The Future of the Firm

The last few years have presented organisations with a seemingly endless series of new challenges to navigate. The big story in this regard was of course COVID-19, but with the situation in Ukraine, global market and geopolitical uncertainty, energy prices, and inflation to contend with, the plates of many businesses around the world are looking increasingly full. Chuck in the destabilising effects of new technologies like artificial intelligence, and it's a wonder anybody is able to keep up at all. How can consulting firms help clients to achieve resilience, then, when firms themselves are having to contend with new technologies and new ways of working? Joining Ed Scott in the latest episode of The Future of the Firm podcast are Mohamed Kande, Vice Chair - US Consulting Solutions Co-Leader & Global Advisory Leader at PwC - and Fiona Czerniawska, CEO of Source. In this episode, Ed, Mohamed, and Fiona discuss how firms and clients alike can build resilience that doesn't just fortify them against challenging climates, but actively harnesses the potential inherent in uncertainty to drive growth.

Transformation. It's something that almost every client we speak to at the moment is talking about. In our most recent data, 52% of clients say that they're either already making a significant investment in digital transformation or planning to do so in the next 18 months, and 41% say they'll be investing in target operating model transformation. But is something missing from this conversation? If transformation were just a matter of implementing new systems, models, or processes, it might be laborious, but not necessarily all that challenging. But of course, it's so much more than that. Joining Ed Scott to talk about the role of people in making transformation happen are Alex Bombeck, CEO of consulting firm North Highland, and Fiona Czerniawska, CEO and founder of Source.

Artificial intelligence is the topic on everyone's mind at the moment, but what does it actually mean for consulting firms? To find out, we've been delving into our own quant and qual research, in which we regularly ask clients about the impact of emerging technology on their use of consulting firms.

Question: What do a father's mental health, a mother's chances of returning to full-time employment, and their newborn child's lifetime earnings have in common? Answer: They would all be improved by an effective Equal Paid Parental Leave policy, according to PwC's 2023 Women in Work report. In this episode of The Future of the Firm, Jennifer Richards, Chief Strategy Officer at PwC, joins Ed Scott to discuss shifting attitudes to parental leave, and the opportunity for firms to demonstrate genuine leadership in this space.

Ed Scott is joined by Martin White and Fiona Czerniawska. The partnership model has its advantages, but the cancellation of EY's Project Everest has shone a light on some of its pitfalls. When big decisions depend on a complex and lengthy voting process in which partners may put their self-interest ahead of the firm's, a firm's ability to reconfigure its business and meet clients' evolving needs is hampered. In this episode of the Future of the Firm podcast, Martin White and Fiona Czerniawska discuss the future of the partnership model.

In the last few months, we've seen artificial intelligence skyrocket from the pages of speculative fiction to increasingly becoming an everyday reality. Technologies like ChatGPT have been the subject of much discussion, but thus far, at least from the outside, AI is yet to break through that invisible boundary between 'interesting gimmick' and 'revolutionary new tool'. So, what's going on? Is AI destined to remain an interesting sidenote in the annals of technological history, or does it represent something more fundamental? Could it be the future, for instance, of consulting? Dr Jan van de Poll certainly thinks so. As the founder and managing partner of PRAIORITIZE, an Amsterdam-based provider of virtual consultancy technology for consulting firms and organisations, he's on a mission to drag the consulting industry into the 21st century, using artificial intelligence to create a virtual consultant which offer advice vertically and horizontally across an organisation.

When was the last time you experienced a crisis? How did you react? If you're anything like the rest of us, the answer might be—not that well. But what if that crisis wasn't something personal, but global? How would you deal with that if you were in a position of leadership, and others were looking to you for guidance? In this episode, Fiona Czerniawska speaks with Adrian Bettridge, who brings over 26 years' experience as a consultant to his role as managing partner at Baringa. Recorded as part of our Greater Leadership Rethink in collaboration with Sheffield Haworth, Adrian and Fiona discuss how leadership within professional services has evolved over the past few decades, particularly in the light of the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent crises.

Against an increasingly tumultuous economic and geopolitical landscape, what really matters for professional services firms in 2023? Join Fiona Czerniawska and Margaret Cameron-Waller for a look at the year ahead.

The professional services sector has always been a continuum. At one end of the spectrum, we've got high-end advice at the most strategic level in client organisations; at the other, we've services that are so familiar and standardised that they've become a commodity. Professional service firms don't have many people who are explicitly looking at the opportunities for productisation across their business as a whole. Instead, productisation is more likely to be an emerging strategy, in which specific client projects yield opportunities to convert services into products and where much of the actual work is done in people's spare time. Joining us to discuss where the greatest opportunities for productisation lie is Jonathan Attia, KPMG UK's Head of Digital Products.

