Update your consulting propositions now!

Consulting firms and their clients have now broadly adapted to the remote working world. Projects have been prioritised – some put on ice at one end, new urgent projects added at the other and a mix in-between.

Client thoughts are turning to the future, now that it’s clear that we won’t be “coming out of this” any time soon. When we do emerge, we’ll be doing it into a new world…but what will it look like?

Strategy consulting firms have seen backlog and pipeline drops by around one third over the past couple of months. This shouldn’t have come as a surprise – who has wanted to strategise over the past few weeks? I believe that these firms are about to come into a new wave of activity, however, scenario planning for their clients, working out what they’ll need to do to adapt to the new world. They’re getting ready for this and the volume of post-COVID-19 “insights” on the major strategy consulting firms’ websites has been steadily increasing over the past week or so – much of this is at an overall “preparing for the new normal” level but some is quite focused on individual sectors or the potential use of specific solutions such as AI. Interesting reading!

Every sector will have its own scenarios to consider – to mention just a few examples, will Utilities think about onshoring their call centres, how can airports utilise contact-free technologies to transform customer journeys whilst maintaining high levels of security, which manufacturing supply chains still operate effectively and which need to go back to the drawing board, will retail banks take the opportunity to radically downsize their branch networks, how much can the health sector provide via home-based care with the support of virtual patient engagement technologies? There will be a huge amount to do and a lot of advice and support to be provided by the consulting and IT industries in particular.

Don’t relax at this point, however. It’s not the case that all firms will benefit equally. You need to prepare, and do it now!

I was reviewing a consulting firm’s Financial Services Digital proposition recently. It was fine…good, even…but I realised that it was deficient in that it looked at the world through a “pre-COVID” lens. Financial Services has, to date, viewed Digital as primarily another channel.  Now that, for example, the over 60’s are using PCs and tablets for video calls and are having to use the internet for shopping, banking etc, there’s an argument that the “cork is out of the bottle”. Digital Transformation is about to hit Financial Services organisations like a tsunami! Digital will be expected by the majority of the retail and business customer bases and there will be a permanent switch in traffic volumes between channels. The impact on operating models, staff skillsets, data accessibility and the like is significant.

Taking this on board (admittedly just a scenario!), the consulting firm’s Financial Services Digital proposition suddenly needs a rethink – it should be more “all-encompassing”, at least in terms of providing the framework, and then the client can understand the scope of the overall transformation required and the elements that this consulting firm can help to address.

The same holds true for many consulting propositions – they need to be reviewed and then updated to take the new world into account. Oh, and just to add an additional flavour, I suggest there are two new world time horizons to think about – “medium term” whilst social distancing remains essential (probably until there’s a vaccine that many of us have been able to benefit from) and “longer term” when we’re properly in the new world.

Enjoy the rethink and stay safe.