Friday 18th Jan, 2019
By Fiona Czerniawska.
I recently did a presentation on the future of professional services for Dansk Industri (DI) at the latter’s beautiful building in the centre of Copenhagen. It was an apt place for such an event: Each floor of the building is named after a concept, and the top floor, with its expansive view across the city, is called “udsyn”.
The simplest meaning of udsyn is “view”, but its resonance is far subtler than that: “Ud” actually means “out” and “syn” means vision. “It means looking outside your world”, DI explained.
I can’t think of a better word to sum up what I think is the big, strategic opportunity for professional services firms in 2019 than udsyn.
Friday 21st Dec, 2018
By Fiona Czerniawska.
Growing East: When we crunch all the data for 2018, we expect to find that demand for consulting services has been patchy. Some sectors and services, in some geographies, will have performed exceptionally well, but other large and well-established markets will have been distinctly bearish. Underlying willingness to use consultants is strong, but that won’t stop clients looking constantly over their shoulder out of fear of a potential downturn. Firms that want to accelerate their growth will be looking to the East: Growth rates in China, Japan, and South East Asia all look particularly positive.
Monday 10th Dec, 2018
By Fiona Czerniawska.
THE SCENE: A bar in midtown Manhattan. It’s late and two men in their 50s sit hunched over their beers. Matt is the corporate risk officer for a major pharmaceutical company. Greying and a little broad around the middle, he no longer aspires to be a professional ping-pong player. He simply wants to get through the week without another crisis. Sandy is his drinking partner of many years, since they met up at business school and discovered a common liking for burritos. Sandy is the financial controller of a well-known arts and craft magazine, a job Matt would happily trade for any day of the week. MATT runs his finger down the droplets on the side of his glass.
Monday 12th Nov, 2018
By Fiona Czerniawska.
Our recent report on how the consulting delivery model could change from being an often uncomfortable and suboptimal mix of advice and implementation to a combination of deep expertise, smart software, and proprietary data (something we’ve reluctantly—in the absence of anything better—termed “managed services”) has triggered more conversations with more firms than anything else we’ve written this year. So what have we learnt?
Monday 22nd Oct, 2018
By Fiona Czerniawska.
Many years ago, I took part in a panel debate about consulting at London Business School. An hour or so into the discussion, a tentative hand went up in the audience. “I’m sorry,” the student said. “This is all very interesting, but I still don’t understand what consulting is.”
It’s a question that’s being asked again today, but this time behind the closed doors of senior partners’ offices. For consulting firms, contemplating their strategy, how they answer this question will determine their future success.
On one side, there are people who see consulting work as a cerebral activity, done by smart, creative people working with smart, creative clients, which helps organisations adopt and adapt best practice and innovative ideas, all in pursuit of better performance. This is, of course, the classic view of consulting—one that would be recognised by the original James O. McKinsey back in the 1930s and one that was nurtured by his illustrious successor, Marvin Bower, who ran McKinsey from 1950 to 1967 and remained a highly influential figure into the 1990s.
Thursday 11th Oct, 2018
By Fiona Czerniawska.
“Transformation is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean you may think strategy consulting is a big deal, but that’s just peanuts to transformation."
If Douglas Adams was alive and well today, and writing The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Consulting, he’d probably have said this. Indeed, one of Adams’ most brilliant ideas, the infinite improbability drive—a faster-than-light drive based on quantum theory—would almost certainly have been deployed whizzing consultants from one side of the transformation universe to another*.
We’ve written before on this blog about the dangers posed by the extent to which transformation, like the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal—another Adams invention—has been gobbling up traditional consulting services.
Wednesday 18th Jul, 2018
By Fiona Czerniawska.
Let’s face it: Consulting is a hit-and-run industry. You turn up, work out the best response (to a problem or an opportunity), steer your client through the tricky decision-making process, and—if you’re lucky and very good at what you do—play a short-term role in implementation. But at some point the client takes over—unless you can, as some firms are trying to do, manage the even trickier transition into a managed service or some other type of long-term relationship. Conventional consulting is very start-and-stop: Every few months you’re going to a new client, and starting the whole process over again. It’s also very fragmented: Unlike the technology sector, where successful software packages act as a magnet to clients and create a more homogeneous environment, consulting work is diverse and fast-changing. Specialist skills burn like phosphorous: Brightly, but briefly.
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.
Tuesday 22nd May, 2018
By Fiona Czerniawska.
At 6%, growth in the Nordics consulting market in 2016-17 was good by continental European standards—but it’s also a good reminder of how dangerous averages can be. Not only are the different countries in the region growing at different rates—growth in Sweden and Finland is roughly twice that of Norway, which is still recovering from the impact of low oil prices—but individual firms’ experiences vary widely.
Speaking recently at events at Virke in Oslo and DI in Copenhagen, I was struck by the possibility that none of the firms in the audience were likely to have grown at that rate. Some we interviewed for our new report on the region were much more upbeat, while others were struggling. Given that context, I offered up seven things consulting firms in the region might like to consider.
Friday 27th Apr, 2018
By Edward Haigh.
I joined Sony in July 1998, on the day it launched its first VAIO laptop in the UK and, in doing so, parked its fearsome tanks on the lawns of the IT industry. By the time I left the company, seven years later to the day, I’d worked for an internet service provider; a mobile network reseller; a social networking platform; a music download and streaming service; and a consumer electronics manufacturer. The list of industry conferences I’d attended was long and varied.
What I’d failed to hear, as I pushed open the front door at Sony’s office that day, was the sound of the starting pistol being fired on a phase of massive convergence in the technology, media and telecoms sector (an act that probably ought to be attributed to the launch of Freeserve, the UK’s first free dial-up ISP, in the same year). But it quickly became clear to me that the competitive landscape in which Sony was operating was in a massive state of flux, in much the same way as the competitive landscape in professional services is today.
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