3 ms·

>>I know people who work with e-discorvery, digital forensics from the consultancy departments of big 4 accountants(PWC, kpmg etc) etc The big 4 accounting fir

>>I know people who work with e-discorvery, digital forensics from the consultancy departments of big 4 accountants(PWC, kpmg etc) etc The big 4 accounting firms work in the middle of the complexity spectrum, and sometimes even towards the lower end. There's two ways this is apparent: 1. They are able to use dedicated tools other people have written. Those tools exist because the problems they solve have been faced with many other companies before, and someone sat down and developed a product for it. 2. They employ a lot of juniors (which is why they are big), and are able to offload a lot of the routine tasks in a project to those juniors (called "leverage" in professional services). Unless you're very high up in your organization yourself (e.g. C-level), it's likely that those juniors are the "consultants" you see. The types of tasks you describe (writing simple scripts and creating PowerPoint presentations) are exactly the types of things a junior would be charged with. In contrast, high-end consultancies tend to be small, and they consist almost entirely of highly skilled and experienced people, who are often times partners or equivalent. They often have to write their own tools and develop their own processes and best practices due to the relatively unique nature of the issues they tackle. Don't get me wrong: all good consultants are also very good salespeople. They have to be, since consulting is a very people-oriented business. But to say that consulting is about sales and confidence is a gross oversimplification.

UK-AL 11y ago
Boutique consultancies and the big consultancies tend be very different things. Boutique consultancies tend to be a few skilled people who have known each other for years who decide start their own thing togother. They probably used to be in-house people who specialised in ERP, security, databases or whatever then started their own company. They have probably have doing it for years, and have geniune interest in the subject. I have respect for that. In fact I've worked for companies like that. But as programmer writing those tools you talk about, and for deep technical problems the consultants can't solve. The consultants would then try sell and use those tools along with consutlancy services. However when people think of consultancies they usually think of mckinseys, accentures, PWCs of the world. They grab prestigious graduates, teach them how do routine work on training courses, then hire them out for a lot of money. I don't get that. I highly doubt these guys could compete with an in-house guy who has been doing that stuff for years.

UK-AL 11y ago

Boutique consultancies and the big consultancies tend be very different things. Boutique consultancies tend to be a few skilled people who have known each other for years who decide start their own thing togother. They probably used to be in-house people who specialised in ERP, security, databases or whatever then started their own company. They have probably have doing it for years, and have geniune interest in the subject. I have respect for that. In fact I've worked for companies like that. But as programmer writing those tools you talk about, and for deep technical problems the consultants can't solve. The consultants would then try sell and use those tools along with consutlancy services. However when people think of consultancies they usually think of mckinseys, accentures, PWCs of the world. They grab prestigious graduates, teach them how do routine work on training courses, then hire them out for a lot of money. I don't get that. I highly doubt these guys could compete with an in-house guy who has been doing that stuff for years.