The Consulting industry, over the last few decades, has been at the forefront of helping firms navigate their key Enterprise Transformation initiatives. The industry has typically helped clients get around these transformations through an optimal combination of proprietary frameworks, IP, tools, and a team of consultants trained with in-house consulting methodologies.  

However , the accelerated advancement associated with Next-gen technologies in the last few years and increased adoption of the same by clients for organization improvement initiatives offers rendered a number of hitherto traditional consulting services redundant such that the industry finds itself now in the throes of disruption and needs to reinvent and transform to stay relevant!

Given the above context, we highlight the particular top 5 trends that we think will shape the Consulting business over the particular next decade and which the market will be best served to pay attention to

1. Execution over Strategy – While Strategy will continue to be important, clients will increasingly give precedence to consulting firms who can walk the talk plus take strategy through to execution and deliver on the outcomes for the particular fees they charge. For example, the classic strategy’s share of work has been steadily decreasing and is now about 20%, down from 60% to 70% some 30 years ago, according in order to Kennedy Talking to Research & Advisory. Technique consultancy firms have recognized this threat and have made numerous moves toward the particular execution aspects through acquisitions, partnerships, or building digital platforms.
2. Technology will be at the core of any Consulting – Technology will be at the core of almost every form associated with consulting. Business leaders have historically always delegated technology and IT enablement to specialists. As a result, technologies had seldom been a part of the C-Suite board room strategy discussions. That will no longer be the case. With new emerging technologies plus business models, clients will certainly increasingly want to know the ‘How’ part of the Strategy from all Consulting companies and will expect Consulting firms to up their game in being able to deliver the desired business outcomes through the optimal combination of next-gen systems   – automation, AI, big data, digital and Cloud to deliver on results such as user experience, employee experience, productivity, process improvement, agility, etc .
3. Skin in the game may become the norm than the differentiator. Clients will anticipate consulting companies to be accountable to the fees being paid and tie a part of their fees in order to the final results achieved. While this is currently already being used by some firms because a differentiator, this may become a defacto model of operations in the future.
4. End from the monolith – the particular rise associated with ecosystems plus modular professionals –   Consulting firms will progressively form partnerships with a broader ecosystem of specialist partners, each of whom brings a good unique capability to the table in which usually they excel. As more specialist boutique companies continue to emerge, the era of a single monolithic setup with one Consulting organization handling almost all aspects can be a thing associated with the past. Clients now recognize that several experts and boutique firms can deliver the desired outcomes at a fraction of the cost simply by leveraging the latest technologies. The traditional firms will have to partner with these professional firms while owning the particular overall transformation accountability. There are already increasing trends of this playing out in significant Transformations along with multi-vendor scenarios.
5. Work from anywhere will be the norm; hybrid – While the pandemic has already accelerated and established the hybrid type of working, this will go 1 step further to the ‘work through anywhere’ option. Clients will increasingly become less concerned about where the talent is located as long as these people get the particular right talent in the right value. As a result, location flexibility will become a key decision influencer with regard to consultants as they choose firms. Firms that offer maximum versatility will end up being the ones who will certainly be able to attract the best skill.

Because these trends strengthen over the next few years and become mainstream, Contacting firms will do well to adapt in order to these earlier than later to avoid transitioning from the types helping customers navigate their own disruptions towards the ones being disrupted themselves.

Ravi Nagarajan is a Partner with Infosys Consulting and is actively engaged along with a number of leading clients across sectors in their Change initiatives.