Monday 25th Mar, 2013
Every now and then we talk to someone who, in the course of a single interview, perfectly encapsulates the opportunities and challenges of an entire market.
Tuesday 12th Mar, 2013
Segmenting the consulting market is a bit like skinning a cat: there are many ways to do it. Size is a useful way of thinking about it: small and medium-sized businesses don’t buy much consulting and, when they do, they buy it from their auditor or from freelance consultants. Sector is much less reliable as an indicator of difference: at the moment, you can take two banks of a broadly similar profile and find that one is buying a lot of consulting services while the other is buying virtually none.
Tuesday 5th Feb, 2013
Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the shadow
Tuesday 13th Nov, 2012
This is the fifth in my series of blogs looking at the prospects for different segments within the consulting industry. “To generalise is to be an idiot,” wrote the 18th century poet and visionary, William Blake. “To particularlise is the alone distinction of merit. General knowledges are those knowledges that idiots possess.”
Thursday 8th Nov, 2012
Contrary to how it seemed to be reported in Norway's leading daily business publication, Dagens Naeringsliv, my opinion of the Nordic consulting market is not that it's locked in a hideous death spiral as clients swing the axe at the heads of the merciless money-grabbing consultants who want to bleed them, and their businesses, dry.
Monday 22nd Oct, 2012
This is the fourth in my series of blogs looking at the prospects for different segments within the consulting industry. Engineering consultancies are the new kids on the block where management consulting is concerned, certainly still new enough for some consultants to be surprised when we include them in our analysis.
Friday 12th Oct, 2012
This is the third in our series of blogs looking at the prospects for different segments within the consulting industry. One of the striking things about HR consulting firms from a client’s point of view is that there aren’t many of them. With the services of the big firms increasingly seen to be commoditised and the genuine specialists hard to find, this €1.1 billion segment of the consulting industry isn’t growing.
Wednesday 3rd Oct, 2012
September seems to have been a good month for most consulting firms in Europe. This summer, unlike that of 2011, didn’t see a crisis of confidence and many clients came back from their vacations keen to get things moving. For the moment the run up to the end of the calendar year is looking fairly positive. Inevitably, firms’ thoughts are turning to next year: will 2013 be a good year for the consulting industry? Vintage or vacuous? Boom or bust?
Monday 30th Jul, 2012
Prior to the financial crisis most large consulting firms had written off mid-market clients.
Thursday 26th Jul, 2012
We weren’t convinced about this last year. We heard a lot from consulting firms about their ability to address the growth ‘agenda’, helping clients respond to the challenges of growing their business in complex and uncertain economic conditions. But the numbers, when we came to unpick them, painted a different story; of a very small market which was struggling to establish itself. Consultants, we suggested then, had become too closely associated in clients’ minds with back-office operational improvement. They might have been addressing the agenda, but their message wasn't getting through.
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