The Future of the Firm

A firm’s brand is one of its most important assets, but is yours still delivering? Shifting services, new tech competitors, and a more complex ecosystem of buyers may mean it needs attention.   In this podcast, we talk to Ed and Alison about how to make your professional services brand work harder.  They share their experiences of the following issues and more:  The big challenge of differentiation in the professional services market today  Balancing a master brand with a firm’s specialisms  Leveraging your brand to help you move into new spaces  Understanding buyers’ emotional responses in a B2B setting  What’s new in brand measurement?  If you enjoyed this conversation, don’t miss our sister podcast, Business Leader’s Voice. In our latest episode, we discuss reducing complexity in your business, with Beth Butterwick, CEO at Jigsaw. 

It may seem like a long time since the COVID lockdowns of 2020 and the sudden pivot to working from home, but our research on the buying habits of consulting clients confirms a lasting legacy of the pandemic on the significance of thought leadership. In December 2022, our global study of more than 3,500 executives in major markets found that over 90% of the C-suite across all regions and industries said thought leadership had at least some impact on their decision making when purchasing professional services.  With levels of thought leadership consumption growing strongly over the last couple of years, firms are thinking more strategically than ever about how to build a thought leadership function that drives brand awareness and reputation. One such firm is Oliver Wyman, whose flagship thought leadership wing, the Oliver Wyman Forum, reaches across industries and geographies, convening senior leaders from business, public policy, academia, and social enterprise to help solve the world’s toughest problems.  Today we are delighted to be joined by John Romeo, Managing Partner and Head of the Oliver Wyman Forum, and Paul English, Director of Marketing Advisory here at Source, to discuss the changing needs of thought leadership consumers, and the Oliver Wyman Forum’s unique approach. 

In a crisis-dominated world, clients are increasingly looking to transform their tax function. With more ambitious goals than pre-pandemic, they are now trying to adapt to a far more challenging and unpredictable world. On this episode of The Future of the Firm, Fiona Czerniawska is joined by Marna Ricker, Global Vice Chair of Tax, EY to discuss the way clients are changing their thinking and what this means for professional advisors in this space.

According to our research, 'sector knowledge and expertise' is now the second most important attribute to clients when choosing a firm to work with, having skyrocketed from 12th place just a couple of years ago.  In this episode of The Future of the Firm, Ed Scott and Fiona Czerniawska are joined by Allan Platt, CEO of boutique consulting firm Clareo, to discuss the importance of sector-specific expertise in times of uncertainty. Specialising in the natural resources, energy, and food industries, Clareo’s highly targeted approach is worlds away from the broad-brush strokes adopted by many larger firms, but it’s not a position Clareo landed on from day one.

The last few years have presented organisations with a seemingly endless series of new challenges to navigate. The big story in this regard was of course COVID-19, but with the situation in Ukraine, global market and geopolitical uncertainty, energy prices, and inflation to contend with, the plates of many businesses around the world are looking increasingly full.  Chuck in the destabilising effects of new technologies like artificial intelligence, and it’s a wonder anybody is able to keep up at all.  How can consulting firms help clients to achieve resilience, then, when firms themselves are having to contend with new technologies and new ways of working? Joining Ed Scott in the latest episode of The Future of the Firm podcast are Mohamed Kande, Vice Chair - US Consulting Solutions Co-Leader & Global Advisory Leader at PwC - and Fiona Czerniawska, CEO of Source.  In this episode, Ed, Mohamed, and Fiona discuss how firms and clients alike can build resilience that doesn’t just fortify them against challenging climates, but actively harnesses the potential inherent in uncertainty to drive growth.  

Transformation. It’s something that almost every client we speak to at the moment is talking about.  In our most recent data, 52% of clients say that they’re either already making a significant investment in digital transformation or planning to do so in the next 18 months, and 41% say they’ll be investing in target operating model transformation. But is something missing from this conversation? If transformation were just a matter of implementing new systems, models, or processes, it might be laborious, but not necessarily all that challenging. But of course, it’s so much more than that.   Joining Ed Scott to talk about the role of people in making transformation happen are Alex Bombeck, CEO of consulting firm North Highland, and Fiona Czerniawska, CEO and founder of Source.  

Artificial intelligence is the topic on everyone’s mind at the moment, but what does it actually mean for consulting firms? To find out, we've been delving into our own quant and qual research, in which we regularly ask clients about the impact of emerging technology on their use of consulting firms.   

Question: What do a father's mental health, a mother's chances of returning to full-time employment, and their newborn child's lifetime earnings have in common? Answer: They would all be improved by an effective Equal Paid Parental Leave policy, according to PwC's 2023 Women in Work report.  In this episode of The Future of the Firm, Jennifer Richards, Chief Strategy Officer at PwC, joins Ed Scott to discuss shifting attitudes to parental leave, and the opportunity for firms to demonstrate genuine leadership in this space. 

Ed Scott is joined by Martin White and Fiona Czerniawska. The partnership model has its advantages, but the cancellation of EY's Project Everest has shone a light on some of its pitfalls.  When big decisions depend on a complex and lengthy voting process in which partners may put their self-interest ahead of the firm’s, a firm’s ability to reconfigure its business and meet clients’ evolving needs is hampered.  In this episode of the Future of the Firm podcast, Martin White and Fiona Czerniawska discuss the future of the partnership model.

In the last few months, we’ve seen artificial intelligence skyrocket from the pages of speculative fiction to increasingly becoming an everyday reality. Technologies like ChatGPT have been the subject of much discussion, but thus far, at least from the outside, AI is yet to break through that invisible boundary between ‘interesting gimmick’ and ‘revolutionary new tool’.   So, what’s going on? Is AI destined to remain an interesting sidenote in the annals of technological history, or does it represent something more fundamental? Could it be the future, for instance, of consulting?   Dr Jan van de Poll certainly thinks so. As the founder and managing partner of PRAIORITIZE, an Amsterdam-based provider of virtual consultancy technology for consulting firms and organisations, he's on a mission to drag the consulting industry into the 21st century, using artificial intelligence to create a virtual consultant which offer advice vertically and horizontally across an organisation.