Big Four firms

The recent announcement that PwC is acquiring Diamond Consultants isn't – and is – a surprise.

In the race to close the gap that Deloitte is perceived to have opened up between itself and the consulting practices of the other Big Four firms, technology is critical. Whether you like it or not, much consulting is driven directly or indirectly by IT changes. New systems don’t just create work for the software vendors and others who implement technology, but typically trigger a raft of changes to working practices and organisational structures.

Quite a lot, apparently.

Many of you will have noticed that there’s a boom in strategy consulting going on.

Having hunkered down for the duration of the (private sector) recession, companies are looking to see how to respond to the recovery. What has changed? How do they need to adapt? Not surprisingly, this leads to increased demand for strategy consulting: that’s happening at the moment, just as it happened after the last downturns in 1997 and 2002.