The best-run consulting firms...

By Edward Haigh

Anyone who has travelled through a major international airport recently will be familiar with a number of important messages: No container carrying more than 100ml of liquid is permitted in hand luggage. Laptops and tablets should be removed from your bag before it's passed through the security scanners. You should be at your departure gate 30 minutes prior to departure. Nestlé runs SAP. Merrell runs SAP. The North Face runs SAP. Your competitors run SAP. That successful-looking guy who's just stepped out of the Mont Blanc store wearing a roll-neck jumper, thick-rimmed glasses and clickety-clack brogues? He definitely runs SAP. Godammit, man, even your cat runs SAP! What in the name of all that's holy do you think you're doing stepping out in a public place without running SAP? Have you no shame?

Recently the SAP-running messages have been joined by more of a similar nature. Aston Martin's ON Office 365 (I suspect the capitals matter very much to Microsoft's marketing bods). Snow and Rock is ON Office 365. Kilmarnock College is ON Office 365 (no, seriously, Kilmarnock College. ON). The implication's the same: what the hell are you doing OFF Office 365?

I mock, but this is pretty smart stuff. You're being told that the list of impressive companies running SAP or ON Office 365 is getting longer. You're being told that running SAP or being ON Office 365 is a very smart thing to do (because 'the best-run businesses run SAP' and being ON Office 365 means you're ON...well...it. ON it. ON the button. ON the money. ON). And you're being told that there are companies which are proud enough to be running SAP or ON Office 365 that they're happy to shout about it. At the same time, while you might not be being encouraged to rush out and buy Nestlé products, you are being told that Nestlé is a smart company that you ought to consider investing in or working for, so it's working for them, too.

All of which has left me wondering if this is something consulting firms should be trying to do.

Indeed it's something that Accenture is sort of doing already. Warner Bros brought their entire film catalogue from the Golden Age to the digital age. €1bn in savings for Unilever. Without any tangles. (Unilever do haircare products, see). In some respects it's actually better because the benefit is often clearer, but the sense of there being a product beyond 'High performance. Delivered' isn't there in the way it is with SAP and Office 365. And 'High performance. Delivered' sounds a bit like consulting speak. It's a slightly cleverer version of an idea being pedalled by just about every big consulting firm in the world. Most call it strategy executed.

What's more, Accenture's adverts talk about something that's happened, rather than something that's ongoing (any ongoing outsourcing deal isn't mentioned). Unilever might have piled the costs back on the moment Accenture walked out the door for all we know, but Nestlé's still running SAP. And you're left with the impression (unintended though it may be, because I genuinely don't think there's any arrogance on the part of Accenture here) that Accenture is much smarter than its client; that poor old Warner Bros didn't have a clue how to digitize its catalogue until Accenture stepped in. Which is fine except that it just doesn't work as well as a piece of joint advertising; so although you have to heap praise on Unilever for being happy to admit that it needed help, and on Accenture for managing to persuade its client that it should be prepared to say as much publicly, my guess is that clients are going to be less likely to want to put their names to this kind of thing.

But what about any other consulting firms, and particularly those outside the IT space? Nada. Why? As many consulting firms strive to build assets, to lessen their dependence on people at a time when the economics of the traditional consulting model are being stretched to breaking point, and as clients increasingly demand outcomes not inputs from them, isn't this precisely the sort of thing that consulting firms need to do? Bypass the Accenture thing because, good though it is, it's as much about clients being willing to put their names to a case study as anything else, and go after the SAP or Office 365 approach: Abercrombie and Fitch runs a PwC Platinum supply chain. The most responsible businesses run PwC Platinum supply chains. Ford's decisions are Deloitte Analytics inspired. The most inspired businesses are Deloitte Analytics inspired. You get the idea.

You mark my words, it's only a matter of time before Virgin's ON Booz.

Sorry.