow consultants,
I love you guys. You know that. But… I’m currently staring at a bid sheet from a panel tender.
We gave you a clear template, instructions, and honestly, a fair amount of love. And yet… creativity happened.
Now, I admire creativity. You wowed us in pitch sessions with AI, big data, generative this, predictive that. Truly inspiring. But then came the Excel.
So, a few gentle reminders from the land of procurement reality. Please do not invent positions. Please do not delete columns — they are not optional. And please do not forget to fill in a column, especially the one called “Company name.” (Yes. This actually happened.)
Special mention to the firm that answered only one lot and wrote “same answer for the others,” leaving us to copy-paste like it’s 2007.
Individually, none of this is a big deal. Collectively, it’s mildly, persistently, soul-crushingly annoying.
And here’s the part that hurts a bit: what we do with this data is analysis. And you know — because that’s pretty much your job — data is best analysed when it is in the same format. Wild concept, I know.
No, this won’t get you “disqualified in a dramatic way.” But when scores are tight — and they often are — this is exactly the kind of thing that quietly nudges you from preferred to not qualified. Or worse: why-is-this-so-hard-to-work-with.
Procurement runs the show, guys. Play along — and the spotlight works better for everyone.
So yes, dear fellow consultants. I love you. Truly. But please: respect the Excel. Respect Procurement. They remember everything. 😉
#ConsultingLife #ProcurementTruths #ExcelIsNotAFreeJazzSession #CQStyle #PanelRants #PlayAlong

Consulting Procurement Expert @ Consulting Quest | Author, MBA

𝗘𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆 𝗱𝗮𝘆, 𝘀𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗮𝘀𝗸𝘀 𝗺𝗲 𝗶𝗳 𝗔𝗜 𝗶𝘀 𝗴𝗼𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗼 𝗸𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗺𝘆 𝗯𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀.

Just today, my father — 80 years old, former teacher — asked me the same thing. Which is how you know the question has officially escaped the tech bubble and entered the family WhatsApp group. When you’re an entrepreneur, your parents don’t just ask about your health or your kids. They periodically check whether your business is still alive and whether you look stressed enough to justify concern.

So. AI.

Will it impact my business? Obviously.
Will it kill it? Let’s say… I’m not panicking yet.

A concrete example. A few months ago, we used AI to translate our app into French. Yes, I know — I am French. But AI did most of the heavy lifting, and we reviewed and refined so it sounded French rather than “technically translated.” Very efficient. Very modern.
And then we discovered that the AI had translated “SOW” as “TRUIE.”
For non-French speakers: truie means “female pig.” It is also, helpfully, an insult.

So there we were, proudly reviewing our very professional procurement app, now confidently inviting users to validate their… pigs.

At that exact moment, I felt strangely reassured.
Because here’s the thing: AI is incredibly powerful at scale, speed, and pattern replication. It is also spectacularly bad at understanding context, intent, and when not to be literal. It doesn’t know when something sounds wrong, politically awkward, commercially risky, or just ridiculous. It just moves forward — very efficiently.

So no, I don’t think AI will “kill” my business. It will absolutely change how we work. It already has. But as long as judgment, accountability, and the ability to spot when your contract has turned into livestock still matter, I think we’ll be fine.

At least until AI learns irony. Then we’ll talk.

Ask consultants what makes projects succeed and the answer is almost never “better analysis.” It’s “better clients.” Not nicer clients. Not more demanding clients. Better ones. The same consulting team can produce wildly different outcomes depending on how the client behaves once the contract is signed.

Many clients complain that consultants “don’t go the extra mile.” Quite often, those same clients treat consulting like a transaction: sign the contract, delegate the work, disappear into meetings, then reappear at the end to ask why the output doesn’t quite hit the mark. This is less a partnership and more a hope-based delivery model.

The best consulting outcomes don’t come from vendor management. They come from partnership. And partnership doesn’t mean micromanaging slide titles or joining every work session. It means being explicit about what actually matters, giving feedback early instead of politely stockpiling it for the final steering committee, staying engaged without hijacking the work, and removing internal obstacles rather than becoming one yourself.

Consultants rarely fail because they lack competence. They fail when direction is fuzzy, priorities change without being acknowledged, and trade-offs are made silently. In that environment, consultants do what any rational professional would do: they optimise for what is visible, defensible, and billable.

When clients are clear, consistent, and fair, something very un-mystical happens. Better teams get staffed. Risks are raised earlier. Extra effort shows up when it actually makes a difference. 

