Tuesday 19th Apr, 2016
By Julie Ahadi.
I used to enjoy sleep. And then I had a baby. Much like the heyday era of consulting, when an abundance of cheque-happy clients and high fees was the norm, I used to roll around in bed of a Saturday morning thinking ‘there’s plenty more where that came from’. Not only has my window of opportunity for a relatively easy life closed, but I am now conditioned not to be able to sleep, even if I am permitted to.*
And to some extent, I’m the problem – I’ve created an adorable baby Frankenstein. At some point along this magical journey, my daughter may just (may just, mind you) have mistaken my kindness for weakness. The moment she’d call; I’d jump. And she got used to it. And so did I. And it really didn’t need to come to this – I’d read all the books, listened to (far too many) people’s helpful advice and yet here I am – me and my eyebags. But, like so many sleep deprived, busy mums (and there are plenty busier than me), I soldier on.
Wednesday 13th Apr, 2016
Julie Ahadi.
If Lionel Messi decided to switch teams, many an English football fans’ phoney allegiance to Barcelona would soon evaporate – mine included.
The question of loyalty to a club, even as respected an empire as Barcelona, the crème de la crème of the professional game, is a secondary thought for many casual observers and sport enthusiasts. What does appeal is the dazzling brilliance of its star players and the unparalleled skills they bring to the sport. This got me thinking about the comparison between top-flight football, and the consulting world of today, especially where the ‘indirect’ client or, in football terms, the ‘un-indoctrinated fan’ is concerned. A client who hasn’t worked with a consulting firm directly will base their opinion of a firm on a variety of factors such as brand, personal recommendations etc. But if a star individual they see on a project grabs their attention, the firm they represent might be irrelevant.
Wednesday 6th Apr, 2016
By Fiona Czerniawska.
Here’s a little chart with a big message.
Tuesday 22nd Mar, 2016
By Fiona Czerniawska
The following forms part three of a series of articles that we have published based on our on-going research into how clients see consulting firms. To view the first article in this series, please click here, and to view the second article, click here.
In consulting who you know and what you’re famous for have a massive influence on your success. No one, surely, could disagree with that? Well, it turns out that the interaction between relationships and specialisation is a lot more complex than we’d imagined.
As always, it helps to take a concrete example to illustrate this.
Monday 21st Mar, 2016
By Edward Haigh.
Crazy people, clients. If there’s one thing we’ve learned about their perceptions of consulting firms in the course of conducting our surveys it’s that their views are changeable and often counter-intuitive. One minute (or at least one year) they think Firm A is brilliant at something, the next they’re not so sure. One minute they tell you they’re not sure Firm B delivers much in the way of value, the next they tell you they’ve recommended the firm to other people.
Tuesday 8th Mar, 2016
By Fiona Czerniawska.
The following forms part one of a series of articles that we are publishing based on our on-going research into how clients see consulting firms. To view the second article in this series, please click here.
Digital transformation represents a massive opportunity for technology consulting firms, but why does our research suggest, again and again, that these firms are missing out?
Our new suite of reports, brand perception summaries for individual consulting firms, suggests the answer lies in clients’ heads.
Let’s take IBM as an example. It has a predictably strong reputation for the quality of its technology consulting work: 66% of executives who know the firm by repute (what we call indirect clients) describe quality as high or very high (the average is 49%), and only a very small percentage say anything that is outright negative. Equally, because IBM is so well-known, there’s little difference when we look at actual clients (or what we call direct clients): everyone knows what IBM does, and does well.
Tuesday 17th Nov, 2015
As China’s economy gradually settles into its “new normal” of more moderate growth, some of the big, foreign-based multinational corporations in the market—the very ones that global consulting firms followed here—have become a bit skittish about making further investments. With MNCs no longer looking like fonts of perpetual high growth, consultants are increasingly turning to the growing and maturing domestic market to fill the gaps in their spreadsheets.
Tuesday 10th Nov, 2015
By Alison Huntington I keep a close watch on the price of oil Lest my consulting practice goes off the boil I must admit, I felt worried for a time But things are fine, I walk the line …is not what Johnny Cash sang, but does neatly sum up consulting to the energy sector over the last year or so.
Tuesday 13th Oct, 2015
By Alison Huntington If you bought a shirt from Primark, you wouldn’t be too annoyed if a button fell off or a seam frayed. After all, shirts from Primark cost about €5. On the other hand if you bought a shirt from Tom Ford (a brand for which a single shirt tends to be priced between €500 and €1,000) then you’d be pretty unimpressed with broken buttons and frayed seams. You’d expect a perfect shirt, you’d expect to look fantastic in it, and you may even expect random (and, obviously, very attractive) strangers to walk up to you in the street and tell you as much.
Thursday 10th Sep, 2015
By Fiona Czerniawska 26%. That’s the proportion of clients in the energy and resources sector globally who think that strategy firms deliver poor-quality work, twice the level of clients on average, and three or four times as many who say this about Big Four or technology firms. Indeed, attitudes about technology firms move in the opposite direction, being more positive in this sector than on average.
Pages |