- •In praise of the fourth edition
- •CONTENTS
- •FOREWORD
- •The concept of consulting
- •Purpose of the book
- •Terminology
- •Plan of the book
- •ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS
- •1.1 What is consulting?
- •Box 1.1 On giving and receiving advice
- •1.2 Why are consultants used? Five generic purposes
- •Figure 1.1 Generic consulting purposes
- •Box 1.2 Define the purpose, not the problem
- •1.3 How are consultants used? Ten principal ways
- •Box 1.3 Should consultants justify management decisions?
- •1.4 The consulting process
- •Figure 1.2 Phases of the consulting process
- •1.5 Evolving concepts and scope of management consulting
- •2 THE CONSULTING INDUSTRY
- •2.1 A historical perspective
- •2.2 The current consulting scene
- •2.3 Range of services provided
- •2.4 Generalist and specialist services
- •2.5 Main types of consulting organization
- •2.6 Internal consultants
- •2.7 Management consulting and other professions
- •Figure 2.1 Professional service infrastructure
- •2.8 Management consulting, training and research
- •Box 2.1 Factors differentiating research and consulting
- •3.1 Defining expectations and roles
- •Box 3.1 What it feels like to be a buyer
- •3.2 The client and the consultant systems
- •Box 3.2 Various categories of clients within a client system
- •Box 3.3 Attributes of trusted advisers
- •3.4 Behavioural roles of the consultant
- •Box 3.4 Why process consultation must be a part of every consultation
- •3.5 Further refinement of the role concept
- •3.6 Methods of influencing the client system
- •3.7 Counselling and coaching as tools of consulting
- •Box 3.5 The ICF on coaching and consulting
- •4 CONSULTING AND CHANGE
- •4.1 Understanding the nature of change
- •Figure 4.1 Time span and level of difficulty involved for various levels of change
- •Box 4.1 Which change comes first?
- •Box 4.2 Reasons for resistance to change
- •4.2 How organizations approach change
- •Box 4.3 What is addressed in planning change?
- •Box 4.4 Ten overlapping management styles, from no participation to complete participation
- •4.3 Gaining support for change
- •4.4 Managing conflict
- •Box 4.5 How to manage conflict
- •4.5 Structural arrangements and interventions for assisting change
- •5 CONSULTING AND CULTURE
- •5.1 Understanding and respecting culture
- •Box 5.1 What do we mean by culture?
- •5.2 Levels of culture
- •Box 5.2 Cultural factors affecting management
- •Box 5.3 Japanese culture and management consulting
- •Box 5.4 Cultural values and norms in organizations
- •5.3 Facing culture in consulting assignments
- •Box 5.5 Characteristics of “high-tech” company cultures
- •6.1 Is management consulting a profession?
- •6.2 The professional approach
- •Box 6.1 The power of the professional adviser
- •Box 6.2 Is there conflict of interest? Test your value system.
- •Box 6.3 On audit and consulting
- •6.3 Professional associations and codes of conduct
- •6.4 Certification and licensing
- •Box 6.4 International model for consultant certification (CMC)
- •6.5 Legal liability and professional responsibility
- •7 ENTRY
- •7.1 Initial contacts
- •Box 7.1 What a buyer looks for
- •7.2 Preliminary problem diagnosis
- •Figure 7.1 The consultant’s approach to a management survey
- •Box 7.2 Information materials for preliminary surveys
- •7.3 Terms of reference
- •Box 7.3 Terms of reference – checklist
- •7.4 Assignment strategy and plan
- •Box 7.4 Concepts and terms used in international technical cooperation projects
- •7.5 Proposal to the client
- •7.6 The consulting contract
- •Box 7.5 Confidential information on the client organization
- •Box 7.6 What to cover in a contract – checklist
- •8 DIAGNOSIS
- •8.1 Conceptual framework of diagnosis
- •8.2 Diagnosing purposes and problems
- •Box 8.1 The focus purpose – an example
- •Box 8.2 Issues in problem identification
- •8.3 Defining necessary facts
- •8.4 Sources and ways of obtaining facts
- •Box 8.3 Principles of effective interviewing
- •8.5 Data analysis
