Consulting : The Changing Landscape

Amongst the innovations that indian headquartered offshoring firms are bringing,the ability to distribute work between various locations and the set of benefits that come along stands tall. Now we are seeing the bemefits that offshoring has provided for technology solutions are getting extended to consulting as well. It is an age where increasingly we are seeing that western firms are getting more and more comfortable with offshoring vendor's technical and business process outsourcing capability. This means engaging them for technical and management consulting tasks — at a fraction of the cost of blue blooded consulting vendors say the Accenture's and IBM. (Note :Like all other posts this is my personal view and not in any way related to my employer.)The truth of the matter is technology's power and reach is becoming so entrenched that invariably it is becoming to be a case of technology and business consulting getting intertwined. As I wrote earlier, consulting is all about delivered value.Prabhat wrote therein that output value as measured as how much more business value one can get & the input value coming from how to do the same with IT for less constitutes major blocks for adding business value. It is here that the indian HQ companies are able to leverage offshore & focus on business value in the process providing support from concept to rollout with superior economics supporting their efforts. So i was not surprised when I came across this interview with Stephen Pratt of Infosys consulting, wherein he talks about linking people’s bonuses to the shareholder value created for clients. He details a method wherein a performance measure is created by adding up all the client fees & by buying the stocks of those companies, and then comparing the performance of that portfolio to the S&P 500. While this looks novel,The adminsitration of this may be pretty tough - too often the ability to adjust for late entrants and early exists within the cycle. Any case this is a variation of the variable pricing that indian headquartered consulting companies have been practicing for some time. He also highlights the fact that consulting had to be a separate entity, one that had the freedom to operate as consulting firm and not as a technology company with its own HR policies and our own culture. My mind rolls back nine years back when I joined my present employer's consulting division, maintained as a separate entity. As I wrote earlier, like the seven wonders of the world slowly giving way to the new seven wonders of the world,there is no doubt that the consulting, systems integration and professional services market is changing. A glorious era lay ahead for offshore consulting firms - and in this flat world where one is headquartered may not matter at all..