Consulting growth in a resource desert

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.

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