- •Box 8.4 Cultural factors in data-gathering – some examples
- •Box 8.5 Difficulties and pitfalls of causal analysis
- •Figure 8.1 Force-field analysis
- •Figure 8.2 Various bases for comparison
- •8.6 Feedback to the client
- •9 ACTION PLANNING
- •9.1 Searching for possible solutions
- •Box 9.1 Checklist of preliminary considerations
- •Box 9.2 Variables for developing new forms of transport
- •9.2 Developing and evaluating alternatives
- •Box 9.3 Searching for an ideal solution – three checklists
- •9.3 Presenting action proposals to the client
- •10 IMPLEMENTATION
- •10.1 The consultant’s role in implementation
- •10.2 Planning and monitoring implementation
- •10.3 Training and developing client staff
- •10.4 Some tactical guidelines for introducing changes in work methods
- •Figure 10.1 Comparison of the effects on eventual performance when using individualized versus conformed initial approaches
- •Figure 10.2 Comparison of spaced practice with a continuous or massed practice approach in terms of performance
- •Figure 10.3 Generalized illustration of the high points in attention level of a captive audience
- •10.5 Maintenance and control of the new practice
- •11.1 Time for withdrawal
- •11.2 Evaluation
- •11.3 Follow-up
- •11.4 Final reporting
- •12.1 Nature and scope of consulting in corporate strategy and general management
- •12.2 Corporate strategy
- •12.3 Processes, systems and structures
- •12.4 Corporate culture and management style
- •12.5 Corporate governance
- •13.1 The developing role of information technology
- •13.2 Scope and special features of IT consulting
- •13.3 An overall model of information systems consulting
- •Figure 13.1 A model of IT consulting
- •Figure 13.2 An IT systems portfolio
- •13.4 Quality of information systems
- •13.5 The providers of IT consulting services
- •Box 13.1 Choosing an IT consultant
- •13.6 Managing an IT consulting project
- •13.7 IT consulting to small businesses
- •13.8 Future perspectives
- •14.1 Creating value
- •14.2 The basic tools
- •14.3 Working capital and liquidity management
- •14.4 Capital structure and the financial markets
- •14.5 Mergers and acquisitions
- •14.6 Finance and operations: capital investment analysis
- •14.7 Accounting systems and budgetary control
- •14.8 Financial management under inflation
- •15.1 The marketing strategy level
- •15.2 Marketing operations
- •15.3 Consulting in commercial enterprises
- •15.4 International marketing
- •15.5 Physical distribution
- •15.6 Public relations
- •16 CONSULTING IN E-BUSINESS
- •16.1 The scope of e-business consulting
- •Figure 16.1 Classification of the connected relationship
- •Box 16.1 British Telecom entering new markets
- •Box 16.2 Pricing models
- •Box 16.3 EasyRentaCar.com breaks the industry rules
- •Box 16.4 The ThomasCook.com story
- •16.4 Dot.com organizations
- •16.5 Internet research
- •17.1 Developing an operations strategy
- •Box 17.1 Performance criteria of operations
- •Box 17.2 Major types of manufacturing choice
- •17.2 The product perspective
- •Box 17.3 Central themes in ineffective and effective development projects
- •17.3 The process perspective
- •17.4 The human aspects of operations
- •18.1 The changing nature of the personnel function
- •18.2 Policies, practices and the human resource audit
- •Box 18.1 The human resource audit (data for the past 12 months)
- •18.3 Human resource planning
- •18.4 Recruitment and selection
- •18.5 Motivation and remuneration
- •18.6 Human resource development
- •18.7 Labour–management relations
- •18.8 New areas and issues
- •Box 18.2 Current issues in Japanese human resource management
- •Box 18.3 Current issues in European HR management
- •19.1 Managing in the knowledge economy
- •Figure 19.1 Knowledge: a key resource of the post-industrial area
- •19.2 Knowledge-based value creation
- •Figure 19.2 The competence ladder
- •Figure 19.3 Four modes of knowledge transformation
- •Figure 19.4 Components of intellectual capital
- •Figure 19.5 What is your strategy to manage knowledge?