That’s not luck. That’s what partnership looks like.

If you want more observations on how consulting relationships succeed — and why they often don’t — subscribe to Consulting Sourcing Spark.

𝗪𝗲𝗹𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟲: 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗮 𝗻𝗲𝘄 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗹𝗱 𝗼𝗿𝗱𝗲𝗿, 𝗯𝘂𝘁 𝗮 𝗻𝗲𝘄 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗹𝗱 𝗱𝗶𝘀𝗼𝗿𝗱𝗲𝗿. 
Rules wobble, certainties evaporate, and yesterday’s “best practice” now comes with a warning label. It’s a time of genuine opportunity and very real constraint—often in the same board meeting. 

On paper, this should be the golden age of consulting. Uncertainty everywhere? Strategy shows up. Supply chains misbehaving? Operations to the rescue. Tech sovereignty, AI anxiety, regulatory whiplash? Cue IT, risk, and compliance. In moments like these, clients do look around the room for adults. 

And then… they open the budget spreadsheet. 

Because the other truth is equally undeniable: when things go south, romance dies first. Spend gets sliced microscopically. Billion-dollar P&Ls suddenly develop a deep emotional attachment to saving the next €100k in advisory fees. Grand visions quietly step aside for PMOs, cost take-out, and “can you please just help us not drop the ball this quarter?” 

Both realities will coexist. Loudly. 

𝗦𝗼 𝘄𝗵𝗼 𝘄𝗶𝗻𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗯𝗲𝗮𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗳𝘂𝗹 𝗺𝗲𝘀𝘀? 

Not the firms with the boldest predictions—because no one truly knows what’s coming. The winners will be those who: 

 • Are useful before they are impressive 

 • Can move seamlessly from crisis mode to value creation 

 • Translate ambiguity into action, not decks 

 • Improve margins in the dull, unglamorous 1–2% increments and  know when it’s time to think big again 

In short: firms that can do emergency surgery and long-term fitness coaching—without charging like a plastic surgeon for a plaster. 

𝗔𝗻𝗱 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗰𝗹𝗶𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀? 
This is the year to stop buying consulting for confidence and start buying it for capability. Less “tell me the future,” more “help me survive Tuesday and still be relevant by next year.” 

2026 won’t be boring. 
But parts of the work will be. 
And ironically, that’s exactly where the real value—and the real winners—will be found. 

𝗛𝗮𝗽𝗽𝘆 𝗡𝗲𝘄 𝗬𝗲𝗮𝗿. 𝗗𝗶𝘀𝗼𝗿𝗱𝗲𝗿𝗹𝘆, 𝗱𝗲𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗳𝘂𝗹𝗹 𝗼𝗳 𝗽𝗼𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆.

We have recently refreshed our Consulting Procurement Maturity Grid.

Not because the old one was broken — but because the market moved on.
The new grid is shaped by real-world challenges: managing demand more intelligently, navigating tighter governance, and proving value beyond a signed SOW.

If you’re curious about what changed — and why it matters now — the article below walks through the thinking behind it.

👉 A quick behind-the-scenes look before you dive in.

Consulting spend is one of the few categories where an organisation can regularly spend seven figures, claim it was “strategic”, and still be unable t

Open article: Consulting Quest’s Updated 2025 Consulting Procurement Maturity Grid — a Field Guide to How Consulting Actually Gets Bought by Helene LAFFITTE • 5 min read

Consulting Quest’s Updated 2025 Consulting Procurement Maturity Grid — a Field Guide to How Consulting Actually Gets Bought

We already know this, so let’s stop pretending it’s a bold prediction: 
consulting firms have massively adopted AI. 

Data collection, benchmarks, knowledge management, slide production, first-pass analyses, GenAI copilots — all in production, all improving fast. 

And yet, the consulting pyramid is still standing. 

Because AI isn’t attacking the pyramid. It’s attacking low value-added work. 

What’s disappearing isn’t “entry-level consulting.” 
What’s disappearing are tasks: mechanical analysis, repetitive slide building, manual data work — the things that were never the point of consulting in the first place. 

That matters, because consulting firms are not made only of consultants. Roughly 30% of staff — often more — are non-consulting roles: knowledge teams, analysts, research hubs, production centers. These are exactly the layers where AI creates immediate substitution. 

Entry-level consultants are a different story. 

They are not just cheap labor learning the ropes. They are part of the firm’s economic engine. Invoiced at more than twice their cost, they fund leverage — and yes, your favorite partner’s bonus. AI doesn’t break that logic. If anything, it reinforces it by stripping out adjacent roles rather than the consulting track itself. 