Thought leadership is a critical means by which a professional services firm can communicate the range of depth of its knowledge in a way that conventional, brand-led marketing can't. But a major lesson learned during the pandemic is that mid-market organisations are looking for practical, real-world experience. How, then, can professional service firms best engage with this market? Joining us to discuss the type of support mid-market clients want from consulting firms and the role thought leadership can play is Tom Stewart, author of the groundbreaking 1999 book Intellectual Capital.

Global economic and political trends have been making it difficult for clients and firms to make sweeping, large-scale decisions, and seemingly no area of business — or life in general, for that matter — has been left untouched. Mergers and acquisitions have historically a line of business characterised by immense financial and logistical movements, but recently the market's been moving in the opposite direction, towards a more frequent, small-scale approach. So how can firms help clients looking to invest in a serial approach to M&A? Joining us to discuss this issue is Ravi Chanmugan, Director for Growth & Strategy and Health within Accenture Strategy.

How do a team of five people manage the entire tax function of New Zealand's largest company? With ease—thanks to the power of a managed service. In this episode, we spoke to Grant Duncan, Group General Manager for Tax, Customs, and Insurance at Fonterra, to find out more about how Fonterra's partnership with EY has helped this multi-million dollar business streamline its global tax function.

It's been known for some time now that EY, one of the 'Big 4' professional services firms, has been considering splitting its auditing and consulting arms into separate organisations. Well, it was recently revealed that the split has been approved by EY's senior leadership, and will now be subject to a partner vote. If approved, EY's audit business would remain in the existing partnership structure, whilst a new, larger advisory business would spin out into a standalone company. This episode, Source CEO Fiona Czerniawska is joined by colleagues Paul English, Director of Marketing Advisory, and Martin White, Principal Consultant. In this roundtable discussion, they get to grips with what the EY split might mean for the resultant audit and advisory firms, as well as the wider professional services market. Find out more about the impact of an EY split

Digital transformation and ESG are the two highest priorities for firms when it comes to investment — but what if these weren't siloed service lines, but two sides of the same coin? This week Susanna Hasenoehrl, Head of Sustainability at SAP in Asia Pacific and Japan, joins us to discuss the role big tech firms can play in helping organisations reach net zero.

Compared to conventional consulting, the outcomes associated with a managed service are more specific and more tangible. Throughout the pandemic, we've seen evidence of growing interest in managed services, fuelled by the shift to remote working that made clients much more aware of the way in which technology can complement consulting rather than simply replace it. Joining us this week to discuss the growth of managed services is Paul Clark, Global Vice Chair of Managed Services at EY.

Increasingly, success in business requires the coming together of different skillsets and technologies. But, in an ever more complex world, it's getting harder and harder for large-scale transformation programmes to be delivered by just one firm - hence, the growth of alliances. Joining us this week to discuss the future of alliances in consulting is Adam Lai, Partner at PwC.

All our research during the pandemic suggested that the thought leadership produced by professional services firms was becoming more important to clients. If we look at our most recent client perceptions data and ask clients about the relative importance of thought leadership when considering which firm to hire, thought leadership has dropped from being the third most influential factor in 2021 to the seventh this year. This is leading us to wonder if professional services firms are missing a trick, and if they're not producing the kind of material clients want, even need, to read.

Accepted thinking around the consulting and wider professional services industry suggests that being a mid-sized firm isn't a comfortable place to be, lacking both the brand weight and scale of the very large firms, and the personalised service and specialist know-how of smaller ones. Yet, here we are, two years on from the single greatest upheaval ever in the consulting industry and most mid-sized firms are still going strong. Our own research suggests that our assumptions about mid-sized firms could be wrong.

Innovation has become a hot topic in consulting over the past few years: No longer content to be mere advisors, firms want to play a more proactive and hands-on role helping clients build and launch innovative new products and solutions. And clients seem keen to work in this way, too: Our client data consistently reveals that "having an innovative approach" is one of the most important attributes a firm can have. But what does all this really mean? To explore the topic of innovation in the consulting industry, we're joined by Giles Colborne, CEO of cxpartners. Cxpartners is Sopra Steria's digital innovation consultancy.

It's almost impossible to glance at the business press these days without some kind of coverage on global talent shortages—and the consulting industry is feeling the pressure of these shortages particularly keenly. Is there anything consulting firms can do to increase retention, and halt the "great resignation" that's impacting them? To discuss the role of learning & development in consulting firms, Fiona Czerniawksa is joined by Nhlamu Dlomu, Global Head of People at KPMG.

