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Can you cross-sell consulting services?
It really is a billion dollar question. One of the most important strategic choices a consulting firm has to make is whether to specialise or diversify. Conventionally, the decision has been driven by size (small firms specialise, big firms diversify): the point at a firm crosses from the first to the second signals its transition [...]
Breaking the mould in manufacturing consulting
Consulting in the manufacturing sector has traditionally either been big business or virtually no business depending on the country you work in. A hugely important part of the German economy, the sector accounts for more than a quarter of all consulting there, it’s only about a tenth of the UK market where it’s dwarfed by [...]
Shaping the future of consulting
There’s a growing consensus amongst consulting firms that the pyramid model, around which their industry has so far shaped itself, might have had its day. Geared towards the idea of a nice shiny partner selling in his formidable knowledge before deploying legions of fresh-faced young guns with intellects the size of Massachusetts to mop up margin, clients are starting to question whose interests the model serves best. Few are concluding that it’s theirs. [...]
The four business models of the future
I wrote at the end of last week about how Dutch consulting firms are in the forefront of pioneering new consulting organisational models and that we expect to see firms in other countries follow suit. Although conventional thinking about how consulting firms are structured has focused on the continuum from generalist to specialist, a more [...]
Hyper-specialisation in consulting
I’ve written a lot in this blog about specialisation, particularly clients’ relentless quest for expertise in a world that has become increasingly flat from a skills point of view. But a recent article in the Harvard Business Review had made me wonder how far it will all go, or – less positively – where it [...]
The scarcity of scarcity
A previous post, about the impact consultant-managers could have on the consulting industry, has had me thinking about what clients lack. For all the talk about scientific management, innovation and new technology, consulting is an industry that’s founded on scarcity – of skills and of certain types of people. The more consulting firms control access [...]
Staff substitution: alive and kicking
Consulting firms call it staff substitution; clients call it contingent labour. Some people say contracting; others, interim management. The number of terms is an indication of how contentious the issue is and how blurred its definition. What it boils down to is the use of management consultants in roles which should rightly be filled by [...]
Can you buy a service without a supplier?
Our latest survey of buying trends among clients has a curious anomaly in it. When we ask people which consulting services they’re planning to purchase, we get a broadly, though not massively, positive response. Technology is high on the agenda as organisations move beyond the cost-cutting and regulatory change that dominated the consulting industry during [...]
The three stages of commoditisation
Consulting is always being commoditised but has yet to become a commodity. Commoditisation has always snapped at the heels of the industry, but emerging challenges and new technologies has historically allowed the industry, on balance, to stay ahead. And that’s what consultants do: they keep on running. But just occasionally it’s worth looking back over [...]
Email-free consulting?
When Thierry Breton, Chairman and Chief Executive of Atos Origin, announced last month that he wanted his firm to be a “zero email company” he raised some interesting questions about how consultants do business. He wasn’t talking about external communication. Forms of communication, once established, are hard to eradicate (there are still some people out [...]
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