- •19.3 Developing a knowledge organization
- •Figure 19.6 Implementation paths for knowledge management
- •Box 19.1 The Siemens Business Services knowledge management framework
- •20.1 Shifts in productivity concepts, factors and conditions
- •Figure 20.1 An integrated model of productivity factors
- •Figure 20.2 A results-oriented human resource development cycle
- •20.2 Productivity and performance measurement
- •Figure 20.3 The contribution of productivity to profits
- •20.3 Approaches and strategies to improve productivity
- •Figure 20.4 Kaizen building-blocks
- •Box 20.1 Green productivity practices
- •Figure 20.5 Nokia’s corporate fitness rating
- •Box 20.2 Benchmarking process
- •20.4 Designing and implementing productivity and performance improvement programmes
- •Figure 20.6 The performance improvement planning process
- •Figure 20.7 The “royal road” of productivity improvement
- •20.5 Tools and techniques for productivity improvement
- •Box 20.3 Some simple productivity tools
- •Box 20.4 Multipurpose productivity techniques
- •Box 20.5 Tools used by most successful companies
- •21.1 Understanding TQM
- •21.2 Cost of quality – quality is free
- •Figure 21.1 Typical quality cost reduction
- •Box 21.1 Cost items of non-conformance associated with internal and external failures
- •Box 21.2 The cost items of conformance
- •21.3 Principles and building-blocks of TQM
- •Figure 21.2 TQM business structures
- •21.4 Implementing TQM
- •Box 21.3 The road to TQM
- •Figure 21.3 TQM process blocks
- •21.5 Principal TQM tools
- •Box 21.4 Tools for simple tasks in quality improvement
- •Figure 21.4 Quality tools according to quality improvement steps
- •Box 21.5 Powerful tools for company-wide TQM
- •21.6 ISO 9000 as a vehicle to TQM
- •21.7 Pitfalls and problems of TQM
- •21.8 Impact on management
- •21.9 Consulting competencies for TQM
- •22.1 What is organizational transformation?
- •22.2 Preparing for transformation
- •Figure 22.1 The change-resistant organization
- •22.3 Strategies and processes of transformation
- •Figure 22.2 Linkage between transformation types and organizational conditions
- •Figure 22.3 Relationships between business performance and types of transformation
- •Box 22.1 Eight stages for transforming an organization
- •22.4 Company turnarounds
- •Box 22.2 Implementing a turnaround plan
- •22.5 Downsizing
- •22.6 Business process re-engineering (BPR)
- •22.7 Outsourcing and insourcing
- •22.8 Joint ventures for transformation
- •22.9 Mergers and acquisitions
- •Box 22.3 Restructuring through acquisitions: the case of Cisco Systems
- •22.10 Networking arrangements
- •22.11 Transforming organizational structures
- •22.12 Ownership restructuring
- •22.13 Privatization
- •22.14 Pitfalls and errors to avoid in transformation
- •23.1 The social dimension of business
- •23.2 Current concepts and trends
- •Box 23.1 International guidelines on socially responsible business
- •23.3 Consulting services
- •Box 23.2 Typology of corporate citizenship consulting
- •23.4 A strategic approach to corporate responsibility
- •Figure 23.1 The total responsibility management system
- •23.5 Consulting in specific functions and areas of business
- •23.6 Future perspectives
- •24.1 Characteristics of small enterprises
- •24.2 The role and profile of the consultant
- •24.4 Areas of special concern
- •24.5 An enabling environment
- •24.6 Innovations in small-business consulting
- •25.1 What is different about micro-enterprises?
- •Box 25.1 Consulting in the informal sector – a mini case study
- •25.3 The special skills of micro-enterprise consultants
- •Box 25.2 Private consulting services for micro-enterprises
- •26.1 The evolving role of government
- •Box 26.1 Reinventing government
- •26.2 Understanding the public sector environment
- •Figure 26.1 The public sector decision-making process
- •Box 26.2 The consultant–client relationship in support of decision-making
- •Box 26.3 “Shoulds” and “should nots” in consulting to government
- •26.3 Working with public sector clients throughout the consulting cycle
- •26.4 The service providers
- •26.5 Some current challenges
- •27.1 The management challenge of the professions
- •27.2 Managing a professional service
- •Box 27.1 Challenges in people management
- •27.3 Managing a professional business
- •Box 27.2 Leverage and profitability
- •Box 27.3 Hunters and farmers
- •27.4 Achieving excellence professionally and in business
- •28.1 The strategic approach
- •28.2 The scope of client services
- •Box 28.1 Could consultants live without fads?
- •28.3 The client base
- •28.4 Growth and expansion
- •28.5 Going international
- •28.6 Profile and image of the firm
- •Box 28.2 Five prototypes of consulting firms
- •28.7 Strategic management in practice
- •Box 28.3 Strategic audit of a consulting firm: checklist of questions
- •Box 28.4 What do we want to know about competitors?