Pricing is one of the most complex issues in the consulting industry, and clients are often unclear on what exactly they are paying for; in fact, our latest research has shown that only 23% believe that consulting firms are transparent when it comes to their fee rates. What can be done to reduce this friction, and how can consulting firms take a more intelligence approach when it comes to their pricing models to ensure harmony on all sides? To discuss the topic, we're joined by Dr. Peter Colman from Simon-Kucher & Partners.

To continue our discussions around brand in professional services, David Redhill, ex-Global CMO at Deloitte, joins us for this podcast episode. We explore whether firms can truly use their culture as a differentiator, the extent to which expertise is related to brand, and how mid-sized firms can compete in an increasingly crowded market.

Has anything truly disrupted the consulting industry in the years since Clayton Christensen's groundbreaking article in the Harvard Business Review? To discuss the issue of disruption within consulting, Fiona Czerniawska is joined by Julian Birkinshaw and David Lancefield from the London Business School.

Our latest research reveals the greatest shake-up in what clients tell us is important when working with a consulting firm since we started tracking this metric seven years ago: Having an innovative approach has been replaced by brand & reputation as the most important attribute. Could this signify a flight to brand, caused by the pandemic? To discuss the topic of brands in professional services, Fiona Czerniawska is joined by Beth Ann Kaminkow, Global CEO at VMLY&R Commerce.

The question of who and what we're willing to trust is one of the defining issues of this digital age. In the context of professional services, trust has always played a critical role in the purchasing decisions of clients, and the pandemic has only served to cement that. In this episode, we are joined by J.C. Lapierre, Chief Strategy & Communications Officer for PwC in the United States, to discuss the role of trust, and how firms can build it in this new age.

Historically, the professional services industry hasn't been a place of gender diversity, but things seem to be changing. This podcast episode, recorded to celebrate International Women's Day, features Rachel Barton, Europe Strategy Lead at Accenture, and Alison Huntington, Director of Client & Brand Insights at Source, to discuss what it's really like to be a woman in the consulting industry today.

It will come as no surprise that the pandemic has resulted in a major rethink about the nature, and future, of work. In this podcast episode, we are joined by Jean-Marc Laouchez, President of the Korn Ferry Institute to explore this issue further, and to hear about how Korn Ferry are contributing to this change.

Clients are becoming more demanding of their consultants than ever before. Clients are looking for partners to assist them with their thorniest challenges, and consulting firms need to step up. In our first podcast episode of 2022, Fiona Czerniawska is joined by Source expert, Margaret Cameron-Waller, to discuss what the year has in store for consulting firms and their clients, and the key drivers of demand.

Clients in Japan have always tended to be relatively conservative in their use of consultants, and have historically been somewhat reluctant to invest in large-scale consulting programmes. In this episode, we're joined by Kenji Katsura, the leader of PwC's technology consulting business in Japan, and Yann Bonduelle, a Senior Advisor to the firm, to discuss how changes are reshaping this market—and what lessons consultants in other parts of the world can learn from their experiences in Japan.

Is it time for the consulting sector to undergo its own behavioural revolution? In this episode, we're joined by Andros Payne, Managing Partner and Founder of the consulting firm Humatica, to discuss what a more behaviour-centric model of consulting would look like, and how a richer understanding of human behaviour could help consultants more effectively deliver change for their clients.

Thought leadership has always been a critically important brand-building tool for consulting firms; and, increasingly, the same is also true in the world of legal services. In this episode of the podcast, we're joined by Leor Franks, Business Development & Marketing Director at the law firm Kingsley Napley, to discuss the history and the future of the legal thought leadership landscape. And we dive deep into the similarities and the differences between thought leadership in the legal and consulting sectors, and what the two worlds could learn from each other about how to create compelling and meaningful content.

In recent years, the private equity market has started to become an increasingly important buyer of consulting services. The recent surge in deal making in the wake of the pandemic has created both opportunities and challenges for the firms that serve this market. At the same time, investors are becoming more and more interested in building environmentally sustainable portfolios, and often need the support of consultants to make that a reality. On this episode, we discuss trends in this market with Mark Veldon, Co-Head of the UK and Co-Lead of the private equity team at AlixPartners, and Eric Benedict, the firm's Head of Business Development for Europe.

Moments of crisis have always brought with them opportunities for consultants operating in the forensics and litigation space; when businesses are put under strain, underlying issues have a tendency to reveal themselves. Today, we'll be examining the various ways in which the pandemic continues to reshape the landscape of forensics, disputes & litigation consulting work—as well as some of the longer term societal and technological changes that have impacted these fields. David Dearman, Senior Managing Director at Ankura, joins us to discuss these trends, and what they all mean for the long-term future of forensics consulting.

