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In my opinion it highly depends what you intend to achieve and what is the underlying challenge which needs to be handled.
The underlying challenge may define the experience you need from a potential person taking responsibility for the task. External advisers may have had access to similar projects in the past and may bring in a different cultural background (i.e. from having worked in different companies of the same industry, different industries but similar projects and / or different regions). This may give you a completely different insight in how to solve your challenge. While it may be important that a project is handled by an outsider, who is not linked to the different involved parties due to past long standing experience, any third party has the risk of showing a lowever focus or being less committed. This is in particular true when well known reputable large consultant companies provide services for relatively small or one-time activities. Additionally, third party advisers tend to provide their services only subject to your involvment. Hence the overall risk and therefore the liability stays with you/your management. (Indemnity clauses are only contractual and may not fully take out responsibility of the management of a company for certain activities). Consequently a large number of projects can be better handled by senior staff from your own organisations. However, for large organisations it is in my personal opinion always good to deviate from the common recommendations of HR to focus on team members who fullfill exactly their requirement to involve only people with experience from the own industry/region. I strongly believe that for some complex projects it would be extremly helpful to utilize different know how and cultural backgrounds as it can bring you some outside-inside view normally provided only be (expensive) external consultants not always committed.
A third party adviser is however, good in cases were you need a reputable consultancy name backing the decision of the management to implement sensible projects in front of their shareholders, employees or even partners. In this case, the management has a possibility to indicate that the proposed project was not only their decisiion. A third party consultant may also be useful for a project which needs to be implemented specific business tasks not easily possible for existing teams (i.e. activities related to change management, implementation of a business strategy requiring difficult decisions, such as closure of plants, decrease of head count, etc.) Such activities may be sometimes more difficult from people coming out of the own organisation.
It is better to appoint a senior employer as it would fill up an important position in the functions of your firm. That person would be always at your disposal to make use of and get the advice as and when needed as compared to hiring an outsider with whom you have limited meetings.In the age of technology and information, information holds a lot of value and by having a person part of the firm keeps your firms interests and future plans safe under one roof.
The senior employee being part of the firm would have more time to dedicate as he/she would have no other clients to split time with, but is100 % focused with your firm and its needs.
A senior official would also have a better understanding and knowledge of the firm as their functions are more transparent to him than an external consultancy firm
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