Client behaviour

We know how big the UK consulting market is.  We know what’s grown and what hasn’t.  We even know which firms are doing well – and which aren’t.  So what?  If the last five years have taught consulting firms anything, it’s that the past is no guide to the future.  If you want to know what’s going to happen, you need client data.

Which is why we’ve spent the last few months asking more than 100 senior executives in UK multinationals about how their use of consultants may change in the future.

We’re a cynical bunch at Source Towers.  Last year, when we heard consulting firms talk about transformation, we suggested it was the latest in a long line of grandiose posturing unlikely to sway clients’ views, let alone their budgets.

We were wrong.  It turns out that clients have been far less dismissive than we anticipated – to the point where we estimate that between one third and two thirds of organic growth among big consulting firms in 2012 came from large-scale transformation projects.

Segmenting the consulting market is a bit like skinning a cat: there are many ways to do it. Size is a useful way of thinking about it: small and medium-sized businesses don’t buy much consulting and, when they do, they buy it from their auditor or from freelance consultants.  Sector is much less reliable as an indicator of difference: at the moment, you can take two banks of a broadly similar profile and find that one is buying a lot of consulting services while the other is buying virtually none.