Reading tip: Agile IT service providers

“Please coordinate agility with customers”

The disadvantage was that we were tied 1: 1 to the interests and guidelines of the customer with regard to working hours, home office and place of work. But I often see promises on the websites of consulting companies: company events, home office, flextime and modern workspaces. But then I hear from my IT consultants friends:

We have flexitime, modern workspaces and home office but that is not possible because we have to adhere to the customer’s guidelines.

Statement from the consultants

Internal agility and NewWork: often many possibilities

Consulting companies offer great company events and also have really great offices. Flexitime and home office are also permitted internally without restriction in almost all cases. The problem, however, is that you are always bound by the customer’s guidelines and therefore has no leeway to use it. The reason is as good as always: “The customer said no” and going to company events often means that fewer hours can be allocated to the customer. So the question remains: How do I create an agile corporate culture when all employees are not on site and you are bound by the customer’s framework?

Reading tip: Consulting 4.0

Internal digitization: often many possibilities

The internal software tools and hardware are really very good at many companies. You can scan travel expenses and receipts directly or even get a company credit card and expenses. However, in addition to the great Macbook from the consulting company, you also get the customer’s laptop: a mostly 12KG heavy brick with Windows 7. Please use this every day and also work on the customer’s tools. So the question remains: How do I design modern digitization when I am tied to the customer’s software and hardware?

Reading tip: Advice 4.0

Now the central question remains: How can a consulting company be agile and digital internally when everything has to be coordinated with the customer?

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Conclusion: adapt customer contracts

My recommendation is that the individual consultants should be close to the customer and be allowed to make decisions independently with the key account manager. The account manager is the advocate of the customer and the employees. He knows the customer and speaks his language, but also defends the consultants.

The internal teams such as HR, internal IT and travel management support the consultants in their work and provide great services and products such as laptops or Office 365.

The task now is to untie the knot of agility and digitization. The board helps the account managers to negotiate new work options such as remote work and flextime as well as their own hardware at the customer’s premises. It is important to loosen contracts and attract exciting projects and customers. Due to the rather supportive activity, the board has enough time to forge strategic partnerships and to attract new and modern customers.

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Der Beitrag Can a consulting company also be agile internally? erschien zuerst auf agile Companies.

My idea is that you form a team to copy the product Scrum meaningful and well developed. It receives requirements and feedback from a technology board. The product is customized for customers by special teams.

example : Think of it like a laptop. You provide the laptop with basic settings and the special teams install certain software on the laptop depending on the user and use it to adapt the laptop.

The Technology Board

The Technology Board consists of the architects and the lead developers and negotiates with those responsible for the customer which functions are necessary. It is important that the product as a central platform can be adapted by the respective special teams, which I will explain in a moment. There is also a representative from each special team on the board.

Specialization in industry and DAX companies

Now you are forming a unit for special industries such as automotive, which adapts the product to the requirements of the industry and has industry know-how. Each branch has a department head and has various small squads (2-5 developers) with key account managers for each customer, who adapt these individually to the customer. Internally, the squads exchange industry know-how.

For DAX companies, I recommend directly specialized units that adapt the product directly. In my experience, DAX companies often have such special requirements that they cannot be compared with other customers or the industry.

Reading tip: Spotify model

Conclusion: the advantages

The advantages are obvious: The stable basic product provides you with a marketing component. Then adapt the product to specific challenges in the industries. This makes sales easier for you, as customers immediately notice: “This service provider understands my problems and speaks my language”. The more know-how you build up for each branch, the easier it will be. Furthermore, you rely on tailor-made solutions for DAX companies, which offer a lot of potential in terms of sales.

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Consulting 1,2 and 3.0

The first legitimate question that comes to mind as a young management consultant is: What was actually before? What characterized Consulting 1,2 and 3.0? Unfortunately, I cannot name a clear source here, as I had to look for the information from various sites.
Consulting 1.0 is thus the classic solution advice for technical questions. Questions are answered by the consultant with professional competence.
Consulting 2.0 With process consulting, it should now also revolve around communication and interpersonal processes. Customers and consultants are moving closer together.
Consulting 3.0 Consulting is probably the way we currently know it. So with a high level of social complexity and the advisor as a specialist and process advisor. You realize your goals hand in hand with the customer and you are more closely involved.