The pyramid was never just a training model. 
It’s a profit model with a learning function attached. 

AI compresses cycles, raises baseline quality, and removes inefficiencies. It does not remove the need for judgment, client exposure, or responsibility under uncertainty. And that judgment is still learned the same way it always was: by doing, watching, getting it wrong, and being corrected. 

AI is an opportunity — for consultants and for clients. 
But let’s stop treating it as either a magic wand or an existential threat. 

As one partner put it to me recently: “It would be foolish not to use AI in consulting today.” 
True. It would be just as foolish to believe it replaces experience, accountability, or trust. 

What AI really does is force firms to be honest about where value is created — and where it never was. It accelerates good consulting and exposes bad habits. Nothing more. Nothing less. 

If these shifts in consulting, sourcing, and governance resonate with you, follow me for more perspectives — and subscribe to my newsletter, Consulting Sourcing Spark, for deeper insights beyond the headlines.

Open article: Welcome To Consulting Sourcing Spark | Consulting Quest by consultingquest.com

Welcome To Consulting Sourcing Spark | Consulting Quest

Conflicts of interest in consulting projects are unavoidable—but unmanaged, they create real risk. We hire consultants for their market experience, yet that doesn’t mean companies should leave themselves exposed. 

In our latest  Smart Consulting Sourcing episode, I share how to handle conflicts of interest in consulting in a practical way—by setting clear boundaries, reinforcing conflict of interest clauses in consulting contracts, and actively monitoring risks over time.

Trust is essential in consulting relationships, but it works best when reinforced by transparency, vigilance, and strong governance.

🎧 Watch the full episode here:  https://lnkd.in/efdkr28N

Hey everyone! Just a quick reminder — 𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗿𝗼𝘄, Laurent Thomas and I are going 𝗹𝗶𝘃𝗲 to talk about something we’re really passionate about:
𝗵𝗼𝘄 𝗺𝗮𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗶𝗻 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘀𝘂𝗹𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗰𝘂𝗿𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗰𝗮𝗻 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗲𝘁𝗲𝗹𝘆 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘂𝗹𝘁𝘀.

We’ll cover how leading organizations:

✅ Strengthen governance
✅ Maximize ROI
✅ Turn consulting into a real competitive advantage

📅 𝗧𝗼𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗿𝗼𝘄 𝗮𝘁 𝟲 𝗣𝗠 𝗖𝗘𝗧 / 𝟭𝟮 𝗣𝗠 𝗘𝗦𝗧  
Join us live on Zoom:🎙️
https://lnkd.in/eVpjXCtK

We’ve also opened a 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘀𝘂𝗹𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗰𝘂𝗿𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗠𝗮𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗦𝘂𝗿𝘃𝗲𝘆 — complete it to receive a personalized report ahead of the session:
👉 https://lnkd.in/egBCa723

𝗦𝗲𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗿𝗼𝘄 — 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗱𝘆 𝘁𝗼 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗻𝗴𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘄𝗮𝘆 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗸 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘀𝘂𝗹𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴!

Consulting project management is not traditional project management. 

Many clients manage consulting projects the same way they manage internal ones. Same rituals, same tools, same obsession with task tracking and slide production. That’s usually where things start to go wrong, because consulting projects don’t fail due to poor execution. They fail because no one is steering. 

Traditional project management is about execution. Consulting project management is about direction. Your consultants are responsible for producing work. You are accountable for whether that work actually creates value. Confusing the two is how organisations end up perfectly on time, perfectly on budget, and perfectly disappointed. 

In a consulting project, your job is not to chase deliverables, validate workplans, or admire how efficiently smart people can fill calendars. It’s to set guardrails, clarify what success really means (not just what will be delivered), decide when priorities change, and stop low-value work before it becomes a “key output” everyone feels obliged to defend. 

When clients don’t steer, consultants will still move forward. They are extremely good at moving forward. Unfortunately, forward is not a direction — it’s a speed. 

Good consulting project management isn’t about control. It’s about direction. And direction is what prevents very intelligent, very motivated people from doing very irrelevant work with impressive efficiency.

For many people, governance immediately translates into more meetings, more reporting, more control, and less trust. Which is understandable, because that does describe a lot of what passes for governance in practice. 

That’s not governance. That’s anxiety with a calendar. 

Real governance is both simpler and harder. It’s the mechanism that turns change into decisions instead of letting it quietly accumulate until someone calls it “execution risk.” 

