Management consultancy is dead, long live management consultancy

Management consulting is much more than perceived by the companies nowadays, it is not a simple trade of advice with invoices. Strategic management advice is a package of various services bound in a prestigious highly expensive box. However, then again, it brings high business value for the business customers.

A management consultant in his element works together with the client bringing value through information, expertise, business insights and execution of the advice.

There was a time the consultants ware on top of the hill, with brightest minds in house. Researching and collecting data from various industries, markets and companies resulted in knowledge domination; companies were willing to pay a high price for the knowledge. Altogether this was the packaged deal which would give companies a competitive advantage in their industry and market.

We live in a technology and data-driven world where detailed information about the customers and competitors is a click away. These insights have been productized and commoditised. Moreover, the execution on these insights is brought by freelancers which flourish within ‘on the demand economy’.

For half a century, the most impactful sales technique was in a management consultant asking their potential customers whether they have thorough insights about the business they are in and how profitable the company was. The answer, in most cases, was no!

When we look at the top management consultancies nowadays, it is not only the business understanding they bring along. They also provide customers through an army of data engineers, helping them build state of the art analytical platforms which provide the customers with real-time insights about their business on all levels. From marketing, sales, customer service, manufacturing, supply chain, competitive intelligence, the data-driven consultancy has become the core business of the leading management consultancy bureaus.

These frontrunners recruit talent to work on significant challenges and questions which come along with the data. The odds are low; the customer has the right team in place to understand the depth and width of the problem. Next, to this, the availability of analytical tools on the market useful for questions that have a smaller scope is immense. The businesses that understand this can incorporate data into real-time decision making but also enable the organisational culture to change. The cultural change is crucial in adopting advanced data-driven solutions.

All are resulting in enlarging the business value. However, this is not an exercise for fainthearted and not easy to implement. Especially if the organisation has 100+ employees. Achieving data-driven savviness means changing the culture, hiring new and different talent impacting the lasting changes to how the company operates. The adoption and implementation are the challenges management consulting can triumph.

To do so, you have to have deep operator expertise. With this management, consultants have the context necessary to know how to help, and this reassures the customer the consultant knows what he is doing.

Most of the value traditional management consultants have offered the businesses has been disrupted by technological advancement, with data availability as one of the key disruptors. However, this does not mean they will become obsolete; they have been the spark within the concept disruption. However, there is no guarantee that they will survive forever in the current state. The ‘on-demand’ expert consultant availability combined with the tools that companies can use to form their strategy and future of the company grows daily.

To ensure their future management consultancy bureaus have to prove they are relevant in this new and advanced world and not only a brand.