Strategic planning

The growth agenda: it’s on the lips of virtually every consulting firm at the moment. Private sector clients, blinking in the macro-economic daylight, want to develop new products and launch them into new markets. They want to know how to innovate, how to recruit the best people from emerging markets and how to re-engage consumers in more jaded ones. Growth-related projects often have a caché within consulting firms beyond their size because the results are more tangible than most consulting services (a new product launched, a new marketing campaign).

Business analytics is, of course, nothing new. Big Four firms and engineering consultancies have long retained small groups of economists to analyse the macro-economic environment; strategy firms have typically taken an analytical approach to assessing – say – the attractiveness of a new market. However, in all such cases, business analytics has been a back-office function, something that is part of another service offered by the firm.

But there are three reasons why analytics is now emerging, blinking, into the limelight.

It’s been a busy summer, at least if you’re in the business of buying and selling consulting firms.