Management Consultancy Magazine April 2000

IMC Journal 13 Transformation, transition, technology

The second joint IMC / Cranfield conference on 10 and I I February 2000 will examine how consultants and their clients are addressing the demands of a customer focused society. Sarah Taylor previews the conference.
Technological innovations such as Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and e-commerce are enabling a much closer contact with customers and are revolutionising the way business is conducted. At the same time, business relationships are undergoing fundamental transformations as embodied in new alliances, outsourcing and virtual organisations. The consultancy profession itself is experiencing a dramatic restructuring as large practices merge, new entrants challenge incumbents and multinationals develop their own internal consultants. As good consultants become increasingly difficult to recruit and retain, the large practices are losing many to new dot.com ventures or smaller niche consultancies. Many practices have established virtual networks of associates as a means of solving resource problems.
As the consultancy industry matures, the average client has more experience of working with consultants (indeed may have been a consultant) and is looking for a different kind of relationship with all their suppliers. The consultant is no longer seen as "the expert", telling an organisation where it is going wrong and then disappearing into the sunset. "Partnership", "leverage" and "knowledge­sharing" are the new buzzwords and the boundaries between manager and consultant are becoming increasingly blurred. As more consultants stick around to manage imple­mentation projects and to deal with the human implications of business change, they are developing longer-term relationships with their clients and looking at new ways of sharing the success of their clients.
This conference will bring together consultants and their clients in a unique forum to examine these issues and exchange best practice. Neil Holloway, managing director of Microsoft UK, will kick off the conference with his keynote presentation about the ways in which technology can enable businesses to deliver the level of experience that every customer will be demanding.
Richard Martin, Director of Du Mar eConsulting, will draw on his own experience of implementing e-com solutions for major UK businesses to lend a useful perspective on the subject. "Five years ago many companies found themselves with undifferentiated products in over-supplied markets," explains Martin. "The emergence of enabling technologies cast doubt on the traditional coping strategies of merging or repositioning. Open, cheap architectures allow service delivery anytime, anywhere, on any type of machine. Devices such as mobile phones, laptops and televisions can now talk over these architectures. The Internet removes the need to distribute information over proprietary networks and has provided a huge repository for knowledge and virtual real estate. Those with a compelling propositions can grab as much virtual presence as traditional companies did physical territory. The result is that we see an insurgence of new players that can get to market very quickly and cheaply with an offering that is compelling."
Fiona Czerniawska, author and managing director of Arke Ideas Consulting, will speak about evolving client/consultant relationships.
"Clients and consultants have a symbiotic relationship," Czerniawska says. "By continually taking intellectual capital from industry to industry, consultants create an environment in which many clients use them as a source of new management ideas. As the rate of business change accelerates and management theories proliferate, the client-consultant relationship will come under increasing pressure. There will be a shift away from process consulting with consulting services becoming much more polarised between analytical work and management secondments, in the effort to deliver results more quickly.
"At the same time, clients will be discovering their own, internal sources of intellectual capital and be looking to exploit their position in the knowledge economy, inevitably eroding some of the difference between client and consultant. For consultancies, this will mean greater specialisation, increased marketing expenditure and more inter-firm alliances."
IMC members can take advantage of a generous discount on the fee for the two-day conference but as a limited number of places are available at this rate, prompt booking is recommended. For more information on the conference call Helen Fielding at Cranfield School of Management on 01234 752532.
If you are not already an IMC member you can become an affiliate or an associate within a matter of days, upon receipt of the appropriate paperwork Call IMC on 0800 31 80 30 for an application pack or fax back the form below.
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IMC News is the official Journal all the ILW_ The Editor of Management Consultancy would like to state that the views expressed In the Journal of Ths IMC we not necessarily those at Management Consultancy. Similarly views expressed elsewhere In Management Consultancy are not necessarily those of the IMC.
JANUARY 2000

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