Wednesday 9th Jan, 2019
By Ashok Patel.
If I were to say that April 21, 2017 marked a momentous occasion in the history of not just the UK, but globally, I’m sure many people would be puzzled. For most, it was a regular Friday in a long list of Fridays in which nothing extraordinary happened. But something remarkable did happen—something that hadn’t happened in 135 years. It was the first full day since January 1882 in which no coal was used to generate electricity in the UK.1
The event, heralded for its significance by both Greenpeace UK and the WWF, may only be one step in the very long and arduous journey to transforming the UK’s power generation portfolio, but it represents a much wider trend of change, and disruption, in the energy industry.
Friday 3rd Aug, 2018
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.
Wednesday 5th Apr, 2017
By Fiona Czerniawska.
Size has long mattered in the consulting industry: in the last five years, we estimate that firms with more than 1,000 consultants have grown by 46%, 2.3 times the rate of smaller ones.
That’s not new: if you went back to the 1970s and tracked firms’ growth since, allowing for all the inevitable mergers and acquisitions, you’d see that the firms that dominated consulting then are still those that rule the roost today. Smaller firms come and go, but the big firms march relentlessly on. There are several reasons for this. Big firms are more likely to work on big projects for big clients: if you’re the CEO of a major corporation you’d don’t hire a ten-person firm to do the global roll-out of your new strategy. You may bring small firms in for specialist advice, and you may well be prepared to pay a premium price for that, but you don’t expect them to cover the ground. With more money coming in, big firms have been able to invest in account management, so they’re alert to upcoming opportunities and are more likely to win them because they know those involved. The biggest firms, too, have been able to attract the best people because they pay more and claim to offer more interesting work with iconic brands.
Tuesday 10th Jan, 2017
By Julie Ahadi.
You may have heard–the US has a new president-elect. Many of the implications of Donald Trump’s presidency have yet to reveal themselves, but one interesting question concerns what he plans to do about Iran, both in terms of the all-important nuclear deal and bilateral relations in general (and one could argue these are currently inseparable). Amongst those watching tensely from the side-lines are the relatively few foreign-owned consulting firms who’ve entered Iran in recent years, as there is a very real possibility that the strides they have made–and indeed the advice they have given to other businesses looking to penetrate the market–could be undone by forces outside of their control. Also spooked are the consulting firms who had been thinking about entering Iran, suspecting it might be the next big thing in consulting.
Tuesday 30th Aug, 2016
By Fiona Czerniawska.
“M&A is integral to our growth,” said one consulting firm we spoke to recently. “It has been for several years and will continue to be. Each year, we factor M&A activity into our growth plan, which in itself is a sign of how strategically important this is to our business.”
Monday 23rd May, 2016
By Julie Ahadi.
Next time you are at home, snuggled up on the sofa with the lights off watching shark documentaries (just your average weekend in my house), wait for a close up of a shark gliding through the ocean. At some point, you will notice that these fearsome creatures are anything but solitary– they have constant company. Little pilot fish (measuring about 60cms) swim, cocky as you like, alongside menacing jaws, safe in the knowledge that there’ll be a constant meal on offer (in the form of small pieces of food from the shark’s teeth) and the kind of protection guarantee that most sea life could only dream of. For their part, sharks get life-long free dentistry (which is really important when you’re a shark). In biology terms, it’s what’s known as a “mutualist” relationship, where different species work together and each benefit.
Monday 16th May, 2016
By Julie Ahadi.
There is an Arabic proverb (Lebanese, in fact) that goes: “He who wants to eat honey should endure the stings”. We suspect that a fair proportion of consultants in the GCC may benefit from reminding themselves of this mantra in the days and months ahead as the impact of low oil prices play themselves out.
Monday 9th May, 2016
By Edward Haigh.
Stockholm’s much vaunted start-up scene is having little direct effect on the fortunes of Swedish consultants, but its indirect effect could yet prove significant.
Not that Sweden’s consultants need much of a leg up at the moment: The Swedish consulting market, already the Nordic region’s largest, grew by a respectable 4.9% in 2015 and shows few signs of slowing. Cross the Oresund, Svinesund or Torne river bridges (connecting Sweden respectively to Denmark, Norway and Finland) and you find a starkly different situation.
But the presence of what many are calling Europe’s Silicon Valley within their midst raises interesting questions for consultants in Stockholm because of what it says about the willingness (or not) of a new breed of digital businesses to turn to them for help.
Tuesday 26th Apr, 2016
By Alison Huntington.
When you look at the conditions endured by French peasants in the late eighteenth century, it’s surprising the revolution didn’t happen sooner than 1789—the French elite had it coming for a long time.
It mirrors the situation consultants in France find themselves in with respect to digital, just without the angry peasants, the riots, the beheading, and general goriness. So not at all really. Except that, like the late eighteenth century, the conditions are all set for a revolution—but it just hasn’t come about yet.
There’s a lot of talk about digital in France, but to date, little action. Despite this, there’s a definite sense of urgency that something needs to be done. Clients have seen decades-old business models turned on their heads by plucky digital disruptors, and know they could be next for the guillotine (sorry).
Tuesday 1st Dec, 2015
Japanese clients are a hard bunch to win over. Consulting has never taken off in that market nearly to the extent it has in other major economies, and consultants we spoke with estimate that only about half of the businesses they’d expect to be buying consulting actually are. It’s a culture that doesn’t think much of investing in intangibles like advice, and while interest is definitely picking up, this is a market that has a long way to go if consulting is ever to become the norm.
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