The Future of the Firm

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.

There is no shortage right now of stories in the press about how professional services firms are responding to the pandemic—be those positive stories about companies going above and beyond to protect their employees and their customers, or more negative ones about firms laying people off or failing to deliver on critical public health projects. But is all of that noise actually having an impact on client perceptions? In this episode, we examine how the brands of leading firms are holding up during this crisis, and ask what firms can do to ensure they come out of this period with their reputation in the market enhanced rather than diminished.

COVID-19 has undoubtedly transformed the way that clients think about risk, and how they evaluate the risk management practices of their own organisations. So what does that mean for the risk consulting market? In this podcast, we explore how the market for risk services has held up through the pandemic; what changes could be on the horizon for how risk services are delivered; and what firms can do today to set themselves up for success in this market.

Getting the right balance between breadth and depth in your service portfolio is one of the perennial challenges for consulting firms. Many clients greatly value the ability to buy multiple services from a single vendor; but spread yourself too thinly and you risk becoming seen as a jack-of-all-trades. So in this episode, we look at what firms need to consider when developing their service portfolio, and how they can find that sweet spot between doing everything under the sun and becoming single service providers. We also explore how the size of your firm helps shape client expectations for what services you’ll be able to offer them, and how you can best take advantage of those expectations.

Regulators in the UK recently announced the details of a plan to reform the audit industry, in response to a series of high profile business failures where auditors took a large portion of the public blame. And these UK proposals may well end up as the template for reforms in other markets. So, in this episode, we examine the role that regulation will play in shaping how audits are purchased and delivered over the coming years—and examine the relationship between regulation and other critical factors that will shape the future of audit.

Sustainability is a topic that’s moved up and down the client agenda for a while now—but around this time last year it felt to many like we’d reached a turning point, and businesses around the world were starting to actually put their money where their mouths were, spurred on by Greta Thunberg, the global climate strikes, and the new wave of media focus on the issue. And while COVID-19 has certainly impacted client priorities, and perhaps led to a bit more of an emphasis on the social side of the ESG equation, it doesn’t seem to have much dampened interest in the topic. Today on the podcast, we’ll be examining the role that sustainability services play in today’s professional services market—and what role they could play in the future.

Consulting firms have not been shy these past few years about making acquisitions; in fact, there have been several high-profile recent examples of firms buying businesses that fall well outside the traditional definition of consulting, in an attempt to augment their service portfolios or create entirely new customer propositions. In this episode of the podcast, we ask whether M&A energy has been diminished or magnified by COVID-19, and explore how the pandemic may change what firms look for in potential acquisition targets.