Consulting in the GCC

By Jodi Davies

Late last year we published a report which examined clients’ views about the role of women in consulting teams.  Our hypothesis was that clients value the breadth of thought that diverse teams bring.  And we were right: two thirds of clients, choosing between consulting teams which were equal in all other respects, would prefer to work with the team that has more women on it.  Why?  Because, they told us, they’ll get a better quality of deliverable.

We tend to take consulting firms' claims that they're dropping low-value clients in favour of a small number of big, high-profile, accounts with a pinch of salt. It's not that we don't believe them, it's just that we suspect it's never quite as binary as they make it sound, and is often being used as a way of telling us that their business is doing very well, without resorting to the usual weapons-grade metaphors. Like "booming", or "exploding".

By Edward Haigh

Most consulting firms give fairly short shift to marketing at the best of times. Seen by many as a function whose remit extends as far as producing shiny brochures and organising events, the average marketing department is under-funded, under-staffed and - by my reckoning - misunderstood.