Thursday 15th Mar, 2018
By Fiona Czerniawska.
You can tell we’ve entered a new phase in the consulting industry’s perennial “war for talent” when a new term emerges.
In the heady days of the late 1990s, the talk was all about fungibility. Client demand was changing so rapidly that consulting firms were struggling to provide the capabilities the brave, new dotcom world was looking for. They couldn’t recruit fast enough, so had to find ways to re-badge people: “Re-spraying an auditor”, was how one Big Four firm partner put it to me; “lipstick on pigs”, was the rather more trenchant view of a client. “Fungibility”—the ease with which an individual could be moved from one practice to another was the rather more politically correct term that gained common currency. But in today’s consulting firm, fungibility isn’t enough. Digital transformation projects, in particular, require a wide range of skills, only some of which are visible on day one. Specialisation—indeed, hyper-specialisation—rules: Clients aren’t willing to trade quality for breadth, and they certainly don’t believe it’s possible for anyone to be a master of multiple trades.
Wednesday 22nd Nov, 2017
By Fiona Czerniawska.
Interviewed recently by the BBC on the impact automation is likely to have on the professional services sector, I was asked whether I thought that all the work done by professional service firms could be done by computers. The answer, to me at least, is clearly no.
Imagine the future of consulting—as we have in our report on the potential impact of robotic process automation and artificial intelligence—on the industry, as a partial eclipse. The sun is the work that conventional human consultants do today. It, and the rays emerging from it, represent different aspects of the consulting process: discover; predict; advise; decide; design; implement; run and report. Technology is the moon. But, even as the moon moves across the face of the sun it won’t entirely obscure the latter’s light: Around the edge, a corona of human activity will continue to shine.
Thursday 16th Nov, 2017
By Fiona Czerniawska.
It’s decades since Theordore Levitt wrote about what he terms “marketing myopia”, the extent to which people and organisations underestimated the potential size of their market because they viewed it through a narrow, pre-determined lens. If you’re trying to sell screws, the problem is not that every solution is a screw but that you only see screw-related opportunities: there’s a bigger market out there, if only you saw it as fixture-related.
I was reminded of this idea recently when talking to a client about how the wTheordore Levittay in which they use professional services may change in the future. A wide-ranging discussion ended up with both him and me realising that we needed to see the market differently, through a different lens if you like.
Tuesday 7th Nov, 2017
By Fiona Czerniawska.
Midnight. Outside it’s dark, but in the neon-bright office, Joshua, a junior consultant, runs his hand across his two-day-old beard. “Remind me,” he says to Sophie, slumped opposite him, “what I’m doing here.”
“Because we have to finish this report before 9am tomorrow,” she mumbles, while what little remains of her social life flashes in front of her eyes. “It’s why I delayed my wedding.”
“No, no, that’s not it”—Joshua scans the room for inspiration—“I’m sure there was something else.”
“Because we want to sell more work?”
“No… Ah.” Joshua scrabbles in his laptop bag, and triumphantly pulls out a crumpled piece of paper. “It’s here, our purpose as a consulting firm. We’re here to make a difference. We should say that tomorrow.”
Wednesday 1st Nov, 2017
Though we’re reluctant to admit it, you could buy 9.7 million data points about the global consulting market from us, and still be missing something.
Thursday 26th Oct, 2017
By Edward Haigh.
A common complaint among many consulting firms, in recent years, is that clients have been unwilling to commit to big projects, at least in one go. Most clients seem to prefer doing things in small, manageable chunks that allow them to assess the value being delivered along the way, and that don’t leave them over-committed at a time when they’re nervous that something unexpected might crop up. Like thermonuclear war or something.
Seeing this as a phase that’s likely to pass is looking increasingly ill-advised, as we suggest in our new report–The hand on the mountain–How assets and productisation are re-shaping the consulting industry. In fact, we posit the idea that it’s part of a trend that’s a long way from being played out, and that, far from being frustrated about projects that last one month, consulting firms ought to start preparing for projects that last one second.
To understand the rationale for this probably requires us to shake up our definition of consulting to some degree, and to see it as encompassing (though not ending with) any situation in which a client has a question and decides to buy an answer.
Tuesday 24th Oct, 2017
There’s nothing like a bit of crystal ball gazing to stimulate debate, so I’ve been asking the senior partners we talk to on a regular basis what they’ll be thinking about next year.
Let’s start with the external marketplace:
Wednesday 13th Sep, 2017
By Fiona Czerniawska.
Some myths take far too long to die.
Twice in the last week I’ve been part of depressing discussions with the boards of consulting firms in which someone has said something to the effect that 2% of all costs in banking/pharma/healthcare/retail go on consulting services. That assumption may make sizing the consulting market easy–but it also makes it wrong.
Friday 8th Sep, 2017
By Fiona Czerniawska.
As we’ve mentioned before on this blog, artificial intelligence and the robotic process automation of the consulting industry is dominating the conversations we’re having with senior partners at the moment. It’s both a promise (no more war for talent!) and a threat (new entrants!).
Tuesday 23rd May, 2017
By Fiona Czerniawska.
One of the big questions in consulting at the moment is where the industry starts and ends.
Digital transformation, big data & analytics, and cybersecurity—the three biggest sources of growth for consulting firms right now—all challenge the boundaries of what we’ve conventionally called consulting. Software specialists, data scientists, and even close circuit TV companies all have a role to play in consulting if recent acquisitions by consulting firms are anything to go by. But all of this activity—I’d argue—has been aimed at assimilating new services into the consulting model, not at changing it. The largest consulting firms are creating ecosystems in which they decide who’s in and who’s out based on their vision of the market, as they see it evolving from a consulting-centric viewpoint.
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