
Mark Newman
Consulting growth in a resource desert
Updated: Oct 8, 2021

As the economy comes out of lockdown, significant worldwide growth of management consulting is being forecasted. One research report suggests a growth of nearly 50% from 2020 to 2025, that's $820bn to $1,200bn - a CAGR of 9.2% (source: Research and Markets)
PwC recently announced spending plans of $12bn to add 100,000 staff to its current global headcount of 284,000 (source: PwC)
Other, smaller firms have equally ambitious growth targets. PA Consulting are targeting £1bn by 2024 - up from £500M in 2020 (source: consultancy.uk)
With consulting firms scrambling to recruit the best people, we can anticipate there will be a bust in resource availability and a sharp increase in salaries. It's already happening in legal services where six figure packages are being offered to newly qualified solicitors (source: Bloomberg). So, if planned revenue growth is going be realised with decent margins, it will need to be supported by productivity enhancements.
How can consulting, and specifically transformation consulting, be made more productive? The current reliance on PowerPoint, Excel, and virtual meeting spaces simply isn't going to deliver the type of productivity gains needed. New technology platforms will be needed to;
support start-to-end transformation journeys
rapidly on-board and rotate staff
leverage scarce expertise across projects
improve remote governance and delivery quality
enhance client engagement and collaboration
enable collaborative delivery across disciplines
integrate operating model designs with strategic analysis and delivery
capture and leverage IP across projects
Adopting delivery platforms will be counter-cultural to consultants who are wedded to their slide decks and spreadsheets, and who prefer to operate in an unconstrained (and ungovernable) delivery mode. The change will need to be led by a new wave of consultants who are focused on both the customer and service excellence, and who are technologically adept.
ASSIST® is a consulting framework and online platform for business transformation that integrates strategic analysis, operating model design, and portfolio optimisation. You can read more about ASSIST® here
If you would like to discuss and see how ASSIST® can be used to accelerate your transformation consulting practice, then please get in touch