Market conditions

Anyone who has been on an aircraft has had that unsettling feeling when, thirty seconds-or-so after take off, the plane suddenly feels as though it's about to stop. "We're stopping!" you think. "Why are we stopping? Stopping isn't a good thing now that us and the ground have parted company! Captain! Captain! Put your foot down, or whatever you do in an aircraft!"

What's happening, of course, is that you're decelerating. You're not stopping, you're not even slowing down, but the rate at which you're speeding up has decreased, and that makes it feel as though you're coming to a juddering halt.

We know how big the UK consulting market is.  We know what’s grown and what hasn’t.  We even know which firms are doing well – and which aren’t.  So what?  If the last five years have taught consulting firms anything, it’s that the past is no guide to the future.  If you want to know what’s going to happen, you need client data.

Which is why we’ve spent the last few months asking more than 100 senior executives in UK multinationals about how their use of consultants may change in the future.

Big data, analytics, cloud, mobile: they’re all now converging on a single point – digitization.

Although cynics may argue this is simply the latest in a series of ideas hyped by consulting firms, our conversations with clients tell us that they're as keen on the concept as anyone.  The idea that easier, cheaper and more accessible data and technology could provide new ways to engage customers and to work with colleagues without raising costs is just too tempting a prospect for most organizations, especially when all other avenues of growth appear to have been exhausted.

Big data, analytics, cloud, mobile: they’re all now converging on a single point – digitization.

Although cynics may argue this is simply the latest in a series of ideas hyped by consulting firms, our conversations with clients tell us that they're as keen on the concept as anyone.  The idea that easier, cheaper and more accessible data and technology could provide new ways to engage customers and to work with colleagues without raising costs is just too tempting a prospect for most organizations, especially when all other avenues of growth appear to have been exhausted.