Filling the gap in financial services: Why IT clients rate strategy firms, and strategy clients rate technology firms

By Alison Huntington.

A few years ago, it was all so straightforward. Strategy firms did strategy work. IT firms did technology. The Big Four did finance-y stuff. End of.

These days, the consulting landscape is far more porous, with firms’ expertise blurring across consulting lines. For clients, the clear demarcation of who to go to for what is no more, and for consulting firms, stakeholder engagement maps have become a lot more complex.

This is perhaps no more amply demonstrated than by the views of clients working in strategy and IT functions in financial services. Strategy clients rate technology firms over strategy firms, while clients in IT plump for strategy firms over technology firms. In both cases, you might assume relationships to be strongest and perceptions most kind in the shared expertise of client and consulting firm, but that’s not the case here.

Part of this is about the impact of digital and the growing pervasiveness of technology across all business issues. It’s forcing CIOs and IT directors to the forefront of strategic decisions—and questions of technology onto clients more used to thinking about pure strategy. The two are so intertwined now that it’s almost impossible to separate them, so it’s likely that financial services clients—highly paid experts in their own function and industry—are most complimentary about a firm that fills a capability gap for them rather than one that augments or complements existing resources.

For clients working in strategic functions, being partnered with a firm that has a long track record in delivering technology programmes, that knows the technology inside out, but can also apply business acumen to an issue, is invaluable. The depth of technology expertise is something few non-tech firms can match—strategy firms may talk the talk when it comes to technology, but few have long-standing expertise and war stories from having made ideas a reality. Likewise, clients in IT increasingly need partners who know enough about technology but specialise in placing it in a strategic context—and this is where strategy firms excel.

Of course, both strategy firms and technology firms are trying to seize slices of each other’s pies and dominate the middle ground where strategy and technology merge. Our research shows that each is having some success in targeting the other’s traditional clients—but at the expense of being the first choice among their own.

And that middle ground—well, that’s still up for grabs.

Our report on Perceptions of Consulting in Financial Services has been published, and you can find out more information here.