Consulting 4.0

As a consultant you have recently received a lot of inquiries about tenders such as: Digital transformation consultant , Data scientist or Industry 4.0 expert . The customer’s requirements seem to have changed suddenly and the digital transformation has the industry firmly in hand. Consulting 4.0 seems to be the consulting firm’s answer to this fact.

Good times for specialists?

It wasn’t that long ago that the competencies were clearly defined: A proper management consultant had to be comprehensively trained; He needed special methodological knowledge, of course, but above all he had to be able to demonstrate experience and expertise across industries and specialist areas (Brand Eins magazine in the Consulting 4.0 edition). According to this quote, expert knowledge is primarily required. In-depth know-how and expert knowledge in an industry. The magazine brings many examples of highly specialized advice such as agricultural and forestry advice or “crowdsourcing advice”. There are also voices in the magazine from large consulting firms such as McKinsey: “We used to negotiate margins with the customer’s purchasing department. With our expert knowledge in a niche, we are unrivaled and no longer have to negotiate for margins ”
According to most voices, the focus is currently on digitization. The consultant as an expert for digitization in the customer’s industry. The questions move away from “What actually is digital transformation? “to” How do I lead my company into this new digital world? ”

“Mating season”

So what exactly does a new company look like after this “Consulting 4.0” trend? There are few answers here, but the tendency should be towards strong specialization in-house and the permanent acquisition of partners who are also highly specialized.

Risks and Criticism

What could such a specialization mean? On the one hand, it can mean for a consulting company that we have the following disadvantages:

• Dependence on a few customers
• high quality requirements as well as new employees and
• Danger of competition.

If we move into a niche, there will be few customers and as soon as 1-2 competitors also act in this, it will be tight. There are also high demands on employees every day and I see few opportunities for those starting out on the job.
For companies, this specialization can also lead to a greater need for coordination, as more service providers are required. As a result of specialization, employees could quickly lose interest in the job and the change rate could be very high. Specialists are also said to not have an eye for the big picture.

The traditional medium-sized company in danger?

I observe many medium-sized consulting houses, which have been producing individual software for customers for more than 30 years, increasingly in danger. Smaller houses are already in the red and larger ones are increasingly switching to “temporary work”. I don’t think it’s consulting when I deploy an employee full-time for a customer all year round. I think that traditional medium-sized companies in particular have extensive expertise and should now prepare this for the customer in internal workshops. A specialization could thus be achieved quickly. One thing is certain, however: if I loan my employees to customers all year round, they will change in the medium term. Either to the customer or to another service provider who has already made the transition to Consulting 4.0. I have also noticed a heated discussion here in which many employees ask themselves: Is this still consulting or is it already temporary work? That means, it should now be made a credo: Maintain expertise and train high potentials.

Already temporary work or still consulting?

So the question arises: temporary work or consulting? It is noticeable that medium-sized companies in particular tend towards temporary work due to a lack of expertise. This is mainly known from software development. Many of my interviewees expressed themselves here in such a way that they actually do a completely normal job as a developer for the customer. Wikipedia says: “ Temporary employment (also: Temporary work called or to ANÜ abbreviated) is when employees (temporary workers) are provided by an employer (lender) to a third party (hirer) for a fee for a limited period of time. “This seems to be absolutely the case in this case To become a personnel service provider because the internal knowledge is lacking. The formula is obvious: You get a consultant to a customer if he has more expertise in a topic than the customer. A temporary worker is usually given to a customer as soon as The third form, which is a kind of mixed form, is called service (often in Time & Material) in which a consultant supports a customer with various tasks from consulting and normal activities. Usually these are positions like that Support from a manager or a project leader.

