Financial services consulting

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.

By Alison Huntington

What’s the difference between TMT and financial services clients? There are the obvious things: the jeans and lumberjack shirts versus the sharp suits; the seemingly impenetrable language of technology versus the dictionary of complex financial products; sunshine-soaked Silicon Valley versus the imposing skyscrapers of New York.

But there are less obvious things, and the one we uncovered is that clients in these two sectors have very different opinions of the value added by consultants.