Black Mirror — Digital Consulting is (future) here

From a time when strategy was thought of as a general’s prerogative to a phase where corporates in growing America brought almost every strategic problem to the consultants who hired MBAs out of top-tier institutions like Harvard to gather & analyze datasets and come up with solutions, we have reached a phase where the traditional cash cow of big consultants has already shrunk considerably. Strategy consulting related work now contributes just around 20 % of their revenues compared to a massive 70% just a few decades ago.

Strategy, on the whole, is built from an experiment. And while productization is a mantra within most consulting houses, the reality is customization built upon rapid-iteration experiments. Making those rapid iteration cycles more effective is state of the art in digital strategy right now. And that’s because certainty remains low.

As technology makes things simpler & with advanced analytics tools now easily available, companies no longer need to hire consultants for everything which talks of strategy. Traditional consultants are also finding it difficult to compete with startups who are leveraging current advancements in data-based analytics and ex-consultants who continue to flood the market. They are fast ceding the opportunity-filled middle ground and migrating to high margin assignments with the cream of the industry — Fortune 100 companies & governments around the world.

Companies across the globe have to constantly adapt to remain competitive. This phenomenon has always been prevalent and has accelerated exponentially in the past decades with technological innovation. This calls upon an increased need for reevaluation and change within companies, to answer this need, digital consultants offer their services to help companies staying relevant.

The burning bridge beneath our feet prompts us to make a significant and often rapid movement. Just such a moment has arrived for the consulting world.

1. Platforms enhanced by AI are making application development, business process engineering and customer management all things business folk can now do for themselves — shifting the role of technology consulting.
2. New ways of working are giving everyone in the business (and from IT) access to human insight, ideation, and rapid innovation — blurring roles and delivering organizational adaptability to align with the needs of the digital world.

These two drivers alone would be significant enough to force a change in perspective.

What is a digital consultant?

A digital consultant is a professional with high skills and training in online marketing that works for companies in order to find and apply a digital marketing strategy especially fitted for the company’s needs. The digital consultants take care of all the digital needs of a business. Therefore, they must have a wide range of knowledge on anything digital and be competent in every field to propose an efficient strategy. The title includes — among other things — a full competence in search engine optimization (SEO), online advertising, web design, and social media. Overall, a digital consultant’s goal is to make a business successful online using their extended knowledge. Digital consultants can work as individual contractors or within a consulting company (Eric Ritter, 2016).

The shift in consulting companies

The leaders of consulting such as Accenture, Deloitte, BCG, KPMG or McKinsey & Company are leading the digital shift within the consultancy business. These companies understood quickly the necessity of digital consultancy and shifted their business model towards a more innovative approach. Particularly with specializations in digital strategy, the recruitment of digital experts and an increased allocated budget for digital training and methods to stay relevant in the fast-changing digital environment.

Indeed, nowadays the digital transformation is at the core of consulting companies’ offering, like the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) states on its website “Leveraging digital technologies is more than just good business — it’s crucial to staying relevant and profitable. Companies lagging in this area risk losing ground to newer entrants and business models that are poised to disrupt markets with innovative products and services.”

Why do you need a digital consultant?

As established, nowadays, with the constant progress of technology, an online presence is not only an asset for companies, it is indispensable, and having the most efficient digital strategy is a major competitive advantage. Indeed, consumers spend more time online now than ever before, in January 2018, 77% of Americans declared going online on a daily basis and that includes 26% that declared going online almost constantly (Pew Research Center, 2018). Digital consultants can help enterprises of all shapes and sizes to find the right strategy for them. It is useful for new businesses to establish an online strategy, for businesses that want to expand, businesses that want an improved short or long-term strategy, or businesses that don’t have access to sufficient skills and knowledge to reach their digital marketing needs. Digital strategy is a pillar for a lot of companies that requires a vast expertise, calling upon a digital consultant is an efficient solution since it brings an expert with an outside perspective that can be perfect for companies.

The digital consulting process

The job of digital consultants varies grandly according to the needs of the company they are working for, however the overall process and working structure is similar for each case. First, the digital consultant has to do an audit of the company, meeting with representatives of the company to evaluate the needs of the company, as well as collect data and information that are essential for the strategy elaboration. Then, the actual elaboration of a digital strategy that fits the company’s profile: values, target market, budget, size, leadership style, maturity… Everything has to be taken into consideration, the strategy must be feasible for the company, with an adjusted timeline. Afterward, the strategy must be approved by the company, changes and reevaluations can be made at the company’s requirement. The final strategy is launched either by the consultant(s) or by the company itself, depending on preferences. Finally, it is good for consultants to make an analysis of the results of a strategy they implemented, it allows an optimization of the strategy if needed, and a future reference for new cases.

In many ways the industry is late to the party. Digital has wrought its disruption to media, retail, travel, utilities, even government. Now the consulting business has the opportunity to press its reset.

I believe that means becoming genuinely digital. Digital first. Because all business is becoming digital. Business is changing/has changed the way it thinks about value, about customer, about experience, about responsiveness (to market mastery).

That means consulting must identify its own a clear value proposition that makes sense in a digital world — understanding its place in what are no longer supply chains or value chains, but eco-systems.

• It means setting a strategic position as a value hypothesis to be tested through rapid iteration with customer insight at the heart.
• It means embracing new ways of working and making them the way to work from pitch to delivery — emphasizing customer-led design, agility and market responsiveness
• It means changing KPIs to deliver the open, collaborative, trust-building behaviors required of organizational vs individual performance.
• It means addressing digital capability and capacity shortfalls in creative and scalable ways.
• It means establishing the legal and commercial frameworks to support rapid partnership models and value-led billing models
• It means organizing around product/service design, development, and life-cycle management
• It means tackling ambiguity head on — with minimum viable organizations from which to scale out fast, and responsive products and services

To put it in a nutshell, using digital consultancy is quickly becoming a must-do for companies regardless of their maturity stage, and consultants, as well as consulting agencies, are heading towards a more digital-focused model. Even though the pace of digital change and disruption is always fastening, and it is becoming more difficult for digital consultants to be on top of every new trend and skill to stay relevant.

Make no mistake — when disruption comes knocking at this scale, incremental change will only delay the inevitable.

Sources:

Aethon presentation. McKinsey. SpiderQube. BCG Commercial Benchmarking study, 2012. DZone image on AI transformation. Google Images.

Author: Phani Marupaka | LinkedIn | Twitter is a seasoned writer on Consulting, Technology, Chatbots and Future space. Explore the Medium profile for more articles.