New outplacement business model boosted by City upgrade

But while outplacement may appear the ultimate bad-weather service for recruiters, there are some firms that have never bought into the economic model.

DBM, formerly Drake Beam Morin, has its roots in the outplacement industry as one of the pioneers in the career transition sector stretching back three decades.

It has more than 200 offices in 40 countries and has had a long presence in the City of London.

However, DBM has traditionally focused primarily on the retail banking side while neglecting wholesale institutions and fund managers. It is currently altering its approach in a concerted effort to attract global financial institutions.

Paul Steward, DBM director for business development, says: "It is fair to say that our previous approach was traditional and generic in nature, offering the same comprehensive range of services and support that we would offer any organisation going through change.

"However, in talking to the market over the past two years we have recognised that a far more innovative, bespoke solution is required to meet the needs of the wealth management and wholesale banking community."

DBM, part of the Thomson Learning division, is currently ramping up its global financial division by doubling its City of London operations and rolling out an ambitious hub-and-spoke style model that intends to offer greater reach and flexibility than current office-based outplacement providers.

DBM's approach is centred around a new web-based tool for training and research as well as live market and news feeds from its parent company Thomson. The plan calls for 90% of DBM services to be available to clients on a remote basis at their convenience.

Peter Murgatroyd, managing director at DBM, says one the benefits of this web-friendly approach is cost reduction and the ability to extend the duration of the service with individuals beyond the length of the contract provided by their employers.

Murgatroyd says: "As a result of pressure in the market to reduce fees and the resultant need to reduce costs, we have been looking at ways of enhancing our delivery capability by making more use of technology.

"We now have capability to provide programmes specifically geared to the financial services industry that can be delivered completely remotely using the internet with dedicated consultant support provided by telephone. We have also built in the flexibility to use the e-delivery capability in all our programmes."

DBM's links to Thomson allow it to tie in Thomson's NETg learning solutions. Stewart says that typically most outplacement firms offer 20 or 30 learning programmes for clients and these are usually only available on disks that must be shared throughout the entire firm.

By offering these programmes on an electronic basis, DBM believes it will give clients more choice.

DBM, however, does not have plans to do away with physical locations - just the opposite, in fact. The firm is adding a floor to its City of London office space on Cornhill Street dedicated to its new global financial division.

The office will have the look of trading floor, with all the news and information services used by financial institutions available in a café-style setting that will be identical to offices planned for the other big financial hubs in New York, Hong Kong and Tokyo.

DBM, with its global reach, has long been popular with ex-pats intending to receive outplacement back home.

The plans for the new model include plugging in the firm's many satellite offices with its larger ones in the larger financial hubs, something DBM says that both its clients and customer institutions were asking for.

Peter Coles, vice-president for global relationships, Europe, says: "More and more businesses are cross-border and increasingly international. As a result, when they choose providers they look for organisations who can deliver the same service in several countries. This demand from the market has been the driver behind DBM's development of a dedicated global financial markets practice to provide a transferable service across major financial cities."

DBM is doubling the number of its ex-industry consultants available to its global financial markets practice from five to 10, and plans for the business in London and New York to be fully operational by the end of the year before rolling out to Frankfurt and Asia early next year.

Stewart believes that the market will remain strong for outplacement firms in the year ahead as investment banks go through another round of job cuts.

He then expects consolidation in the financial services sector to bring yet another wave of redundancies.

Stewart says: "Senior industry figures are already on record as stating that we may well see the number of key houses reduced to one German, two Swiss and six American in the foreseeable future. Whatever your view, it looks like a bumpy road ahead."