In today's consulting landscape, clients want their consultants to create real, tangible, and measurable value—value that persists long after your team finishes the project. Generally, clients are highly sceptical about whether their spend on consulting services is generating a positive financial return on investment. So any firm that is able to define, measure, and ultimately create, value is likely to find itself standing out in what is becoming an increasingly crowded market. In this episode, we're joined by PwC's EMEA Consulting Clients and Markets Leader, Julian Wakeham, to discuss value in consulting: what it is, how it's created, and what firms can do to make sure value is demonstrated at all stages of a project.

The pandemic has acted as a sharp reminder of just how fragile the world's economy and our global infrastructure truly is. Layer on top of that the new kinds of threats that have emerged—from immediate dangers such as cybercrime, through to long-term, planetary issues like climate change and geopolitical realignments—and it's easy to see why it's often argued that we're living through an "age of crisis". On this episode, we're joined by Nicholas Bahr—Global Managing Director for Operational Risk Management and Sustainability at DuPont Sustainable Solutions—to discuss how consultants can help their clients navigate this new threat landscape.

Since the beginning of this year, the consulting market has bounced back faster than many had anticipated—leaving many firms struggling to find the resources to keep pace with client demand. While the so-called "war for talent" is not a new phenomenon in this industry, the problem does feel more acute now than ever before. So, on this episode of the podcast, we're joined by Amanda Gethin—the Global Talent Leader for Consulting at EY—to discuss how the pandemic has intersected with longer-term factors to produce today's talent shortages, and what firms can do to solve this crisis.

The pandemic has made COOs and CEOs acutely aware of their human capital dependencies, and many have turned to technologies like artificial intelligence and robotic process automation as a means of building more resilience into their businesses. And that's been great news for the new generation of specialist automation consulting firms and "automation as a service" providers. In this episode, we speak to Roboyo's Charles Vivian and Nicolass Hess to find out where this field goes next, and what implications that will have for the wider consulting sector.

Over the past decade, digital transformation has been one of the most important drivers of consulting spend; our latest data suggests that the digital transformation market makes up over a third of the total global market for consulting services. However, the pandemic has had some profound effects on the digital priorities of clients—and, in many industries, has led to a significant acceleration of digital trends. In this episode, we're joined by Didier Bonnet—an Executive Vice President at Capgemini Invent—to discuss how consulting firms can update their digital offerings for this new world.

For many of us, strategy work is what we immediately picture when we think about consulting. However, like every facet of this industry, strategy consulting has moved on a great deal over the past few decades. Indeed, for many clients, the word "strategy" itself has a very different set of connotations than it once did. In this episode of the podcast, we're joined by Jonathan Goodman—Chair of Monitor Deloitte and a Vice Chair of Deloitte Canada—as we discuss just how much has changed about strategy consulting, and how the field will continue to evolve over the coming years.

Thought leadership is a crucial part of the brand-building strategy of the modern professional services firm. And over the past year and a half, it's taken on a new level of importance; for many clients, it has played a vital role in helping them successfully overcome the challenges of the pandemic. On this episode, we're joined by Francis Hintermann, the Global Managing Director of Accenture Research, to discuss what firms can do if they want to maximise the impact of the content they produce, and ensure it accurately reflects the priorities of their clients.

As issues of racial justice have taken on a new level of importance in the public consciousness, consulting firms have become more aware of the need to confront the sector's historical failings. In this episode, we're joined by Ekow Sanni-Thomas, founder of Inside Voices, a platform dedicated to holding companies accountable for their diversity pledges. We discuss the practical steps that consultants can take if they want to transform their firms into truly anti-racist organisations.

Over the past few years, the boundaries between freelancers and established consulting firms have become a lot more porous than they used to be. Spurred on by a desire to create more flexible resourcing models, large consulting firms have adopted a much more proactive approach to bringing freelancers into the delivery of their client engagements. And that's been facilitated, in part, by the arrival of a new generation of "talent-on-demand" platforms, which have made it easier than ever before to source and vet freelance consultants. So, on this episode of the podcast, we're joined by Charlotte Gregson, Managing Director for the UK & US at COMATCH, in order to take a deep dive into the rapidly evolving world of freelance consulting—and what it all means for established professional services firms and their clients.