Are you also a consultant?

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The eternal dilemma with travel time

Every consultant knows the following scenario: “The working time itself lasts at least 40 hours per week, since the customer pays five days of eight hours in almost all cases. The actual working hours are usually longer. Traveling around six to 16 hours a week without daily commuting between the hotel and the customer increases the free time to a minimum. With additional activities for the customer or a service for an internal project, the small amount of free time in the hotel is usually lost (source: Computer week ). It also clearly shows that travel is not good for health and social life. Many of my colleagues complain of a lack of fitness, weight gain and the desire to socialize outside of business. After almost 3 years, they actually “just want to go away”. Due to the large number of positions, it currently seems quite easy to get a position in a consulting company. But many of my respondents actually no longer want to go back to consulting, but rather “do something internally”.
In consulting, digitization has been carried out in customer projects for years, but its own industry has so far eluded digital change. For this reason the buzzword: “Consulting 4.0” was developed.

Regionalization against travel stress?

The problem with many consulting firms I have spoken to is that many applicants either quit because of the long travel time or do not even want to start. The goal is therefore: Regionalization . Consultants from Munich should stay in Munich, etc. But somehow this answer was not enough for me and I also believe that this has little to do with digital transformation.

The digital consultant

In the research area of the August Wilhelm Scheer Institute there are subject areas such as: eConsulting stores , virtual consulting, crowd consulting, Consult-Yourself Services and eConsulting Social Networks as an answer to the digital transformation in consulting. At the moment there is still little concrete information on both topics, but I would like to present the basic idea of Consulting 4.0.
The central question is why the consultant supports numerous digital projects and is supported by even more digital tools but has not yet been digitized. The consulting service is therefore still heavily dependent on the individual consultant. If this leaves the company, this leads to extensive damage to the project at the customer’s site.

New target group: Mittelstand advises SMEs

It has been proven that medium-sized companies have significantly lower R&D budgets compared to large companies and can hardly bear the costs of the traditional consulting they need themselves without any scale effect. This is a promising future, especially for medium-sized businesses. He can benefit from the advantages of consulting in a new way that is more suitable and compatible for this type of company (Werth and Greff IM +).
Thanks to digitization, SMEs will be able to use consulting much more efficiently in the future. Central questions in this context are how consulting has so far been used by German SMEs and how its use can be fundamentally optimized through digitalization instruments. It is particularly important to refer to the diverse software-side potentials that arise from topics such as remote consulting, platform markets, self or crowd consulting (Werth and Greff IM +).

Consulting Yourself Service

Consult-Yourself Services transfer self-service technologies, which enable customers or end users to use services independently, into the consulting industry.
The consulting industry is an expensive, not very scalable industry. A consultant can only provide one consultancy service at a time. Consult Yourself Services in management consulting can help to overcome these scalability limits and thus make a significant contribution on the way to digital consulting.

EConsulting store

Of the eConsulting Store is the online shop of the management consultancy. More precisely, it is a fully integrated web solution that enables both the sale and the processing of digital consulting services. During the purchase process, the customer is continuously informed by the switchable Online sales advice supported. Virtualized consultations are then activated in the form of links to the remote session in the ECS dashboard at the scheduled date. The links will also be sent as a reminder by email shortly after the appointment.

Summary

If we take these two examples, there are 2 different use cases for digital transformation in consulting. I think that the trend is towards “remote” and flexible work in which the consultant decides for himself how he works. The approaches are there and the question now arises: will the customers of such consulting houses accept this? Since I have been a consultant myself for almost 3 years, I estimate that the consulting houses themselves would be ready and the employees too. I see the strong process more in the hands of the “customer”. He always has the luxury of choosing from what feels like 100 different consulting firms, which are actually all almost equally well qualified. So the question would be justified: why should they then want to get used to a new system? I am definitely looking forward to the further results of the study.

What do you think?

