Tag Archives | industry trends

Services Industry News: Quick Takes

By Michael W. McLaughlin on July 6, 2011 in Business Life, Industry Trends

Here’s a brief roundup of links and news from around the services industry.

24% say they’d rather give up sex than sit through another PowerPoint presentation.

The Economist offers advice to consultants as demand for services rebounds.

Job market for consulting shows real signs of life.

What consultants are earning at 4,956 companies.

Accenture’s earnings beat expectations. Booz Allen’s profit surges.

PwC gobbles up consulting firm PRTM. The financial details are hush-hush, but you can bet some people will end up with bags of money.

Consulting Magazine selects its top 25 consultants for 2011. Mostly a vanity award?

According to the Boston Consulting Group, consumer sentiment is currently all over the map.

What do executives want from their CIOs? PA Consultants’ survey says cost savings, increasing operational efficiencies, and delivering consistent, stable IT performance.

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Retaining Top Talent in Professional Services

By Michael W. McLaughlin on June 14, 2011 in Industry Trends, Managing Your Business

For the last few years, consultants at many firms were barely hanging on. Some dodged layoffs, survived cost-cutting measures, and withstood client pressure for fee concessions. Now, many of them think it’s time for firm leaders to recognize their sacrifices.

In their report, Professional Service Firms–Re-engaging and Retaining Employees, researchers at Towers Watson have some advice for firm leaders wrestling with this issue. With retention levels creeping back to pre-recession levels, firms must put renewed emphasis on keeping their best people. According to the report, though, firms that simply throw more money at top performers are missing the boat.

Certainly, financial rewards play a pivotal role in retention. But firm leaders must also look at how they’re helping people with career development, work-life balance, and workload. Effective retention practices include an array of strategies, not just pay raises.

Equally important is for firm leaders to strengthen the bond of engagement between employer and employee. Better engagement, the report says, leads to improved retention. That’s not exactly an “aha” finding. But the research offers specific ways for firm leaders to boost engagement, including giving people a say in the selection of their work, fostering an environment in which people can express their opinions, and ensuring that all employees are treated with respect.

The report wraps up with a warning: Firm leaders who fail to recognize the seriousness of the retention issue risk losing their top talent. For some firms, the approach to employee engagement needs reinvention. And the time to do that is now.

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Services Industry News: Quick Takes

By Michael W. McLaughlin on June 9, 2011 in Industry Trends

Here’s a brief roundup of links and news from around the services industry.

New Kellogg/Northwestern research: Visionary leaders attract more followers, especially in times of crisis.

A jab at outsourcers: 77% of IT staffers say that outsourcers invent work just to make more money.

Consultants get a Showtime “comedy” series: House of Lies is likely to be pretty dark humor.

Deloitte survey: Two out of three workers actively looking for new jobs.

Resumes are dead: The bio is in.

About 30% of consulting firms fail each year. Here’s some basic advice for averting failure, though it may not be nearly enough for many.

Tech news: Survey reveals 68% of global organizations planning to adopt cloud strategy.

A client’s perspective: Five questions for assessing consultants.

Eliminate Your 3 Biggest Time Traps for Good.

Six Business Technologies That Don’t Work.

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CEOs:Things Are Looking Up

By Michael W. McLaughlin on April 8, 2011 in Industry Trends

PwC released its 14th Annual Global CEO Survey, which shows strong confidence in the growth prospects for the global economy. CEOs are almost as confident about growth as they were before the global economy tanked.

It’s understandable why CEOs are bullish. For instance, in North America, corporate earnings are at record levels and profit margins for non-financial S+P 500 companies are expected to climb to their highest levels in at least 18 years, according to Bloomberg.

Find out more about the PwC survey report.

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Project Failures: Symptoms vs. Causes

By Michael W. McLaughlin on April 7, 2011 in Consulting Process, Managing Projects

Why do projects fail? In a multi-industry study of 163 companies, researchers at PM Solutions asked that simple question. Their report identifies five primary causes of project failure:

Requirements: Unclear, contradictory, and ambiguous
Resources: Lack of resources, resource conflicts, and turnover of key resources
Schedules: Too tight and overly optimistic
Planning: Based on poor data, insufficient details, and bad estimates
Risks: Unidentified, assumed, or not managed well.

You could look at the list above and conclude that there’s nothing new in this report–and you’d be right. What’s so alarming, though, is that such problems still plague us. This report says that more than a third of company projects are at risk of failing.

But when I look at this list, I see symptoms of project failures, not causes. At the center of any successful project is competent leadership. When you see a failed project, you’re likely to also find poor leadership.

If you perceive one of these seemingly obvious “causes” for failure on a project, you’ll want to look further. The real problem is lurking elsewhere.

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Quick Takes for Service Providers

By Michael W. McLaughlin on April 6, 2011 in Industry Trends, Managing Your Business

Is McKinsey & Co. the Root of All Evil? A catalogue of McKinsey-inspired strategies gone wrong.

Exposing the CULT in ConsULTant. A lawyer’s take on the myth of the business consultant.

How to Become a Management Consultant. If it was this straightforward, everyone would do it.

How to lose a client–fast. Some obvious points, but good reminders.

What do “social media” consultants actually do? Here are a few clues.

