Now we know what the next big thing is

By Fiona Czerniawska

Twenty years ago Gavin Potter and I wrote a book called Business in a Virtual World.  Its thesis was that the increasing conversion of ‘stuff’ into digital information paved the way for a new way of doing business.  The book garnered some nice reviews, earned the praise of people we respected – and sold a couple of thousand copies.

How times change: today, digitization books pepper the top of bestselling business book lists.  After years of speculating what the next big thing in consulting will be, I think we’ve found it.

Digitization – which we’d define as exploiting the opportunities to change products, processes and business models by converting analogue information into digital information – is the word on many clients’ mouths, rapidly subsuming analytics.  Our research suggests that 84% of organizations are either currently engaged in digitization projects or actively planning them.  Part of this is driven by the irresistible siren call of technology, the solution for all problems and the launch pad for most opportunities.  There’s something of a bubble growing here: our new report on digitization quotes one bemused executive, “We’re working on our digital strategy.  I have no idea what that means.”  Not since the height of the dotcom boom have we seen so many organizations striving for something they don’t understand and may not need.  The crux of the matter is that little word ‘may’: for some organizations, digitization really does offer game-changing possibilities – and we only need to look at the massive take-up in the media and retail sectors to see this.  But for others there’s a definite sense of keeping up with neighbors, a desire to tick the box saying digitization strategy before they have a clear idea of the precise potential for their business.

But for consulting firms there’s no ‘may’ about it: quite the opposite.  For them, digitization is important because it results in large-scale projects which depend on a combination business and technology skills (by contrast, clients think that traditional IT work is a commodity, to be done by firms which just do technology).  Put simply, digitization drives up other types of consulting.  Among organizations which already have a digitization project underway, or which are planning one in the near-term, 41% say their expenditure on all types of consulting projects will increase, compared to 27% of organizations where digitization isn’t happening.  Faced with that kind of statistic, even consulting firms which would never, in a million years, describe themselves as digitization experts need to have mapped out what their response to this growing market is going to be.  Otherwise they may find themselves left on the shelf.