Digital

By Alison Huntington.

I recently interviewed a consultant who was telling me about a digital transformation programme he’d worked on with one of Britain’s police forces. As part of the programme, each front-line officer was given a tablet to replace the traditional policeman’s notebook. The technology would mean accurate digital records, fewer hours lost to paperwork, the ability to update cases on the go, and myriad other benefits. Except that it didn’t. The consultant went out on the beat one day and watched as an officer took out his tablet … and proceeded to use it as a clipboard to lean his paper notebook against while he jotted down his notes with an old-fashioned biro.

It’s just one of many examples that illustrate how the success of transformation depends on people, not just new technology. So what do HR clients—the people in charge of the people—make of the consultants trying to help them?

By Alison Huntington.

We’ve talked before on these pages about the merits and limitations of sub-brands. While they may help to raise awareness of new capabilities, they may also underline that the sub-brand isn’t core to what the firm does. Nowhere is that debate more pressing than in a discussion about digital sub-brands. What’s next for those firms with separate digital sub-brands, if digital is becoming fundamental to everything clients do?

It’s tempting to say that digital sub-brands are reaching the end of their shelf life, and should be integrated back into the parent brands of the firms that spawned them. But recent conversations with clients have given me pause for thought.

Referring to two firms with digital sub-brands, one client says: “They’re still a bunch of number crunchers and geeks.” The digital sub-brands haven’t changed his opinions about the parent brands. Another client used the word “stuffy” to describe the culture of another firm—the opposite of the more innovative and digital image the firm’s sub-brand seeks to convey. “They realised that they can’t attract the people they need for digital,” says the CIO of an energy company in Germany, “so they had to open a new ‘digital’ office up the road that felt different.” It’s hardly a ringing endorsement of the parent brand’s ability to succeed in the digital world on its own.

By Lindsay Stark.

Last year, we wrote about the relatively slow spread of digital transformation across Canada. This year, we’re pleased to say that the tortoise may well have come into its own.

With the consulting market presenting overall growth of 4.9%, 2017 was a good year to be a consultant in Canada—but it was even better if you were able to offer digital services. Canada’s digital market is now almost four times the size it was in 2016, with digital work now accounting for 20% of all consulting happening there. To put that in perspective, the US digital market—arguably the most dynamic in the world—remains much larger, but grew just 77% over the same period. If you’re a consultant wanting to sell digital solutions, Canada must look like a very nice option.

Fuelled by attractive new-technology use cases pouring in from the US, Canada’s clients were eager to learn how they could replicate the successes being enjoyed south of the border. For those clients asking how they could use new technologies to improve back-office efficiency, Canada’s consultants had an answer: cloud-based ERP systems.