- •Box 28.5 Environmental factors affecting strategy
- •29.1 The marketing approach in consulting
- •Box 29.1 Marketing of consulting: seven fundamental principles
- •29.2 A client’s perspective
- •29.3 Techniques for marketing the consulting firm
- •Box 29.2 Criteria for selecting consultants
- •Box 29.3 Branding – the new myth of marketing?
- •29.4 Techniques for marketing consulting assignments
- •29.5 Marketing to existing clients
- •Box 29.4 The cost of marketing efforts: an example
- •29.6 Managing the marketing process
- •Box 29.5 Information about clients
- •30 COSTS AND FEES
- •30.1 Income-generating activities
- •Table 30.1 Chargeable time
- •30.2 Costing chargeable services
- •30.3 Marketing-policy considerations
- •30.4 Principal fee-setting methods
- •30.5 Fair play in fee-setting and billing
- •30.6 Towards value billing
- •30.7 Costing and pricing an assignment
- •30.8 Billing clients and collecting fees
- •Box 30.1 Information to be provided in a bill
- •31 ASSIGNMENT MANAGEMENT
- •31.1 Structuring and scheduling an assignment
- •31.2 Preparing for an assignment
- •Box 31.1 Checklist of points for briefing
- •31.3 Managing assignment execution
- •31.4 Controlling costs and budgets
- •31.5 Assignment records and reports
- •Figure 31.1 Notification of assignment
- •Box 31.2 Assignment reference report – a checklist
- •31.6 Closing an assignment
- •32.1 What is quality management in consulting?
- •Box 32.1 Primary stakeholders’ needs
- •Box 32.2 Responsibility for quality
- •32.2 Key elements of a quality assurance programme
- •Box 32.3 Introducing a quality assurance programme
- •Box 32.4 Assuring quality during assignments
- •32.3 Quality certification
- •32.4 Sustaining quality
- •33.1 Operating workplan and budget
- •Box 33.1 Ways of improving efficiency and raising profits
- •Table 33.2 Typical structure of expenses and income
- •33.2 Performance monitoring
- •Box 33.2 Monthly controls: a checklist
- •Figure 33.1 Expanded profit model for consulting firms
- •33.3 Bookkeeping and accounting
- •34.1 Drivers for knowledge management in consulting
- •34.2 Factors inherent in the consulting process
- •34.3 A knowledge management programme
- •34.4 Sharing knowledge with clients
- •Box 34.1 Checklist for applying knowledge management in a small or medium-sized consulting firm
- •35.1 Legal forms of business
- •35.2 Management and operations structure
- •Figure 35.1 Possible organizational structure of a consulting company
- •Figure 35.2 Professional core of a consulting unit
- •35.3 IT support and outsourcing
- •35.4 Office facilities
- •36.1 Personal characteristics of consultants
- •36.2 Recruitment and selection
- •Box 36.1 Qualities of a consultant
- •36.3 Career development
- •Box 36.2 Career structure in a consulting firm
- •36.4 Compensation policies and practices
- •Box 36.3 Criteria for partners’ compensation
- •Box 36.4 Ideas for improving compensation policies
- •37.1 What should consultants learn?
- •Box 37.1 Areas of consultant knowledge and skills
- •37.2 Training of new consultants
- •Figure 37.1 Consultant development matrix
- •37.3 Training methods
- •Box 37.2 Training in process consulting
- •37.4 Further training and development of consultants
- •37.5 Motivation for consultant development
- •37.6 Learning options available to sole practitioners
- •38 PREPARING FOR THE FUTURE
- •38.1 Your market
- •Box 38.1 Change in the consulting business
- •38.2 Your profession
- •38.3 Your self-development
- •38.4 Conclusion
- •APPENDICES
- •4 TERMS OF A CONSULTING CONTRACT
- •5 CONSULTING AND INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
- •7 WRITING REPORTS
- •SUBJECT INDEX
The consulting industry
all stages of the consulting process. Greater emphasis has been placed on clients’ active participation in problem-solving, new and more effective approaches to organizational change, the development of clients’ own problemsolving skills, quality management in consulting and the need for clients to learn from every consulting assignment.