According to M2 Consulting, most independent consultants (76%) are satisfied or extremely satisfied with their career choice.

How much do management consultants earn? These numbers seem low.

Six Ways to Identify a Company in Decline. Add over-reliance on consultants to the list?

Good IT consultants can make bad employees. Is independent thinking an impediment to being a good employee?

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Podcast: Daniel Burrus on Seeing the Future

By Michael W. McLaughlin on March 4, 2011 in Industry Trends, Management Consulting News, Managing Your Business, Podcasts

Meet the MasterMinds: Daniel Burrus on Flash Foresight

Dan Burrus, futurist Daniel Burrus is the author of the bestselling new book, Flash Foresight: How to See the Invisible and Do the Impossible, and Technotrends.

Dan is one of the world’s leading technology forecasters and business strategists. He’s the founder of Burrus Research, a firm that monitors global advancements in technology-driven trends to help clients understand how technological, social, and business forces are converging to create untapped opportunities.

I asked Burrus how we can use the futurist’s tools to guide our businesses and help clients find those new opportunities.

Run Time: 18 minutes

Find out more about Daniel Burrus at www.flashforesight.com and www.burrus.com.

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The Best (Large) Consulting Firms to Work For

By Michael W. McLaughlin on March 1, 2011 in Industry Trends

Last month, Fortune magazine released its annual list of the 100 Best Companies to Work For. Eight consulting/accounting firms earned a place on this year’s list. For most of those firms, job growth in 2010 was non-existent. Ernst & Young, for example, reported a 7% reduction in jobs, and KPMG shrank by 5%.

Most job growth was concentrated in the pure consulting firms–not in the full-service professional service firms. Boston Consulting Group grew jobs by 2% and Booz Allen Hamilton by 9%. These two firms were also offering the highest average salary of the consulting/accounting firms, but not the highest among the top 100 companies. For instance, a senior account executive at SalesForce.com (#52 on the list) reportedly earned an annual salary of $318,323.

Ranking and Firm	Average Salary	2010 Job Growth
# 2 Boston Consulting Group	$154,501	2%
#26 Plante & Moran	$ 64,300	-4%
#63 Deloitte	$ 81,622	-1%
#73 PricewaterhouseCoopers	$ 86,826	-4%
#77 Ernst & Young	$102,593	-7%
#85 Booz Allen Hamilton	$112,728	9%
#86 KPMG	$ 73,300	-5%
#99 Accenture	$ 83,500	4%

Most of the firms on this list are still struggling to align their businesses with the market realities they face. So executives had to make tough decisions about how to size their practices and serve their markets most profitably.

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Industry Watch-July 2010

By Michael W. McLaughlin on July 21, 2010 in Industry Trends

According to researchers at the Boston Consulting Group, an economic downturn is a perfect time for mergers and acquisitions.

Apparently seeing it the same way, Deloitte is in the market for acquisitions. A year ago, Deloitte acquired the public sector practice of the bankrupt firm, BearingPoint. And now, the firm is on the lookout for new opportunities.

Consulting firm, Mercer, is also in the hunt. Mercer has acquired IPA, a health and benefits administration technology provider, hoping to use the acquisition to support its planned expansion into the health and benefits mid-market outsourcing business.

Rumors are still out there about the potential for a Booz & Company and AT Kearney merger. If it happens, the combined practice could gain a firm hold on the mediocre middle. The merger might realize substantial cost reductions from slashing overhead and administrative cost, but it would take value beyond that to make this a decent deal. If the merger is approved, expect an epic, ego-fueled battle for control of the combined firm and for the distribution of its earnings to partners.

In other news, consulting and business outsourcing giant, Accenture, reported encouraging third-quarter results that the firm characterized as a momentum builder. Accenture executives cited strong performance in their management and technology consulting practices as an indicator that the global economy is improving.

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Thought Leadership

By Michael W. McLaughlin on May 10, 2010 in Managing Your Business, Marketing

As I was going through email last week, I read that just since March 2010, the top 25 consulting firms have published more than 400 new thought leadership pieces. If you add what other firms and individuals published in the same period, you’ve got a seriously crowded market for new information.

Sometimes, it seems as though consultants adhere to the “more is better” rule. Firms keep cranking out articles, white papers, and surveys. Yet some complain that their efforts often go unnoticed. Their solution: publish more. Maybe the marketers believe that if you sling enough stuff against the wall, something will eventually stick.

With demand for services perking up, it’s a great time to get into the market with the essential ideas you’ve already developed. I’m not suggesting that you abandon your goal of being a thought leader in your field.

Related articles

Rethinking Thought Leadership

Be a Thought Leader—Not a Follower

Instead, I’m saying that to reap the value from your efforts, you have to do more than just toss more jetsam into the sea of thought leadership; you must engage directly with your clients on your ideas. After all, a good idea isn’t really worth much until someone makes use of it.

Before you write that next article or white paper, ask yourself two questions: First, have I done enough to help clients understand the ideas I’ve already developed for them? And second, what is my strategy for engaging with clients and getting their feedback once I put this new article out there?

It’s getting harder and harder to get clients’ attention. If your strategy is to simply add more to an already-flooded market, don’t expect anything better than mediocre results.

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