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Fortress strategy under siege
By Fiona Czerniawska You can get really bogged down in how to segment the consulting industry, so I’ve developed a simple, Disney-style model to explain the current dynamics of the market. Let me...
View ArticleThe case for less mechanical account management
By Fiona Czerniawska “What would I advise a consulting firm to do? Spend more time on relationship development. We have a very, very good account manager: he sleeps, eats, and breathes our industry; he...
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Clients: Too busy to body-shop
By Fiona Czerniawska Our recent survey of clients showed yet another jump in the amount they’re doing. We ask people about a whole host of different initiatives, ranging from cost-cutting, through...
View ArticleWhat next for the GCC consulting market?
The GCC consulting market has added $1bn to its value in the space of just three years. That’s roughly equivalent to the size of the entire Swedish consulting market: it’s a lot of growth. But can we...
View ArticleIT (brand) architecture is not the answer
By Fiona Czerniawska Technology companies* have always had a problem with consulting. Typically, technology companies have treated their consulting businesses in one of two ways. For some – most,...
View ArticleEngineering consultancies: getting back in on the act
By Fiona Czerniawska Environmental consulting didn’t have a great recession. Concerns about the impact on business of climate change and the need to use all resources, not just energy, on a more...
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Hidden in plain sight: the single, most important factor in driving clients’...
By Fiona Czerniawska Last year, when we asked clients about the most important factors which influence their opinion about a given consulting firm, they told us it was the quality of people they...
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Business models: the client view
By Fiona Czerniawska Is the consulting industry guilty of talking too much to itself? There are times I think firms’ big and on-going debate about business models are starting to sound like therapy...
View ArticleWomen in consulting in the Gulf region
By Jodi Davies Late last year we published a report which examined clients’ views about the role of women in consulting teams. Our hypothesis was that clients value the breadth of thought that diverse...
View ArticleThe business planning re-boot
By Fiona Czerniawska A long time ago I found myself schlepping around the local offices of a major consulting firm asking what their plan was for the next couple of years. The answer to my question...
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How digital is re-writing the rules of competition for consulting firms
By Fiona Czerniawska It was an innocuous question, the kind we ask clients every day: which firms did you consider for this project? The project was digital transformation – the kind of project we hear...
View ArticleFrom fintech to contech?
By Fiona Czerniawska Fintech is the buzz of the moment. “There are hundreds of start-ups with a lot of brains and money working on various alternatives to traditional banking,” Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP...
View ArticleThe black hole at the heart of the consulting universe
By Fiona Czerniawska Consulting is a like a piece of string, I wrote earlier this year, with low-cost consulting (industrialised, standardised work in familiar territory) at one end and high-value...
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Can the US consulting market keep growing at its current rate?
By Fiona Czerniawska Nothing lasts for ever, certainly not upswings in the economic cycle. Yet the US consulting market, despite its size and maturity, has been growing faster than the average global...
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Strategy and technology: a salutary tale from the energy and resources sector
By Fiona Czerniawska 26%. That’s the proportion of clients in the energy and resources sector globally who think that strategy firms deliver poor-quality work, twice the level of clients on average,...
View ArticlePaving the way for more women partners
By Fiona Czerniawska Consulting firms have made huge efforts over the last decade to increase the proportion of women in their businesses. By the standards of most industries they’ve been highly...
View ArticleKorn Ferry and Hay Group: The HR consulting market turns a corner
By Fiona Czerniawska It’s just the latest deal in a wave of consolidation that’s been washing over HR consulting for a decade or more – but it’s one that could signal a shift in the market. The $7.5bn...
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The role of the consulting brand: it’s not what you are, but what you do
By Fiona Czerniawska 40% of senior executives say that a firm’s overall brand has a significant impact on their opinion about the firm, and a further 43% say it has some bearing. That makes brand more...
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Industry knowledge: plenty of room for improvement
By Fiona Czerniawska Finding points of difference between consulting firms is something clients have always struggled with, but there’s one characteristic that’s coming up again and again in our...
View ArticleEnter the orchestrator?
By Fiona Czerniawska Clients want to have their cake and eat it. They regularly tell us that they’d like to use specialised firms, but in practice they tend to stick with larger ones (and the bigger...
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