In summary, every consulting company is required to specialize and to prepare services for the customer in a transparent manner. The traditional medium-sized company for individual software will no longer be able to exist in this form. But regardless of whether they are specialists or generalists state-of-the-art. I think the healthy mediocrity will prevail as always. Perhaps it is enough to simply set up a consulting firm a little more agile and react promptly and correctly to trends. Almost every senior consultant has industry knowledge and there are often numerous certifications. So the core is actually only in this consultant now practices of digital transformation, Industry 4.0 or Big data bring closer. Or what do you think, how and whether the consulting industry will change to Consulting 4.0? Have you already noticed changes in your work as a management consultant or as a manager in your work with management consultants?
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Der Beitrag Consulting 4.0 – digital transformation? erschien zuerst auf agile Companies.

Agile IT service providers

One approach for one agile I already have IT service providers in Article: Influence of digital change on IT service providers presented and would just like to touch on this here briefly. Overall, more consultants, doers and implementers are desired, who think outside the box and offer everything, so the criticism in the articles. A service provider should be able to cover an entire process from start to finish.
But one service provider can often not cover everything. Let’s think of a small consulting house with 30 people. It is simply impossible to cover an entire IT process. A solution that I already have in the Consulting 4.0 Article is: you enter into partnerships. So you offer the customer a complete and comprehensive service. As a service provider, I use other service providers to do this, but manage them in such a way that the customer does not notice with the focus on high added value for the customer.

Consulting Y

Everything that can be digitized will be digitized. Simply because it works. Companies that cannot withstand the frenzied pressure to innovate in the age of the digital revolution are dying out like dinosaurs. But who should implement the increasingly complex digital transformation processes in times of skills shortages and demographic change? Ferdinando Piumelli asks himself in his book Consulting Y. In this book I have found two exciting passages, which I would like to elaborate on in the following. For more information, see this Book by Ferdinando Piumelli .

External or internal?

Companies continuously need new know-how if they can assert themselves against the competition. Since only a few top executives have the necessary know-how to develop innovations, companies cannot avoid working with external experts, said Puimelli.
This thesis may be true. But how does the cooperation with an agile service provider work? According to Puimelli there are 4 possibilities for this, of which I would like to introduce 3.
The first case is about a one-time project. According to Puimelli, it does not make economic sense to qualify employees for a one-off case. The external award of the project offers itself. The advantages are that external service providers have, at best, already carried out similar projects many times, so that the company can benefit from this experience and be guided through the process. Disadvantages are that after completion of the project there are no know-how carriers in the company who are deeply familiar with the subject. This is particularly problematic if the project team has developed a product that will later require a lot of support.
Further offers Outsourcing at. Puimelli says: If entire processes or individual applications are outsourced to service providers in Asia (offshore) or Eastern Europe (nearshore), we speak of outsourcing. This form of cooperation entices with considerable cost savings. However, it requires that the processes are semi-automated and that each individual service is precisely defined.
The last form are honorary powers, because in Germany there is the right expert for every problem and an almost unmanageable number Freelancers , said Puimelli. He also sees it as an advantage that the company hardly enters into commitments and can meet short-term personnel requirements. Disadvantages are that, according to Puimelli, freelancers are like mercenaries and are looking for the most expensive contract offer. Real loyalty cannot be expected here.

Trust in the service provider

The success of a consultant and consultant is not primarily determined by his professional competence. At least as crucial to success is his ability to enter into and maintain trusting relationships, says Puimelli in his book.
However, he also speaks of a dilemma: In the relationship between consultant and manager, however, the difficulty arises that the manager has an interest in securing a certain information advantage in his area of responsibility in order to secure his position in the company. Innovations are therefore only of interest as long as they do not endanger his own existence. At the same time, it is in the interests of the consultant to gain as much insight as possible into the company in order to be able to provide meaningful and promising advice beyond the current case and possibly generate follow-up orders.
He describes the solution in a concept of credibility, reliability and relationship, which must be built. He also describes these abstract elements in more detail:
For example, credibility consists of the following elements: knowledge, presence and behavior. The basis for credibility as a consultant is professional competence. But beyond that, a presence must be shown in personal interaction that shows genuine interest, integrity and loyalty. It starts with the appropriate clothing. The third component is honest and consistent behavior. That means not talking about difficulties nicely, but also addressing unpleasant truths. No promise should be made that cannot be kept. Like credibility, reliability and relationships can also be translated into concrete, trainable attitudes and behaviors. A trusting relationship can be established in a targeted manner and does not have to be a coincidence.

