Most of these services companies, seem to thrive because executives in client companies can have someone to shift blame in case of implementation issues or road

Most of these services companies, seem to thrive because executives in client companies can have someone to shift blame in case of implementation issues or roadblocks. The whole IT consulting thing is a "shift the blame" game, at-least in large corporations. You have a project, a specification is made, a consultant selected, work offloaded. Consultants aim is to increase billing hours. So they develop a barely spec fitting application with a lot of loose ends, so as to maximize the recurring maintenance revenue down the road.