Monday 21st Nov, 2016
By B.J. Richards.
“My grandpa is still waiting for me to grow up!” announced my good friend Josh to peals of laughter as we sat in a swanky London cocktail bar. It had been a while since we’d seen him, and we were thrilled that a speaking engagement had brought him to town. You see, Josh’s job as a professor and principal investigator at a top-ten global research institution keeps him pretty busy, so we don’t get to see him as much as we’d like.
Monday 17th Oct, 2016
By Alison Huntington.
We ask clients a simple question to gauge their opinions about value: How much value do they think a consulting firm added in relation to the fees they paid it? The troubling answer for consultants in the TMT sector is that few think the value added was worth more than the bill at the end.
Thursday 13th Oct, 2016
By Edward Haigh.
The overarching narrative within the consulting market over the last decade has been about the inexorable decline of traditional strategy consulting, and of a more practical, implementation-focused brand of consulting emerging in its place.
The numbers bear out the extent to which that’s hurt some of the most prestigious names in the consulting industry: in the UK strategy firms now account for a little over 17% of the market, while the advisory practices of the Big Four (which, in all but one case, didn’t even exist some 15 years ago) now have a 38% share.
Monday 15th Aug, 2016
By Julie Ahadi.
At the core of every firm, big or small, there are a handful of people who are not only responsible for directing the growth of the business, but who, by default, set the tone of the firm’s culture. Leading by example is not just a cliché, it is the life source of an organisation, and all that transpires emerges as a direct result. Greed and a disregard for professional ethics did not worm its way into and corrupt the global banking system from the outer edges, for example. Its leaders had themselves been the torchbearers of such behaviour and by doing so, actively or not, encouraged others to act this way. Just as a child’s behaviour is often judged as a product of a parent’s example, so too can the conduct of a company’s employees be seen as representative of that of its inner circle.
A few years ago, in an attempt to capture the essence of what made Source Source, the directors of the business created a bio of a virtual employee (“Judy Bright”). Judy’s personal and professional characteristics summed up those of our then-employees just as they do today, five years on. The initiative provided our customers and new recruits alike a sense of our unique culture, and the values we as a business hold dear.
Monday 8th Aug, 2016
By Alison Huntington
Here are two striking statistics.
Forty-nine percent of clients globally say they get the value they pay for from consulting firms. Their experience is a transaction—nothing more, nothing less.
Fifty percent of clients say their use of consulting is mostly driven by a shortage of internal capacity.
Tuesday 31st May, 2016
By Margaret Cameron-Waller.
I recently visited PwC’s cyber security experience centre in Florida. This showcased the impressive breadth of work the firm is doing in this area, but was a very timely visit because cyber is such a hot topic globally amongst the clients we interview. Cyber is consistently one of the areas where clients anticipate that spending on consulting will increase and where they can make a clear case for investment. “There’s no limit to how much we’ll spend on this,” is a much-repeated message from our interviews.
Our research also tells us that technology firms dominate clients’ choice of firm when they are considering consulting support. This is interesting because, while technology is the foundation of any successful cyber response, it’s unlikely to be the complete panacea.
Thursday 26th May, 2016
By Edward Haigh.
Value = quality divided by price, right?
Possibly, but not according to our data. At least not always. Our survey of clients (to which we had over 9,000 responses) reveals their views about value to be far more complex than you might imagine. Before we go any further we should be clear that we asked them to describe value in relation to the fees they pay. Our question was: Do you get more than you pay in fees (if so how much more), about the same as you pay in fees, or less than you pay in fees?
Thursday 12th May, 2016
By B.J. Richards.
The management consultant and the computer nerd. Hardly the same species, it’s almost as though they are of two different worlds. One is slick, well-manicured, and effortlessly works the room in a suit that cost more than my rent. The other spends long, solitary nights hopped up on Mountain Dew, furiously tapping away at a keyboard, clad in a Cheeto-stained hoodie.
Could they ever learn to get along, to join forces for the common good? Perhaps if the fate of the world hung in the balance. How about the fate of the Benelux consulting market?
Like consulting firms in most markets, those in the Benelux region are facing a dire shortage of consultants with the digital skills they need to grow. Unable to hire, acquire, or train techy consultants as quickly as the market demands, some are taking a drastic step: They’re admitting they won’t always be able to find the consulting skills and the digital skills they need in the same person, and they’re restructuring their talent strategies accordingly.
Thursday 5th May, 2016
By Fiona Czeniawska
Consultants love the idea of client loyalty: the notion that someone will come back to them time and time again, and will use them in preference to any other firm. In consulting heaven, clients are monogamous.
What a shame, then, that that’s so rarely the case.
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