Glassdoor has released its annual results of the best companies to work for.
Best Consulting Companies 2012
While one can quibble about the sample size, survey methods etc., it is always instructive for companies to see how their employees view them (and always how they view themselves).
I’ve highlighted the only five consulting companies in this list in red. The usual suspects from the Big 3 are here – Bain, McKinsey. BCG is missing. Strange.
Is your company in here? If not, send this to your HR group and your partners. This is what they should be worried about.
The Economist’s “World in 2012″ has a couple of nice articles about technology/software industry trends that I thought I would share. I liked a couple of the articles:
- Virgin territory. Prediction: Apple launches a viable mobile payments platform and buys Square.
- Angel investing: 90% of the world’s data have been created in the last 2 years. Wow.
- Direct action: Media firms (think Disney) will have to act more like retailers. Time to rejig the industry verticals inside consulting companies. Again.
I found this in the WSJ yesterday and thought it was a nice touch: says thanks to the PwC people + a little bit of subtle marketing.
I don’t think we see enough of this. It’s easy for consulting companies and their partners to forget who really does the work in the firm.
When was the last time you said thank you to the people on your team? When was the last time a partner on your engagement said thanks to you?
Most companies have used digital for operational improvements (cheaper marketing, cheaper customer support etc.) and for keeping up with the trends (we need to have an online presence on Twitter). This is old hat; nothing new here. While this is obviously useful and required, I would argue that this piecemeal approach is missing the bigger system view & opportunity. How so?
Digital is not jus
t another technology. Mobile is changing what information people have at what time. Unlimited data is changing the power relationship of information. Social has changed the behavior of how people get recommendations. Location based services have upended the power relationship that companies used to enjoy. The traditional approach of treating digital initiatives as a one off is missing the handoffs that need to happen between functional areas and the opportunity of using analytics to dramatically change things. Fiddling at the edges is not going to work.
Companies have a narrow window of opportunity to develop sustained strategic advantage by moving quickly and doing digital holistically. Smarter companies are starting to step back and envision what a truly digital enabled “next generation” company would look like? I.e. if we were to build a company to have digital in its DNA, what would that look like?
Some examples:
- HR – What if we could increase the quality of our hires and reduce churn tenfold? Better analytics and social can do this
- Facilities – What if we could cut our facilities spend by half? We can through better analytics about what is used when and by sharing with (gasp) other companies.
- IT – What if we could switch the traditional 80/20 operational vs. strategic spend on its head? We can through cloud and outsourcing.
- Sales & Marketing – What if we could reduce our sales & marketing by half, yet increase our effectiveness? We can by re-examining the traditional sales & marketing funnels.
- Product & services – What if we could create new service / produce lines without large scale capital expenditure? We can through better use of data & collaboration.
I see smarter companies starting to think about how they could be re-wired and the implications for each functional area & overall company strategy. More on this in subsequent postings.
There’s a great article in the current version of HBR with Ron Johnson (the guy who came up with the Apple Stores) on how retailers should be thinking. The conventional wisdom is all doom and gloom – everyone will buy everything online and stores will die (I exaggerate, but you get the point). Ron’s insights and in particular his way of thinking is refreshing. Some titbits:
- Online retail is just 9% of total retail and is growing at 10% a year. In other words, physical stores will be around.
- Each store associate at Apple has to go through 6-8 interviews before getting a job. Wow. Compare that to the associates at Best Buy.
- When coming up with the Apple Store, Ron didn’t tweak the existing model. They completely re-thought the whole idea; in essence, they applied Blue Ocean Strategy concepts to understand what the customer experience was and what it should be.
The part that I loved the best was the comment about how all department stores look and feel the same because they’re all run by people who’s strength is analytics, not intuition. i.e. They all buy the same products, from the same suppliers ending up with an experience that completely non-differentiated.
Well worth a read, especially if you’re in any aspect of customer facing strategy or retail. Email me if you need the article.
You may find this article on the normally secretive McKinsey interesting. Ostensibly, it’s about the insider trader scandal that McKinsey was in the middle of. Most of that is old news. The article does offer a few titbits:
- It has 1200 partners and ~9000 consultants
- ~$7B in annual revenue (7th largest by size of all consulting companies)
- Senior partners (i.e. Directors) earn between $1m-$3m a year
If you enjoyed this, you may want to check out the “Lords of Strategy” book (that was a good read).
