Consulting firms hit the headlines: What last week’s press told us about the market and what’s to come.
It’s been a busy fortnight of news for Source. Key messages from our hotly anticipated UK Market Trends report resulted in significant press coverage of the tougher conditions firms in the region are facing—with 0% growth forecast for 2024. But then it was the turn of some of the largest firms in the global market to hit the headlines: Accenture and Deloitte.
All this news coverage corroborated our message of slowing demand across most regions, in what is a considerable change from the post-COVID boom years many firms enjoyed. Accenture has cut its revenue forecast in response to the “uncertain macro environment”, while Deloitte announced a significant reorganisation in a bid to “modernise and simplify” its strategy, which has been interpreted by the press as a cost-cutting response to that same environment.
And it was the second of these two headlines that particularly caught my eye as, by happy coincidence, I’m knee deep in writing a very pertinent report on go-to-market strategy.
Go-to-market strategy can mean many things, but for the purposes of our Emerging Trends report, it’s the plan that sets out how you intend to deliver to your customers. For consulting firms, that means how they organise themselves internally to do this efficiently. It’s also about how they communicate their offerings, to existing and potential clients, to ensure they win the work that will support their revenue and growth targets—goals which are becoming increasingly hard to achieve.
Whether the Deloitte announcement does reflect a change in their go-to-market strategy, a move to contain costs, or both, it’s definitely the right time to take a fresh and honest look at what your clients want and act on what you find.
We’ve been flagging a decline in client confidence for almost a year now and, with the exception of a few hotspots such as the GCC, growth in consulting is much harder to find. Hence our decision to look at go-to-market strategy and understand where it could make a significant difference to firms.
We’ve not finished the full analysis yet, but two big messages are already coming out strongly: