Agencies - the future?

[SussexSeagull]

My current contract is a slight variation on the norm where I invoice direct to the client and the agent does the same for their cut (the recruitment part was bog standard).

I agree with most of the above, I can't see the current status quo changing much for the foreseeable future unless a piece of legislation comes out of leftfield that changes the landscape.

[Wanderer]

I do. It's in the 10's of thousands. In the Business Unit I'm in there's around 3k suppliers on the system, most are inactive and procurement go through periodic culls to remove them.

They prefer a smaller number of large suppliers who they can have "leverage" over. In the global IT organisation they reduced the supplier base to 4 main companies ( IBM, Accenture, Wipro, Infosys)

For the UK contractors there is a limited number of agents on the PSL. Practically everyone goes through one of them. Again it's because of ease of manageability

Yep, I've seen clients in a similar situation. They have a huge number of suppliers but they prefer agencies and maintain a small list of preferred suppliers that they work with.

I guess that another reason is that they get a standard terms of business with their contractors too and they don't get stung with intellectual property rights not being handed over when work is done and such like.