Entrepreneurial brainstorming session N.10: software for the consulting industry
Are you jealous of consultants?
You shouldn’t. True, their work might appear glamorous: you think they would speak to C-level executives only, providing Powerpoint-supported matrixes & magic quandrants; you believe consultants spend most of their time thinking hard, that their job is truly intellectual. In other words, the perfect, self-fullfilling job where your brains grows as fast as your bank account.
This vision is totally wrong.
A consultant, from his early age to his mid-30s, will spend most of her/his time in nit-picking Powerpoint template alignments, crunching numbers on Excel, or filling in questionnaires out of loads of factory workers in Dakota (I was there).
Consultants often recommend their clients to make use of best-of-breed software, but they hardly have time to improve their own internal processes since their business models rely on what I call the “timesheet dictatorship” or pay-per-time-spent-on-a-client. Basically, whether you read Daily Sports in the toilets or debrief a meeting doesn’t matter: if you think about your client, you bill it! So, most consulting firms rely on lazy processes, and still make good money. What if you could make them save money? Their margins would increase further, and your bank account would grow as fast as your brains (for once).
This is where I see an opportunity for clever software people. Get these bored consultants out of the wood, grant them with a glass of whisky to make them speak and listen to what they say carefully. Listen to their day-to-day workload: consultants pretend one day is never like the other because they move from a client to another; but do you think implementing SAP at Nestlé is really different from deploying SAP at Ford? do you think a cost-saving mission at Boeing really differs from a cost-saving mission at Ahold? I can assure you that the job doesn’t differ an inch. Just ask a senior consultant and (s)he’ll tell you (s)he can almost write the final recommendations without knowing the sector in which the client operates, or even the client’s name. To make a long story short, consultants spend a lot of time doing the same things for identical purposes in similar environments.
A well-thought, well-packaged software may help hell a lot the consulting industry. Actually, n well-packaged software may help a lot (n being the number of similar processes one would find between different consulting firms in different businesses).
So, if you are or have been a consultant in the past, which automatizable processes come accross your mind? What could software people automatize to ease your job a little? Help software developers and they’ll help you back. Consultants are too smart and costly to be left cleaning Excel tables & preparing presentations 80% of their time.
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Business Process Management, Business strategy, CIO, Consulting, ERP, Entrepreneurship, Europe, Organization, Outsourcing, Project Management, Software, Supply Chain, USA, innovation, operations
I agree with your article, Jeremy, though we have to treat the present evolution with care.
1) Many company internal processes are repetitive and knowledge management may help to learn from past experiences and to improve performance during further projects. Most success stories of the software industry are based on the idea of standardization of repetitive processes. So, the more a company’s activity is limited (non-repetitive), the less software products will be efficient. That’s a fact.
2) Consultancies are not consultancies, ie. Bainees are not McKinseys and BCG has not a lot to do with Cap Gemini. France’s (and Europe’s) management consulting market is highly segmented, each segment having its own actors. To make it simple, there are “one-stop-shops” and “strategy specialists” (even if I agree that they often clash on contract bids). Cap Gemini’s and Accenture’s job is to sell “ready-made” processes, often standardized and software-driven. They love knowledge management. McKinsey tries to find specific, client-adapted niche solutions, which make companies differ from their competitors. This explains why for the same time in office, Mr McKinsey’s bank account grows faster than Mr Accenture’s one (sorry for the Mr, but less than 20% of french consultants are female). And, as human intelligence is still more powerful than computer brains, this is also the reason why software knowledge management solutions are more efficient for one-stop-shops than for specialists.
3) In times of strong economic growth and oligopolistic markets, companies have a lot of cash. Paired with well performing Managing Partners it can happen (and it happens more often than we might imagine) that standardized low-added-value projects are sold by specialist consultancies for a specialist price. In this case, software developpers can help consultants by offering sophisticated, highly specific and raedy-to-use knowledge management products. There is a real investment opportunity and I don’t even mention the customer’s bank account.
However, two questions remain considering the persistency of this market:
1) Is this a temporary opportunity (related to economic cycles or other trends)?
2) Are specialist consultancies about to open “one-stop-shops”?
We’ll see…
hello jeremy
do you think you can duplicate a final recommandation in corporate communication ’s activities ?or crisis communication?
That ’s what I like my job of consultant
in my case men cannnot be modeled
Michel
Rupert & Michel, I agree with you in the sense that pure strategy consulting & corporate communication work cannot be automatized, or put it this way, ’softwarized’.
However, there exist software that really help the data crunching process (before the actual mission, consultants need to gather information): in the corporate communication business for instance, you may for instance take a look at Digimind (http://www.digimind.com/).
Indeed Robert, although job hunting is the last reason why I blog. You’ll find my e-mail address over there: http://jeremyfain.wordpress.com/about/
Looking forward to reading your message,
Jeremy
Jay,
BCG and several other strategy consultants use highly-customized versions of Powerpoint ‘hundred of plugins, etc…).
Probably not the best way to work, but so useful…
i pay for u get mnc company job
Suresh raja
e-mail id: suresh_enjoy2006@yahoo.co.in address: no,15 west mada st
tel: 9994028125 kaladipet Chennai-19
: 9444869971
Objective:
That ensures an excellent apportunity to expose my creativity
Technical skills:
Language : c, c++, java, vb 6.0;
Web technology: asp,_______java script,html,_______vb script;
Operating system: window xp,ms dos;
Data base: oracle 8.1,ms access
Education:
Bsc computer sceience mano college ;
M.S university , tirunelveli.
Course included;
Office automation data structure principle of programming
C programme digital computer architectute oracle
C++ Rdbms o/s
Html vb wap
Java micro processor asp
Extra curriclam activities:
Holder of nss certificate
Member of kabadi and cricket &kho-kho in tye college level team
Project details:
Project name:
College management system
This project involves maintain college level process and it may be used online
Resposbilities:
· all details collect from our college
· then reference from asp,oracle books.
Environment:
Asp,_______java script ,html,oracle 8.1 and windows xp
Personal details :
Fathers name: r.shunmuganathan,
Data of birth : 15-5-85
Nationality : Indian
Religion: hindu
Hobbies:
Drawing& photography
Interest:
Traveling*& lot of time spend in computer work
Language known:
Tamil,English
Hello Suresh,
Thank you for your interest and drive to join the team.
However, we’re not especially keen on having a remote team since all three of us have so far been in Paris.
So I’m afraid I won’t contact you for the job, unless you send me by e-mail some really thrilling computer science projects of yours.
Many thanks again,
Jeremy