Increased client competence in using consultants. Many organizations, private and public, have become experts in using consultants. They have developed their own criteria and methods for selecting consultants, collaborating with them during assignments, monitoring their interventions, learning from their approach and evaluating results. The progress made by the consulting profession would not have been possible without these advances by clients.
Internal consulting. Consulting services provided under various names by internal units within private and public organizations are not a new phenomenon, but their volume and role increased very considerably in the 1970s and 1980s. The internal consultant has become a regular actor on the management consulting stage.
2.2The current consulting scene
Thanks to the progress outlined in the previous section, and to the numerous challenges faced by businesses worldwide, management consulting has become an important and highly visible professional service sector in terms of size, structure, sophistication, range of services offered, standards applied, results produced and overall influence. Consultants have become acknowledged and often indispensable advisers in major business decisions and transactions. Leading consulting firms are respected and solicited thanks to their broad knowledge base, diversified resources, innovative spirit and capacity to cope with complex and novel situations.
Sector growth
The growth of the consulting sector reflects the high and steady demand for consulting. The estimated value of the world consulting market was US$102 billion in 1999, up 260 per cent from 1992, when the total revenue attained some US$28.3 billion. The 1999 estimate for spending on consulting in Europe was US$33 billion. Average annual growth rates of the world market attained 25 per cent in 1990–94 and 18.9 per cent in 1995–99. At present, the total number of management, business and IT consultants, including e-business consultants, may well be in the range of 650,000–750,000. These figures can only be estimates, because the scope of consulting has not been precisely delimited and data are collected from various sources. Yet the figures give a clear indication of orders of magnitude and trends.
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Management consulting
Sector restructuring
Over the past decade, sector restructuring has been significant and impressive. Mergers, acquisitions, new types of alliances and vigorous new business development with the firms’own resources have swept away the division between management and IT consulting, especially in large consulting firms. These firms have become providers of integrated and multidisciplinary services, able to respond to virtually any demand from their client base. While a few years ago it was possible to discern easily distinct types of large consulting firm, such as global multifunctional firms, strategy houses or information technology consultancies, this is no longer possible. It is true that some leading firms have maintained a prevailing technical profile thanks to which they attained their present technical reputation and market position. However, services in general have become more homogenized as many firms have copied competitors when they offer a new consulting product. Emphasis on service integration and complete packages has also made the service offerings of various firms more similar to each other.
The proportion of total consulting business in the hands of the largest firms did not change significantly between 1990 and 1999, when the 20 largest firms held some 50 per cent of the world market. However, the proportion increased in 2000 to nearly 60 per cent as a result of faster growth of large firms, mergers and acquisitions. Concentration among the top firms continued through large-scale operations such as the merger in 1998 of PriceWaterhouse and Coopers & Lybrand, which created the world’s fourth largest management and business consultancy (not including the audit and accounting wing of the new firm) with 34,000 employees and annual consulting revenues of US$6.6 billion in 2000. The first position was held by Andersen Consulting (renamed Accenture after the split from Arthur Andersen in 2000) with 62,000 employees and revenues of US$8.9 billion in 2000. The Big Six were reduced to the Big Five. Another major structural change was the acquisition in 2000 of the consulting wing of Ernst & Young by Cap Gemini. Further restructuring, including acquisitions of consulting firms by large non-consulting companies, is plausible, although the negotiations concerning the acquisition of the consulting wing of PricewaterhouseCoopers by Hewlett-Packard in the second half of 2000 were unsuccessful. Other initiatives to merge and create new alliances have had varied outcomes.
Another form of restructuring coming to the fore is the separation of management and business consulting from accounting and audit services in the large firms as a result of evolving perceptions of conflict of interest and other reasons (see section 6.2).
The movement into management and IT consulting markets by large nonconsulting firms from the manufacturing, utilities and service sectors – a sporadic occurrence some 6–7 years ago – has turned into a significant trend. HewlettPackard employed 6,000 consultants in 1999. In 1992, IBM had 1,500 consultants on its payroll. By 2000, with 50,000 consultants, it had become the world’s largest combined IT/management consultancy company measured in terms of annual revenue from consulting (US$10.2 billion). This trend is not confined to computer
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The consulting industry
hardware and software manufacturers. Management and business consulting, often in combination with IT consulting, is offered by airlines, banks, insurance companies, electricity authorities, manufacturing companies, and others. This is the result of several factors: the search for new business opportunities among nonconsulting firms; attempts to provide a more complete and better integrated service to customers (including hardware, software, advice and assistance in implementation); and efforts to achieve synergy by integrating key components of the value chain and making full use of firms’ special knowledge and business relationships (e.g. in public utilities). It also shows that, at present, financially and technically strong businesses from any sector can add management and business consulting to their service portfolio and that many such developments can be expected in the coming years.
