The Future of the Firm

Questions of brand-building have always been front of mind for consulting firms; but over the past year, those questions have taken on a new level of urgency. At a time when clients are scrutinising their consulting spend more carefully than ever, a strong brand can be the difference between a healthy pipeline and a sputtering one. So, on this episode, we’re joined by John Rudaizky—the Global Brand and Marketing Leader for EY—to talk all things brand: what makes for an effective professional services brand; how you can build one; and how you can put that brand to work as an engine for growth. 

For the modern professional services firm, thought leadership can be a powerful tool for building a brand and establishing credibility with clients. But since the start of the pandemic, there have been some important changes both to the ways in which clients consume that thought leadership, and to what they’re looking for from it. In this episode of the podcast, we’re joined by thought leadership and content marketing expert Bev Burgess—a consultant, author, and Senior Adviser for ITSMA—to discuss what that all means for the future of firms’ content, and sketch out what thought leadership will look like in 2025 and beyond.

Even before the pandemic, it was becoming increasingly common to hear consulting firms talk about their sense of purpose—the idea that their actions are motivated by something above and beyond a desire to generate profits for their partnerships. And events of the last year have certainly put those claims to the test like never before. So, on this episode of the podcast, we take a look at what “purpose” really means in the context of the professional services industry; we ask why having a purpose matters, how you can figure out what yours is, and what firms can do if they want to make sure their commitment to a sense of purpose isn’t a hollow one.

Any consulting firm will tell you that their people are their greatest asset. Talent acquisition and retention have always been topics that leaders in this industry have paid close attention to, in order to ensure that their firms can continue to provide clients with the highly skilled, creative, and motivated project team members they’re looking for. But COVID-19 has introduced some new wrinkles into the talent proposition. With consultants travelling a good deal less than they once did, firms will need to rethink how they sell the profession to young graduates; at the same time, the shift to remote project delivery may allow firms to operate much more geographically distributed workforces. In this episode, we explore the various implications that the pandemic has had on talent—and what firms can do to set themselves up for success in the talent market of tomorrow.

Consulting has, historically, always been an industry in which sales were highly relationship-driven; and as a consequence of that, marketing teams within consulting firms have sometimes struggled to demonstrate their ROI to the rest of the business. Now that COVID-19 has created a situation in which partners aren’t able to spend as much facetime with clients, many firms have found that they’ve needed to lean more heavily on their marketing functions in order to continue driving sales. In the long-run, this experience may act as a catalyst for firms to start rethinking the role of their marketing functions, and how they interface with the rest of the business. On this episode of the podcast, we’re joined by Matthew Lieberman—CMO for the US and Mexico at PwC—to explore how one firm’s marketing function has stepped up to the challenges created by the pandemic. 

Lorien Pratt discusses the potential of Decision Intelligence in AI for consulting firms, handling complex decisions like M&A and HR policies. The evolution of AI from logic-based approaches to deep learning is explored. Challenges in incorporating DI into professional services and the convergence of disciplines for data-driven solutions are highlighted.

Even prior to the pandemic, the ambition of becoming truly customer-centric was high up on the agendas of leading businesses across a wide range of sectors—in both the B2B and B2C space. COVID-19 has created a new sense or urgency around those ambitions; many organisations have come to realise that their ability to weather this particular storm will depend, in large part, on whether or not they can successfully close the gap between themselves, their customers, and the end consumer. In this podcast, we are joined by Mike Mickunas, former Global VP for Commercial Insights and Analytics at Kelloggs and current Bain External Advisor, to talk about how service providers can help businesses put the customer at the heart of their decision making.

It’s fair to say that organisations have never before been more conscious of the critical two way dependencies between themselves and their workforces. On the one hand, businesses are having to think about how they can keep their people safe and do right by their employees; on the other, those same businesses are trying to create the type of institutional resilience that will allow them to continue operating even if key individuals are temporarily unavailable. We could well be on the verge of a complete transformation of the relationship between employees, businesses and society-at-large. So, in this podcast, we explore the nature of that transformation—and ask whether it will lead to a consequent reimagining of the role of human capital consultants.

Regular listeners of the podcast will have frequently heard us address the thorny topic of value in the professional services industry; today, we apply that thinking to the world of audit. Non-discretionary work like audit isn’t always seen as “value-generating” in quite the same way that discretionary spend—consulting services, for example—is. But is that really fair? In this episode, we explore the relationship between audit and value, as understood by clients; and we ask what auditors can do if they want to maximise their perceived value-add.

Thought leadership has always been one of the most important weapons in a consulting firm’s brand-building arsenal. And that’s why it’s so important to invest time into making sure that your content output is highly differentiated; not just from the thought leadership that other firms are putting out, but also from all of the other media sources you’re competing against for client eyeballs. In this episode, we explore how clients’ content consumption habits have been affected by COVID-19, and what that means for consulting firms who want to make their material stand out from the crowd.