Is that agile consulting now?

Whether this is agile consulting or Consulting Y cannot be clearly determined, but something seems to be changing for medium-sized companies. The strategy is visibly changing towards agile service providers and the type of partnership is also changing. The framework contracts are loosening up and enable new forms of agile cooperation as well as the more flexible provision of services and even implementation of the Work 4.0.
If you would like to find out more about this topic Consulting Y, please feel free to contact the Round tables participate and discuss relevant topics with myself and other experts. Also read my article on Tradition in the middle class or for Influence of digital change on IT service providers and take a look at the Article Consulting 4.0 . Take a look in Book by Ferdinando Piumelli to Consulting Y.
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IT management consultancies & digital transformation

Consulting is a service that provides added value for the customer through specialist knowledge in one or more areas. The concept of consulting is the often used Angliscism of advice and consequently the synonym for “consultant” can often be found again (Hoffmann 1991).
Management consulting, on the other hand, is a branch of consulting that specializes in supporting companies with regard to organizational and process optimization (Hoffmann 1991). According to the Federal Association of German Business Consultants, this sub-area generated around 44% of the 25.2 billion euros of sales in 2014 nationwide (Jörg Murmann 2015).
The above definition shows that a management consultancy supports a customer in solving a complex issue (Hoffmann 1991). The question arises: How does it come about that a customer hires a management consultancy?

Complexity as a trigger for management consultancies

The counseling situation  it results from the fact that, due to the complexity of the problem or the situation, the customer is not able to solve it adequately on his own and with his own resources. For this reason, he turns to external experts who should first give him an overview, later point out possible decision-making paths and then support him in choosing the solution strategy (Hoffmann 1991).
The complexity of a situation can grow beyond the possibilities of the customer, for example if the business environment changes rapidly or if there are changes within the company due to restructuring of the organization. The advisory service is intended to reduce the amount of information and, at the same time, the complexity of the problem in order to enable the customer to act again (Kubr 2002). This results in two main tasks for management consultancies: Provision of knowledge and development of solutions for business decision-making problems (Schrädler 1996).

Success factor: knowledge transfer

The knowledge transfer in combination with the development of solution approaches for the customer results from the interplay of knowledge, experience and information (Schrädler 1996). Kampe says that the leverage structure has to be reconciled depending on the scope of the project and its complexity. By this he means that the relationship between the advisors of junior and senior consultants is crucial for optimal advice (Kampe 2011). The transfer of knowledge within the consulting company is stored and supplemented in so-called knowledge management systems. In order to constantly supplement the knowledge, there is also close cooperation with science, for example in the form of workshops or further training (Alavi and Leidner 1999).
For the success of the consulting service, according to Kubr, the independence of the consultant is a decisive factor for success. In this context, independence is often associated with objectivity to the existing project. Kubr assesses the consultant’s objective and neutral view of internal company events as particularly necessary in order to identify the actual problem with the customer (Kubr 2002). The independence of the consultant is also intended to counteract the “operational blindness” of the customer. Operational blindness in an organization has its origins in routine in everyday work. A blind employee assesses his work as good, although this is not the case and does not feel the need for change, as a result of which the effectiveness in everyday work suffers. Operational blindness can increase if management has recognized it but does nothing to prevent it (Hohlbaum and Olesch 2004).

