Monday 22nd Nov, 2010
What do a pen and a children’s playground have in common?
Thursday 11th Nov, 2010
One of the revolutions in financial services over the last ten years has been the increasing complexity of its supply chain. Banks sell products which other organisations develop and administer. Buy your insurance from one company and you’ll find another providing the service behind the scenes. The result is an industry increasingly polarised between front-office organisations, whose brands are household names, and back-office ones we’ve often never heard of.
Wednesday 10th Nov, 2010
The fall in public sector expenditure on consultants in the UK since June’s election has been steeper and sharper than anyone expected. And it’s not stopping there: two thirds of senior public sector managers expect it to continue falling over the next year, our research has found.
Wednesday 4th Aug, 2010
What on earth does the consulting industry have in common with the golden age of Hollywood? Quite a lot, I think.
Monday 2nd Aug, 2010
It is tempting for large consulting firms to think they are immune from competition from independent consultants. The idea that a firm such as McKinsey might be threatened by a freelancer seems as laughable as a cartoon elephant standing on a chair above a tiny mouse.
But the truth is that competition has a domino effect – two domino effects, actually, depending on whether demand for consulting is growing or falling.
Let’s divide consulting firms into four groups:
Tuesday 20th Jul, 2010
No, this isn’t a series of observations about client “dependency” on consultants.
Wednesday 19th May, 2010
Interviewing people for our recent report on strategy consulting, I was struck by this phrase. Coined by Muir Sanderson at Booz in London, he was referring to the way in which consulting firms, particularly strategy ones, have been escalating their attempts to build and keep client relationships in recent years.
Sunday 31st Jan, 2010
Consultants really don’t help themselves sometimes.
The word “product” is one most firms would like to steer clear of. They think it smacks of a supermarket approach: put a standardised consulting process in a box, pile it high and sell it cheap. But this is a very narrow-minded way of thinking about it. Sure, you can productise a process in such a way that anyone can do it, destroying value to the client and consulting firm alike. But you can also take a more Lego-like approach, either:
Thursday 17th Dec, 2009
Internal consultants have a chequered history: one minute they are on the up, eager recipients of corporate largesse; the next they are on the down, seen as a luxury the organisation can no longer afford. Lacking the brand and independence of external resources, they have widely been seen as the “poor manager’s consultant”, the people you use only when you don’t have the money for the real thing.
Wednesday 16th Dec, 2009
Recessions are extraordinarily effective tools for sorting winners from losers. Just as with retailers on the High Street, we’re seeing signs that the consulting firms with weaker business models are starting to sink to the bottom, leaving their more robust rivals bobbing around in the still choppy waters.
But a problem for one set of firms is unquestionably an opportunity for another. Recessions also give us a glimpse into the future, showing us which business models are likely to perform best.
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