Digitising consultancy

In an independent research, Boston Consulting Group (BCG) was named a leader in digital business transformation services.

Digitalisation, today, provides both an opportunity and challenge for businesses. Even though businesses are ready to apply it, they may not have the adequate expertise to achieve this objective. This is where consultants can play a huge role in helping businesses reach their goals by establishing a digital strategy and applying technology across the client organisation.

As the world is undergoing this huge shift and the post-Covid era makes the change even more inevitable, only the best in the business are likely to stay in the game - be it organisations or consultants.

According to BCG, Digital leaders achieve earnings growth 1.8 times higher than digital laggards - and more than double the growth in total enterprise value. In the short term, digital technologies and ways of working offer productivity improvements and better customer experiences. In the medium term, digital opens up new growth opportunities and business model innovation. Successful transformations also set companies up for sustained success; they won't have to digitally transform again as they master continuous innovation. Investors say that 50 per cent of companies should invest more aggressively in digital capabilities and technology.

In the report titled 'The Forrester WaveT: Digital Business Transformation Services, Q4 2020', Forrester evaluates ten digital business transformation vendors based on 30 criteria that were grouped by current offering, strategy, and market presence.

BCG was the only vendor to receive the highest possible score in all three sub-criteria of the business strategy consulting criterion: business strategy, strategy optimisation, and business model innovation.

According to the report, to identify the right transformation partner, digital business transformation customers should find providers that "combine industry, technology, and organizational expertise into outcome delivery."

The report also notes that "Every vendor in this study is capable of delivering each of these capabilities we evaluated, in isolation. The key to success is how well they can orchestrate all these capabilities together into a single transformation solution that will help your firm become a digital business-using technology to create new value for customers, driving new revenue for growth and profitability."

 "BCG rapidly builds disruptive digital business models," and it describes the firm as having "a sharp focus on identifying and delivering measurable business outcomes." The Forrester report also acknowledges that "BCG's strategy - to help clients build a bionic company - is heavily oriented around time-to-value."

In its evaluation, Forrester emphasises "CEO-level enterprise transformation, because changing the business model to fully embrace digital capabilities requires a fundamental change in business strategy. And to succeed, the strategy execution requires both organisational and technology changes."

Rami Mourtada, partner and associate director at BCG, said: "Consulting firms, like all other companies, are faced with the challenges of managing through uncertain economic times while still addressing the increasing need for a top-to-bottom digital transformation. Not only do consultancies need to adopt the latest disruptive technologies to modernise their services and products, and digitise their organisation and processes, but also to place an increased emphasis on their approach to their people and ways of working, given the prominent people and knowledge element of the consulting business.

"BCG believe successful companies of the future, including consultancies, are bionic, ones that blend human and technological capabilities with purpose and strategy at the core. Our research shows that while 70 per cent of digital transformations fall short of their objectives, there are six critical factors in place for successful Bionic transformations: An Integrated Strategy with Clear Goals; Leadership Commitment from CEO Through Middle Management; High-Calibre Talent; An Agile Governance Mindset; Effective Monitoring of Progress Toward Defined Outcomes; and Business-Led Modular Technology and Data Platform."

Mourtada added: "Digital transformations are difficult to execute, and this bionic approach to digital transformation reverse the odds of digital transformation success from 30 per cent to 80 per cent."

BCG's interdisciplinary teams have a wide range of industry, functional, and technology expertise. Client engagements are designed around strategy and purpose to deliver immediate and high-impact value to clients. BCG builds the capabilities, processes, and mindsets necessary to sustain a digital transformation.

The Forrester report notes, "Overall, BCG stands out not only for bringing strong digital business strategy capabilities to clients but also helping clients improve their strategic planning to better understand how to layer new technology into business strategy and operations.As one client put it, 'I didn't expect that BCG could do everything themselves. But they did everything, from the case interviews to coding. They really have a practice that's a one-stop shop."

• Business and Technology Review