Expertise and new ideas

Due to their external perspective, consultants have a certain distance from the customer’s internal processes and previous procedures, which allows them to get an objective impression of the situation. This results from an impartial attitude on the part of the advisor  towards the various stakeholders of the customer, which makes it easier to work on solving the problem of the stuck structures (Schrädler 1996).
It can be assumed that the counselor has certain skills and resources that are currently not available to the person seeking advice. According to Kramer, the consultant’s degree is of secondary importance, nonetheless, the majority of the approximately 86,000 consultants in Germany have a natural or engineering background, mostly in combination with business management knowledge. In addition to the high professional requirements for consultants, a distinctive personality profile is also very important to the consulting firms. This includes, for example, a confident manner, communication skills (preferably in several languages), open-mindedness, resilience and analytical thinking (Kramer 2006). It should be noted, however, that it is obviously sufficient for the customer if a consultant pretends to be a consultant or if he is employed by a consultancy firm. There are many certifications and textbooks on the subject of “consulting”, but no standardized vocational training in the actual sense (Dr. Michael Zirkler 2005).

IT management consultancy

According to the Association of German Management Consultants, IT consulting accounts for 21% of the turnover of € 25 billion in 2014 mentioned at the beginning of the chapter (Jörg Murmann 2015). The aforementioned characteristics of consulting also apply to IT consulting.
The aim of the IT consultancy is to strengthen the competitiveness of the supervising company through various project assignments. The areas of responsibility range from internet and cloud services, such as e-commerce or in-house learning and information platforms, to the analysis and implementation of software and system solutions that include, for example, IT security (Kramer 2006).
According to Scheer, there is a trend towards increasing personal contributions on the part of customers, especially in IT projects. As a result, on the one hand, large consulting firms have to adjust to a high degree of flexibility with regard to the deployment of employees or consider the possibility of using freelancers in a targeted manner. On the other hand, the customer’s need for increased self-control brings enormous potential for small consulting firms or start-ups, which can act much more efficiently and flexibly with flatter hierarchies and virtual forms of organization.

Business consulting in growth

Overall, Scheer expects major changes on the advisory market over the next 5 years (Scheer 2016). Due to the special characteristics of IT consulting, it represents enormous potential for medium-sized consulting and is in  another article  shown. The study on this is currently being prepared and around the middle  June 2017 on this blog. If you want to stay informed, you can Newsletter subscribe to. The text is an excerpt from a study that I am currently doing with a student.
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Medium-sized companies on the advance

Management consulting is one of the industries that benefits greatly from digitization. Admittedly, management consulting is to be seen as one of the industries that sets up, directs and is involved in implementing a large number of projects for the digitization of companies from a wide variety of industries (Werth et al. 2016). But what potential does the consulting industry itself have? Greff and Werth says again: Rather, the industry is facing a change that will transform and attack established consulting processes (Werth and Greff 2016). One potential could be to advise the undeveloped group of German medium-sized companies according to the motto “Mittelstand advises medium-sized companies”.

Drivers: Consulting 4.0

The challenge for medium-sized companies is that they have demonstrably a significantly lower R&D budget compared to large companies and that without economies of scale it is difficult to bear the costs of the traditional consulting required. A trend like Consulting 4.0 could help here (Werth and Greff 2016). Brand also thinks one thing is addressing the topic of Consulting 4.0 and says: Since big names in the management consulting industry with well-known representatives such as Accenture GmbH or Capgemini GmbH are usually financially unsustainable for SMEs due to high hourly rates, a beneficial partnership was rarely an option. However, the latest studies and publications on the topic of Consulting 4.0 give new hope for consulting for medium-sized companies (Brand Eins Thema 2016). You are also welcome to read mine Article on Consulting 4.0 .

Expert interviews and case studies

During the interviews, there was a tendency towards two types of advisory service provision. On the one hand there are those consultants who were mostly on site during the project (consultants 2 and 3) and those who tended to act remotely (consultants 1 and 4). The decision about the procedure was dependent on the respective requirements and decisions of the client and was not least influenced by the client’s financial aspects.

Reading tip: More articles on Mittelstand 4.0

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