Technology consulting

By Zoë Stumpf.

I’m a big fan of Germany. That’s probably just as it should be: My surname is German, as are (perhaps more importantly) some members of my family. It’s also hard not to have huge admiration for a country that keeps all its best wines purely for domestic consumption. However, my respect for German attitudes has grown even further on the back of research that we conducted recently for our DACH report on trends and growth in the German, Austrian, and Swiss consulting market.

The reason for my ever-growing enthusiasm for all things German is that it turns out that quite a number of senior German consultants feel that they need to lead the debate about the impact of robotics and AI on the future workforce. I know that this is the topic of many news stories the world over, with widespread concern about the potential disappearance of a number of white-collar jobs, and those of us with children trying to steer them towards future-proofed careers (apparently hairdressing is a safe bet).

By Fiona Czerniawska.

It sounds like heresy. With digital transformation consulting work growing by almost 20%, technology services companies—and here I’m talking about firms that develop, implement and integrate software systems, as well as those that provide outsourced IT services—would surely be mad to ignore the opportunity that’s sitting on their doorstep.

Escaping the gravitational pull of their legacy business:

Right across professional services, there’s a growing divide between low-cost services—typically fairly standardised, repeatable work in familiar areas, which organisations buy because they simply don’t have (or want) the bandwidth to do themselves and high-value services, which are those focused on new and emerging issues, where organisations aren’t sure of the skills required, and where innovation therefore plays a critical role (cybersecurity and the use of digital technology to reinvent business models would be two good examples).