Intellectual Capital: Articulating Your Portfolio

Abstract

‘What frustrates me’, said one client I interviewed recently, ‘is how difficult it is find out what a particular consulting firm is good at. It used to be that everyone said they were good at everything: now firms recognise that such claims are actually counterproductive, and they talk about only working in areas where they’re strong. But this switch in marketing hasn’t made much of a difference in practice. Consultants are always optimistic about their ability to do things they haven’t done before, and that really muddies the water from the client’s point of view.’

I believe we’re at the start of a period that will see the industrialisation of the consulting industry … Consulting services will become more tangible, more ‘productised’ than they have been in the past. Part of this is a reaction to greater scrutiny by the market than has been the case historically in this sector: when you find yourselves being compared to a ‘traditional’ company with physical products, you have to be very clear about what your assets — intellectual as well as physical — are.

Alan Buckle, COO Europe, KPMG Consulting