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I think you're misundestanding what Management Consultants are for. They're not for advice, they're for whichever executive hired them to get their way by recei
by codeulike 11y ago
I think you're misundestanding what Management Consultants are for. They're not for advice, they're for whichever executive hired them to get their way by receiving an expensive report that tells them to do the thing they wanted to do anyway. Executive can then fail to do the thing, and not take the blame. Its a very useful service, and being expensive is a very important part of the package.
These productized things look like they actually _do_ something, which puts them in a completely different product space.
(source: worked for one of the big six, back when there were six of them)
- exelius 11y agoYep, never underestimate the power of CYA... Also, depending on the company, most consultants can be paid for out of CapEx (depending how you word the contract), but you'd have a hard time convincing accounting that a SaaS service billed periodically is anything but OpEx...
- aaroncohn 11y agoCYA...cover your ass...always top of mind for Mr. Big Business Executive over there!
- aaroncohn 11y agoHah yes -- consultants do get paid a lot to make decisions on behalf of executives who don't want to. Or more specifically, ones who don't want to be blamed if it doesn't go well. A former colleague once quipped, "no one ever got fired for hiring McKinsey." That said, making decisions is EXACTLY where productized consulting services get interesting. I have a productized workplace happiness service (https://worknice.co https://worknice.co), and a massive part of the value is that the AI has the authority to make decisions for the client (granted, they're not big strategy decisions; it's more like whether we should bring puppies to the office or have a wine & cheese night). Tl;dr no one at a company likes making decisions because they don't want to be blamed if it goes bad. But AI built into productized consulting services can potentially make decisions, taking it off the humans' plate, and that's capturing the same value consultants provide.
- shostack 11y agoCan you get into any detail on how you execute on your version of productized consulting services? What does the day-to-day behind the scenes look like? Also, you might want to fix this on your pricing page: "But cancellations within the first 60 days and receive a full refund for the remaining time." Doesn't read properly.