Abstract :
This paper sets out to reflect on the views of users of consultancy services, particularly in the field of supporting product engineering and development. The paper sets out to understand the key success factors that consultancy providers should address when responding to opportunities in product engineering consultancy and to identify the differences between the two principle types of support that industrial companies often seek. By concentrating on meeting customer needs in a conscious and measured response, university consultancy providers should be able to improve their contract capture rate and their professional reputation in their own particular niche of the consultancy business