Wednesday 5th Sep, 2018
By Fiona Czerniawska.
“They’ve done it again!”, said a recent client we interviewed. “They’ve sold us on promises about brilliant new technology and streamlined processes, and they’ve ignored the fact that success depends on people.”
In case it’s not clear, the “they” he was referring to are consulting firms. With two years of digital transformation under the industry’s collective belt, clients are starting to ask for hard evidence of results (a point I covered here). They’re also complaining that consultants aren’t engaging sufficiently with what they have increasingly come to believe is the main obstacle to delivering genuine transformation in practice: changing people’s behaviours. And they’re worried that, as robotic process automation becomes embedded in transformation work, more and more investment cases will depend on reducing their workforce in some areas, and redeploying people in others. “I want to know how consulting firms are going to help deal with the collateral impact of new technology and processes,” continued my irate executive, “but no one is talking to us about that.”
New research by Proudfoot suggests that this client, and all the others who’ve talked to us in a similar vein over the last few months, are right to be concerned.
Tuesday 10th Jul, 2018
By Fiona Czerniawska.
Markets are what you make of them. Henry Ford knew it when he introduced the “any colour so long as it’s black” Model T Ford. Faberge knew it when he produced the first of his brilliant, bejewelled eggs. Big or small, high value or low cost: We get to decide.
For all the work we do in sizing the global consulting market (hint: it’s big), we’re acutely aware that there’s another, hidden market out there (hint: it’s much, much bigger. Where do you find this? First, you question your instincts; second, you re-think your value proposition.
Wednesday 4th Jul, 2018
By Alison Huntington.
Our recent report, Intelligent Analytics:Threats and opportunities in the global analytics market, reveals that, collectively, consulting firms currently only have a 25% share of the analytics market. The remaining 75% is being done in-house, by clients themselves.
That ought to bring the focus of most consulting firms—beating their fellow consulting firms to the analytics prize—into sharp relief. Instead of slogging it out with each other to work out how they divide up 25% of the market, perhaps they should be focused on the bigger prize that would come from persuading clients to do less in-house.
Pages |