In a consulting project, governance is about deciding when priorities shift, making trade-offs explicit (scope, time, budget, quality — pick at least two), protecting delivery conditions, and being willing to say “stop” when continuing no longer makes sense. None of that requires policing hours, supervising how consultants work, redesigning slides, or monitoring activity instead of impact — all popular substitutes for actual governance. 

When governance works, projects don’t feel heavier. They feel clearer. Decisions are visible. Trade-offs are acknowledged. Direction exists. 

When governance doesn’t work, projects don’t usually explode. They drift — politely, professionally, and straight into disappointment.

Trust is routinely cited as the number one success factor in consulting engagements. It is also, conveniently, the number one justification for not putting any real governance in place. That combination tends to end badly.

Trust without structure doesn’t create freedom. It creates drift. And drift is what happens when everyone assumes alignment without checking whether it still exists.

Strong consulting relationships are not built on blind faith. They are built on earned trust, reinforced by mechanisms that make expectations, trade-offs, and decisions explicit. The idea that structure somehow signals mistrust is one of the more persistent myths in consulting — usually upheld right until things get uncomfortable.

In reality, clients have far more tools than they think: steering committees with actual decision power, clear roles and accountability, deliverable-based payments, mid-project assessments, change control processes, conflict-of-interest disclosures, and confidentiality safeguards. None of these exist because people are dishonest. They exist because ambiguity, pressure, and change are guaranteed.

Good consultants don’t resist this structure. They welcome it. Clarity protects everyone — including them. It reduces second-guessing, limits political exposure, and makes it easier to raise risks early instead of explaining them late.

Trust doesn’t mean disappearing until the final invoice arrives. It means staying engaged while letting experts do their job, with just enough structure to ensure that confidence doesn’t quietly turn into assumption.

If this resonates and you want deeper, practical thinking on consulting governance and sourcing, subscribe to Consulting Sourcing Spark.

https://lnkd.in/ebkbiB9y

Open article: Welcome to Consulting Sourcing Spark by consultingquest.com

Laurent Thomas

Consulting Quest

Helping companies to optimise the ROI from their consulting spend.
Leading Consulting Procurement Excellence Programmes with Fortune 500 companies.
Developing Consource.io, the E2E platform that will transform the way companies use, buy and manage consulting services and Improveo.app the place to go If you want to improve your business

Co-Founder and President

Co Founded Consulting Quest to Improve the way companies procure consulting services

Co-Founder & Chairman

Stratalis Consulting

We advise our clients on how to outperform in uncertain markets.

The Stratalis Group is a global strategy and innovation consultancy focused on helping our clients to become future-focused and to deliver tangible opportunities for growth. We advise market leaders on how to develop foresight around future opportunity and risk, strategic flexibility to adapt and organizational focus to guide and inspire.

Through creative growth strategies and innovation execution on products, services and business models our clients achieve increased profitability, improved efficiency and superior return on investment.

Laurent is an Advisory Partner associated with the New York Office with a focus on Strategy & Transformation.

Advisory Partner - Strategy Practice

Staminachem

CEO & Managing Director

Solvay

Global P&L Accountability for the O&G Chemical business. Driving the turnaround, restructuring and repositioning in a rather agitated period (covid, negative oil prices, ....). Fixing operational issues, rebuilding the innovation pipeline and setting up new commercial channels.

Executive Vice President Global Oil and Gas

Driving the strategy and transformation of the Global Business Unit to achieve the expected strategic position and financial returns (EBITDA, Cash and CFROI). Remit included : Strategy, M&A, Strategic Marketing, Commercial Excellence, Distribution, Sustainability, Open Innovation, Ideation and Global Supply Chain.

Executive Vice President Strategy & Transformation Novecare

Oliver Wyman

Organization Transformation Practice Leader for North America

Senior Partner

Partner

ZS Associates

Various projects in the pharmaceutical industry.
PMI following consolidation operations in Pharmaceuticals
Sales Force Optimization, Strategic Marketing, New Products Introduction

Consultant

Renault

Engine Manufacturing Engineering Department

Intern

At Consulting Quest, we are convinced that Companies can better and faster reach their goals by smartly leveraging management consulting. “Creating more impact by better using, buying and managing Consulting Services”. We know how to help companies do just that.

We partner with executives as well as procurement teams. We provide customized solutions addressing all steps of the consulting sourcing process to control their costs and maximize the impact they get from their consulting spend.

As the leading pure player in consulting sourcing, we operate on a global scale and blend digital and human capabilities to deliver on our promise: smart consulting sourcing.

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