arkimeda

Is there such a thing as independence?

Client-side or supply-side? It seems such a simple question, but in practice the response is much more complicated. Consulting firms can be notionally divided into those that offer independent advice and those which have obvious ties, perhaps to a specific vendor if they’re an IT consultancy or to a parent company in the case of the [...]

The great divide?

One of the ways in which this recession is proving to be different from a consultant’s point of view is that demand for freelance consultants appears to have shrunk. Although there’s no hard data on the shift anecdotal evidence from clients, consulting firms and even freelance consultants confirms it. There are several possible explanations for this. The [...]

Don’t ask, don’t tell

Economic downturns invariably trigger renewed interest in paying for consulting services on a risk-reward basis. This one is no exception: every consulting firm I’ve spoken to recently reports that clients are talking about this and many believe there’s an opportunity for them to steal a march over their competitors by actively offering it. The jury [...]

The value of brand in a recession

Most people would agree that the recession has so far produced a flight to brand in the consulting market. But will this continue to be the case? There are two forces acting here. The first, pulling clients towards familiar firms, is security. Of course, this has always been important to some extent, especially where high-profile, critically important [...]

Survival instinct

One of the points often made about the consulting industry is that barriers to entry are low. But this isn’t strictly true. They’re low in theory (there’s no regulation to keep new entrants out, for example) but history suggests they’re high in practice. Over the last 30 years there are remarkably few firms which have [...]

Could demand for consulting fall off a cliff?

It’s been widely reported that Volvo trucks suffered a potentially catastrophic fall in demand in the third quarter of 2008: from around 40,000 trucks a month, sales fell to around 100. Clearly, the owners of big fleets of trucks are trying to save money by running their vehicles for longer. Could the same thing happen to [...]

The anatomy of a bad relationship

Clients view consulting relationships in two distinct ways: the personal interaction they have with the consultants (the people), and the results delivered (the promises they make). So what is it that goes wrong? Unsurprisingly, clients cite poor quality consultants first. “Bad consultants are those who trot out platitudes and charge a lot,” was how one manager [...]

The promise pyramid

Every consulting project has promises embedded within it: they may be small or large, explicit or implicit, but they are there nonetheless – and the single, most important thing a consulting firm does is keep its promises. There are three types of promises. First, there are the must-keeps. These are the promises that all consulting firms make [...]

Consultants as bellwethers for the economy?

There’s a common perception that consultants do well in a downturn. Because they sell services rather than products, consulting firms are – the argument goes – better able to adapt what they do to, to fit changing economic circumstances. Thus, in the good times, their focus is on growth and new markets; in bad times, [...]

The ripple effect

If the consulting “industry” is a collection of micro-markets, you’d expect any downturn to hit sectors and services at different times and with varying degrees of ferocity. That would certainly be borne out by the experience of niche firms in recent years: 2002-04 saw some firms powering ahead while others gave up an unequal [...]