Tuesday 1st Aug, 2017
By Fiona Czerniawska.
You don’t need a crystal ball these days to prophesy the death of the conventional audit process. Just about anyone who can scrape some tea leaves together has looked into their cups and seen the future: the people-less audit has become the expectation du jour.
Friday 7th Jul, 2017
By Zoë Stumpf.
It must be very irritating to be Canadian and be constantly taken to be American—at least by foreigners unfamiliar with nuances of accent. The good news for the Canada consulting market is that there’s no real danger of that type of confusion happening: Not only is the market a fraction of the size of that of its southern neighbour, it’s also very different in its make-up. Take digital transformation as an example. In the US—arguably the world’s most digitally mature consulting market—digital has become a vast behemoth accounting for a huge 25% of the total market, driving work across all service lines and encompassing all industries. In Canada, it’s a different, rather more modest story, with digital work accounting for less than 6% of the market and the largest share of the work falling to strategy consultants. Indeed, the fact that digital projects now account for a very large proportion of all strategy work in Canada suggests that digital is something people are talking about a lot more than something they’re acting on.
Tuesday 4th Jul, 2017
By Alison Huntington.
Apparently, it’s true: People own dogs that look like themselves. A 2015 experiment revealed that by just looking at pooch and owner, it’s easy to match them up because their hairstyles and eye shape tend to be similar. Aside from wondering who on earth funds this sort of research, it made me think that there’s perhaps a parallel: Consulting firms’ offices tend to look like their owners.
Tuesday 13th Jun, 2017
By Zoë Stumpf.
It may be a little fanciful to compare a consulting market with a film, but the Benelux consulting market has, to my mind at least, an awful lot in common with 1993’s Groundhog Day–a comedy all about an arrogant TV weatherman, tasked with covering the annual appearance of a groundhog from its hole, who then gets trapped into reliving the same day over and over again until he gets it right. It's this time warp element (rather than the humour) that draws comparisons with what is happening to consulting in Benelux now–a market that seems to have got itself well and truly stuck on the hamster wheel of low growth.
Tuesday 30th May, 2017
By Fiona Czerniawska.
That’s the question we ask in our new report on the digital transformation market, which is based on data from 150 very senior executives in the US.
Digital transformation is big business: we estimate that $1 in $6 spent on consulting now goes on this, a trend that’s cannibalised demand for traditional consulting services of all types (though some more than others). By itself, the global digital transformation consulting is now worth more than most local consulting markets (it’s twice the size of the entire UK market, for example, and five times that of China).
Tuesday 16th May, 2017
By Rachel Duk.
I confess: I was utterly enchanted by Disney’s remake of their classic film Beauty and the Beast. In common with my fellow cinema-goers, I sought solace from the ongoing political debacles in the UK in a French wonderland of singing candlesticks and talking teacups. And in a happy coincidence, my mind was allowed to linger in that particular universe for a little longer, as the next day I boarded a Paris-bound Eurostar to talk to some of our customers about the France consulting market. While I prepared myself for the day ahead—the soundtrack still ringing in my ears—it began to dawn on me just how many parallels existed between Beauty and the Beast and the France consulting market.
Thursday 23rd Mar, 2017
By Alison Huntington.
This article was originally published in HR Review on 20th March 2017
The definition of success is different for everyone. For some it’s a lofty title and six-figure salary; for others it’s feeling like they’re making a difference. Others want a fulfilling career alongside the other important things in life: friends, family, and generally having a life outside work.
While each person has their own vision of what success looks like, the £100bn+ global consulting sector has a very set measure of success for its staff: revenues generated. Assessment of staff at consulting firms from manager grade (the middle of the consulting ladder) upwards can broadly be summed up as “bigger is better”—the more work a consultant has brought in over the course of the year, the higher the rating in their appraisal.
Monday 13th Mar, 2017
By Edward Haigh.
61%.
That’s the proportion of clients that we surveyed in the US recently who said that they were already involved with, or planning, initiatives related to artificial intelligence (AI), furthering the idea–currently being pushed by people from Silicon Valley to Washington and beyond– that we stand at the cusp of a new wave of automation.
Friday 10th Mar, 2017
By Edward Haigh.
$20bn.
That’s how big we think the global digital transformation consulting market is now, which means that it represents about 15% of the entire market. It’s a market that’s changing all the time, both in response to changing technology, but also as clients’ understanding of the potential for digital transformation moves from front to back office.
Wednesday 8th Mar, 2017
By B.J. Richards.
“Keep calm and carry on”: The plucky little exhortation with the horrifying backstory became positively ubiquitous over the last few years, gracing countless coffee mugs and greeting cards while keeping many a London souvenir shop afloat. Irrepressibly British, the WWII-era sentiment clearly struck a chord with a recession-weary citizenry upon its rediscovery at the end of the noughties.
Pages |