| | By Mick James
My feature on IBM last
month prompted a lively
postbag, indicating that
the issue of the
integration of IT and
consultancy is going to
exercise the industry for
a long time to come.
One consultant
wondered if the whole
issue couldn’t be
resolved at the branding
level, noting “I haven’t
seen a distinction in the
way clients approach/look
upon us (business
consultants) vis-à-vis
the IT/hardware people”.
Could IBM services
even now be flying high
under the “Monday” brand
which they presumably
inherited along with PwC?
I suspect that even if
they’d come up with
something a bit more
workable we’d be having
discussions along the
lines of: “When we talk
to clients they don’t
understand that we can
draw on the whole IBM
organisation – isn’t it
time IBM put its brand
behind its consultants?”
Which is exactly what BT
has done, after all.
A lot of comments came
from people with IT
backgrounds. One weighed
in from a Chicago
airport, where “everyone
is going Wi-Fi”, adding
“it seems to me that the
real markets (our day to | |
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IT and business look
more and more like the
irresistible force and
the immovable object,
with consultancy
positioned precisely and
painfully between the
oncoming rock and the
unyielding hard place.
I'm not sure I know
what the answer is but I
do have a few questions.
Such as, is it better to
integrate the value chain
externally, and deal with
the cultural gaps and
clashes as they occur, or
have a one-stop shop and
internalise all those
problems? Or should
businesses simply expel
the IT cuckoo from the
nest, and deal with
everything through
outsourcing or
“through-the-wall”
services like
salesforce.com. Should
your CIO be a driving
force in the business, or
just an underling in the
procurement department?
And if your IT department
is ultimately subservient
to finance, are you going
to get the best
technologies or the
cheapest? Another
correspondent noted that
recent IT failures in the
NHS could be traced
pretty squarely back to
the failure to commit
resources. (A digression,
but given that Government
computer projects are so | |
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| | controversial and so
expensive, isn’t it time
they had their own
minister. Or is that a
recipe for disaster?)
One answer that
strikes me as blindingly
obvious is that it’s both
necessary and urgent for
consultants – all
consultants – to stop
being prisoners of their
past. Any consultancy
firm needs to answer the
question: Why are you in
business? By this I don’t
mean the bit on the
mission statement which
says “To give the bestest
excellence to our
super-lovely clients” but
the personal history bit
which goes “I fell out
with Frank over the
Munich fiasco and I heard
that Roger had been let
go by XYZ and Beryl was
unhappy at ABC and so...”
Or “then we acquired
So-and-So for their
supply chain practice but
they had a little interim
management side and
so...”
If consultancies are
going to wander up and
down the value chains
like rampaging mastodons
then they need to make a
good case for it.
Equally, if they’re not,
they need to explain that
their lack of capability
doesn’t matter.
Otherwise, the suspicion
from the client side is | |
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| | that whatever a big
systems integrator or a
Big Four firm says,
they’re simply playing
the cards they are dealt.
I’ve said before that
there’s a very powerful
argument to be made for
the integrated firm if it
can be shown that
consultancy experience is
actually feeding back
into product and service
design – but so far
there’s little evidence
that this is happening.
Equally, there’s a great
case to be made for
independence and
objectivity, but not much
so far in the way of
results to back this up.
It might be
interesting now to hear
from clients, to see what
their ideal consultancy
firm looks like. I’ve
noticed that GP practices
have begun to orient
themselves more around
patient expectations,
with some pretty good
results at ground level.
I’ll redesign your
business, you redesign my
consultancy. What would
that look like?
My thanks to all my
correspondents for their
stimulating feedback –
I’ve mentioned no names
(unless letters are
marked “for publication”,
I respect anonymity) but
I’m very grateful and
hope the flow of comment | |
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