The ones that caught my eye:

• Stop Collecting Customer Data – Doc Searls. Goes against everything that companies do with sales, marketing data. He also has a book, The Intention Economy,  in the works that seems worth checking out.
• Crowdsource Management Reviews – Linda A. Hill and Kent Lineback. Essentially public feedback from all employees.

Worth a read. Let me know if you need the article.

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.

• 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 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?

Digital is not just 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.

• 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.

• 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).

Without giving away the book, think of this as a Blue Ocean Strategy book with a human touch. The author wears her knowledge lightly (she’s a marketing professor at Harvard) and the flow is easy to follow and understand.

Most of her examples are from product companies (e.g. MINI car, Dove soap), rather from companies that compete on services (think consulting). Furthermore, although most of her examples are focused on big companies, the reflective reader should easily be able to think about this from his/her own professional careers (i.e. Am I really different from my peers?).

This should be a must read for those responsible for any aspect of competitive strategy – product managers, strategists, marketing managers – especially those in customer facing roles.

• Universities – US has ~3000 for-profit colleges. 40% of Americans have college degrees. For-profit colleges spent about one-third of their revenues on advertising¹
• Strategic differentiation – Although 80% of company managers thought their companies were strongly differentiated, only 10% of customers agreed². Wow. BTW – The article is from a bunch of strategy partners from Bain. Worth a read.

1. Leveling the field – Harpers: http://harpers.org/archive/2011/10/0083639
2. The Great Repeatable business model – HBR – http://hbr.org/2011/11/the-great-repeatable-business-model/ar/1

• Most seem to be under prepared for both Big Data (not surprising) and Social Media (really?)
• CMOs see the use of external partnerships in lead management and analytics grow the most over the next 3-5 years. Interesting.
• Quote of the article: “Marketing people will need unique skills in the near future. They’ll need to be capable of integrating
  marketing and IT — like footballers who can kick with both feet”. I already see companies struggling with this.

Worth a look, especially if you’re in marketing.