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.”
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