Growth

By Ashok Patel.

If I were to say that April 21, 2017 marked a momentous occasion in the history of not just the UK, but globally, I’m sure many people would be puzzled. For most, it was a regular Friday in a long list of Fridays in which nothing extraordinary happened. But something remarkable did happen—something that hadn’t happened in 135 years. It was the first full day since January 1882 in which no coal was used to generate electricity in the UK.¹

The event, heralded for its significance by both Greenpeace UK and the WWF, may only be one step in the very long and arduous journey to transforming the UK’s power generation portfolio, but it represents a much wider trend of change, and disruption, in the energy industry.

By Lindsay Stark.

Last year, we wrote about the relatively slow spread of digital transformation across Canada. This year, we’re pleased to say that the tortoise may well have come into its own.

With the consulting market presenting overall growth of 4.9%, 2017 was a good year to be a consultant in Canada—but it was even better if you were able to offer digital services. Canada’s digital market is now almost four times the size it was in 2016, with digital work now accounting for 20% of all consulting happening there. To put that in perspective, the US digital market—arguably the most dynamic in the world—remains much larger, but grew just 77% over the same period. If you’re a consultant wanting to sell digital solutions, Canada must look like a very nice option.

Fuelled by attractive new-technology use cases pouring in from the US, Canada’s clients were eager to learn how they could replicate the successes being enjoyed south of the border. For those clients asking how they could use new technologies to improve back-office efficiency, Canada’s consultants had an answer: cloud-based ERP systems.

By Fiona Czerniawska.

Size has long mattered in the consulting industry: in the last five years, we estimate that firms with more than 1,000 consultants have grown by 46%, 2.3 times the rate of smaller ones.

That’s not new: if you went back to the 1970s and tracked firms’ growth since, allowing for all the inevitable mergers and acquisitions, you’d see that the firms that dominated consulting then are still those that rule the roost today. Smaller firms come and go, but the big firms march relentlessly on.  There are several reasons for this. Big firms are more likely to work on big projects for big clients: if you’re the CEO of a major corporation you’d don’t hire a ten-person firm to do the global roll-out of your new strategy. You may bring small firms in for specialist advice, and you may well be prepared to pay a premium price for that, but you don’t expect them to cover the ground. With more money coming in, big firms have been able to invest in account management, so they’re alert to upcoming opportunities and are more likely to win them because they know those involved. The biggest firms, too, have been able to attract the best people because they pay more and claim to offer more interesting work with iconic brands.