Sector polarization has continued and presents considerable challenges for medium-sized and small firms, which have to search constantly for new strategies to cope with delicate problems of positioning, maintaining identity, finding a niche, surviving and ideally growing in a competitive environment, retaining competent people and convincing clients of their special skills and other advantages. These firms continue to account for an important share of the consulting market especially in Europe (42.3 per cent in 1999).
At the other end of the spectrum, thousands of independent practitioners and small partnerships of 2–5 consultants provide evidence of imagination, adaptability and vitality. In Europe, 82 per cent of consultancy firms are small; these firms delivered only 10 per cent of consulting services in 1999, but the sector concentration and the power of the large consultancies have not driven them out of business, although their conditions of work have changed quite substantially. Once again, the experience of recent years has demonstrated that, in professional services, size is not the only criterion, and that many services can be provided equally well or even better, and under more advantageous terms from the client’s point of view, by small operators. Small operators can often win by doing different things from large firms, providing a more personalized service and innovating. Networking and subcontracting have enabled many small operators to participate in large and complex projects, often in cooperation with larger service providers.
E-business consulting
Probably the most significant development that has shaped the consulting industry in recent years has been the emergence and spectacular growth of e-commerce and e-business consulting. Virtually non-existent until the mid1990s, it has rapidly turned into the most dynamic area of consulting business. By 2000, all the leading management and IT consultancies were also active in e-business consulting, offering software and advisory services for doing and promoting business via the Internet. Many of them have stressed that e-business should not be viewed as a different sector, but as a new dimension of any business and consulting which will soon become a standard and fully integrated component and method of operating.
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Management consulting
Equally, a number of new firms have appeared, often providing e-business consulting services in combination with development, marketing and installation of software – the so-called “e-consultancies”. At one point a group of them even started calling themselves the “e-five”, and statements such as “the new e-stars are set to destroy the old guard”4 began to appear. Within months, the e-consul- tancies had thousands of professionals on their payrolls. Many of these consultants came from the larger and more traditional consulting firms, most of which were relatively slow to enter the e-business consulting field.
The spectacular development of “e-consulting” was full of paradoxes. It brought a great deal of innovation, dynamism and entrepreneurship to consulting and its contribution and impact have ensured that “the profession will never be the same again”.5 It has created new opportunities, new business models and new ways of consulting in the era of the Internet and the knowledge economy. It has broken the resistance to change in many long-established companies and paved the way to doing more business through the Internet. It has shaken the selfconfidence of large consulting firms, which have realized that any professional service provider can lose its comfortable competitive advantage to dynamic and innovative newcomers if it misses major business trends and opportunities.
Conversely, many providers of e-consulting services, including those regarded as new stars and sector leaders, did not avoid the pitfalls of overselling, pushing clients into hastily prepared and over-ambitious projects, making unrealistic promises to both clients and investors, conceiving and launching “dot.com” businesses with no market and no future, overcharging, recruiting more staff than they were able to train and supervise, and others. In addition, many e-consultancies did not escape financial speculation based on anticipated growth and future earnings supposed to come from the “new economy”, rather than on professional reputation, competence and real business results.
This short though spectacular e-consulting euphoria culminated in 2000; by the end of the year, it was over. The share prices of most Internet consultancies dropped by 90 per cent or more, thousands of consultants employed in this sector became redundant, and “what was once a baffling industry, with dozens of firms all promising e-business transformation and transcendental strategic thinking, is now reduced to a rather more digestible shape”.6
Lessons are still being drawn from this short e-consulting boom.7 There is no doubt that the Internet has generated unprecedented opportunities for consulting services and that the information and knowledge-based economy will constitute an excellent market for consultants for many years. It is also true that, during the 1999–2000 e-business hype, quite a few consultants put their unrealistic ambitions and short-term financial interests before their professional integrity and their clients’ needs and interests.
Accelerated commoditization
High growth rates in consulting could not be maintained over extended periods without increased service standardization and commoditization. To meet existing
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