The interim management sector is ready for a major growth spurt over the next decade as it looks set to take on an ever-increasing role in UK business.
The industry, reckoned to be worth £200 million, still lags a long way behind the management consultancy business, which is estimated to be worth £6 billion.
BIE Interim Executive managing director Martin Wood said: “The movement towards using interim managers has definitely accelerated in the last two years. At the same time, the role of the interim manager is becoming more sophisticated.”
Wood, speaking at a CBI seminar on the interim sector today (July 9), added: “We’re going through an economic dip for the first time since the industry started to establish itself a decade go.
"There’s been a lot of rationalisation recently and we’re now seeing a host of talented people coming to us who ideal material for interim managers.”
According to Wood, interim management is still a “niche sector”. He warned however that interim manager providers like BIE had to make sure that they could provide the right levels of service for the industry to realise its potential.
“With any new industry, it is absolutely critical that we make sure that our interim placements work,” he said. “If we place someone and then that interim fails, that business might take a long time to come back.”
He also added that because of the economic downturn in the last 12 months, “interims are having to work a lot harder than they were two years ago as companies look at their costs more closely”.
Nevertheless, he was hopeful that as companies became more aware of the role interims can play and the relative cost savings they could help generate, the industry would continue to grow over the next few years.