In the modern consulting industry, it's vital that firms understand how to help clients unlock the innovation potential within their organisations. Increasingly, clients aren't just looking for consultants who know how to write a compelling PowerPoint deck; they want to find partners who can provide them with the practical support necessary to develop, launch and scale radically innovative products and services. In this episode of the podcast, we're joined by Frazer Bennett, Chief Innovation Officer at PA Consulting, to discuss the role of innovation in today's consulting sector. As well as looking at the longer-term trend of firms embracing their role as enablers of innovation, we'll also be examining the extent to which COVID has pushed this topic up the agendas of clients, and the various ways in which firms have had to adjust their approaches to innovation in response to the rise of virtual working.

Over the past twelve months, the global Black Lives Matter movement has forced businesses in every industry to ask themselves some hard questions about their track record on issues of diversity and inclusion. For the consulting sector, these questions feel particularly pertinent, given the way in which a firm's success is directly rooted in the human capital it has access to. On this episode of the podcast we're joined by Susan Haseley—Executive Vice President at Protiviti and the firm's Global Diversity and Inclusion Leader—to examine this topic in more detail. We explore why—from a commercial and ethical standpoint—consultants ought to care about diversity and inclusion, and we examine what specific steps firms can take to transform themselves into more diverse organisations.

Whether you're a leader within a consulting firm or a consultant who advises clients on questions about management and leadership, there's a good chance you've spent a lot of time over the last year thinking about the topic of employee engagement. Engagement might not be a new concept, either for consultants or their clients, but it is one that feels more relevant right now than ever. The pandemic has, after all, had a profound impact on the relationship between leaders and their workforces. So, on this episode, we're joined by Pamela Hackett—CEO of consulting firm Proudfoot and author of "Manage to Engage" —as we take a deep dive into the world of engagement. We'll look at what it takes to build an engaged workforce, and we'll explore the role that consulting firms can play in helping clients take their first steps along that journey.

Since the very beginning of the pandemic, there was talk in both the private and public sector about the need to "build back better" and ensure a "green recovery" from COVID-19. Now that we're starting to get a better sense of what a post-COVID future could look like, clients are asking themselves tough questions about what, exactly, a green recovery will mean in practice—and how to balance competing priorities at this critical moment in time. In this episode, we revisit the topic of sustainability; and more specifically, we examine the way in which client demand for sustainability services has started to reshape the competitive dynamics of the consulting sector. To discuss this topic, we're joined by Dame Jo da Silva and Carol Lemmens from Arup—the firm's Global Sustainable Development Director and Global Advisory Services Leader, respectively.

Digital transformation has been a critically important driver in the growth of consulting spend over the past decade. And customer experience has been one of the areas where digital transformation has played the greatest role in unlocking new opportunities for clients. Any business needs to be able to meet its customers where they are; so, as consumers have become more digitally savvy, businesses have been forced to develop their own digital capabilities accordingly. On this episode of the podcast, we're joined by Quinton Pienaar—PwC's EMEA Customer Transformation Leader—to discuss how firms can support their clients' customer transformation journeys, particularly in the context of the changes to consumer behaviour caused by the pandemic.

M&A is a crucial engine of growth for large consulting firms. But it also holds the potential to fundamentally reshape the parameters of the industry and the axes along which firms compete with one another; over the past few years, there have been a number of high profile examples of firms buying up companies from outside the sector in an effort to diversify their service portfolios and, in some cases, create entirely new customer propositions. Conversely, there have also been cases of companies from outside the sector using well-placed acquisitions as a way of gaining a foothold within consulting. In this episode, we're joined by Daniel Schwartmann—Accenture's Managing Director responsible for inorganic growth activities across their global strategy and consulting business—to discuss what M&A activity today can tell us about the future of the industry.

Historically, consulting firms haven't always been seen as attractive investment vehicles for private equity. As organisations whose success depends primarily on their human capital, consulting firms can be harder to properly value than many other businesses. And the nature of project-based work can lead to unpredictable cashflows—not something that many investors are looking for. But recently, something seems to have changed; private equity investors are taking a closer look at the sector, and that's led to a number of high profile deals in the past few years. In this episode, we're joined by Richard Holden—a partner at the investment bank Alantra—to explore the reasons behind that shift, and what it will mean for the future of consulting.

Questions of brand-building have always been front of mind for consulting firms; but over the past year, those questions have taken on a new level of urgency. At a time when clients are scrutinising their consulting spend more carefully than ever, a strong brand can be the difference between a healthy pipeline and a sputtering one. So, on this episode, we're joined by John Rudaizky—the Global Brand and Marketing Leader for EY—to talk all things brand: what makes for an effective professional services brand; how you can build one; and how you can put that brand to work as an engine for growth.