Nothing kills consulting firm profits like having people sitting on the bench and nothing kills revenue like not being able to staff projects.

What do most firms do now?

1. Run a lean bench in each local office and redeploy resources from one region to another when an office has more work than it has staff.

The downsides?

1. Often available resources available in another region may be in the wrong specialty or not capable or experienced enough for the task.
2. Clients may reject these resources or refuse to pay for travel costs, or these resources may not be released by the exporting region or come with high internal transfer costs for the importing region.