Abstract
Scalability is the major success factor for digital business models. Facing an upcoming trend to also digitize consulting industry, the leading question is how to transform conventional business models of consulting firms into successful digital ones. This paper addresses scalability in knowledge intensive services like consulting services. The authors analyze instruments that contributed to a scalability in business models of other domains and transfer those into the consulting domain. Besides of this theoretical work, they also present individual use cases, where those instruments have already been realized by consulting firms. In summary, the paper can help consulting executives to realign their business models, to select appropriate digital technologies and to build up new digital services incorporating scalability in the consulting domain.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Al-Debei MM, El-Haddadeh R, Avison D (2008) Defining the business model in the new world of digital business. In: Proceedings of the fourteenth Americas conference on information systems, Toronto ON, Canada, 14–17 Aug 2008
Baldi M, Lerch M, Schoenecker A (2017) Scheer Marketplace – ein Praxisbericht: Kundenorientierte digitale Beratungslösungen erfolgreich entwickeln. IM + io - Magazin für Innovation, Organisation und Management. IMC, Saarbücken, pp 42–47
Burkhart T, Krumeich J, Werth D, Loos P (2011) Analyzing the business model concept—a comprehensive classification of literature. In: Thirty second international conference on information systems, Shanghai
Chesbrough H, Schwartz K (2007) Innovation business models with co-development partnerships. Res Technol Manage 50(1):55–59
Clarity (2017) Clarity.fm – consultant’s profile in the platform frontend. https://clarity.fm/robertocandelaria/expertise/setting-up-and-running-a-crowdfunding-kickstarter-indiegogo-etc-campaign. Accessed 1 Mar 2017
Consultancy.uk (2016) Global IT-consulting market. http://www.consultancy.uk/consulting-industry/it-consulting. Accessed 1 Mar 2017
DaSilva CM, Trkman P (2014) Business model: what it is and what it is not. Long Range Plan 47(6):379–389
Deelmann T (2015) Managementberatung in Deutschland - Grundlagen, Trends, Prognosen. Springer, Wiesbaden
El Sawy OA, Pereira F (2013) Digital business models: review and synthesis. In: Business modelling in the dynamical digital space—an ecosystem approach. Springer, Heidelberg, pp 13–20
Fini A (2009) The technological dimension of a massive open online course: the case of the CCK08 course tools. Int Rev Res Open Distrib Learn 10(5)
Hoecht A, Trott P (2006) Innovation risks of strategic outsourcing. Technovation 26(5–6):672–681
Holcomb TR, Hitt MA (2007) Toward a model of strategic outsourcing. J Oper Manage 25(2):464–481
Imp3rove (2017) Sample of the automated evaluation report of IMP3rove self-assessment. https://www.improve-innovation.eu/our-services/assessments/improve-assessment/. Accessed 1 Mar 2017
Inspirient (2017) Inspirient Webinterface. https://www.inspirient.com. Accessed 1 Mar 2017
Ismail S (2014) Exponential organizations: why new organizations are ten times better, faster, and cheaper than yours (and what to do about it). Diversion Books
Johann D, Greff T, Werth D (2016) On the effect of digital frontstores on transforming business models. In: Shishkov B (ed) Proceedings of the 6th international symposium on business modeling and software design, Rhodes, pp 64–72
Liu H, Ke W, Wei KK, Hua Z (2013) The impact of IT capabilities on firm performance: the mediating roles of absorptive capacity and supply chain agility. Decis Support Syst 54(3):1452–1462
Luo Y, Bu J (2016) How valuable is information and communication technology? A study of emerging economy enterprises. J World Bus 51(2):200–211
McGrath RG (2010) Business models: a discovery driven approach. Long Range Plan 43(2–3):247–261
Meuter ML, Ostrom AL, Roundtree RI, Bitner MJ (2000) Self-services technologies: understanding customer satisfaction with technology-based service encounters. J Mark 64(3):50–64
Milovanović G, Milovanović S, Spasić T (2016) The role of contemporary web technologies in supply chain management. Ekonomika 62:43–58
Nissen V, Seifert H (2015) Virtualization of consulting—benefits, risks and a suggested decision process. In: Pavlou P, Saunders C (eds) Proceedings of AMCIS 2015, vol 2, Puerto Rico, pp 1380–1391
Odgers Berndtson (2015) Consulting-monitor 2015. http://www.odgersberndtson.com/media/2355/odgers_berndtson_consulting-monitor_2015.pdf. Accessed 2 Feb 2017
Oestreicher-Singer G, Sundararajan A (2012) Recommendation networks and the long tail of electronic commerce. MIS Q 36:65–83
Olbrich R, Jansen HC, Hundt M (2016) Effects of pricing strategies and product quality on private label and national brand performance. J Retail Consum Serv 34:294–301
Osterwalder A, Pigneur Y (2013) Business model generation: a handbook for visionaries, game changers, and challengers. Wiley, New York
Rai A, Patnayakuni R, Seth N (2006) Firm performance impacts of digitally enabled supply chain integration capabilities. MIS Q 30:225–246
Rochet J-C, Tirole J (2003) Platform competition in two-sided markets. J Eur Econ Assoc 1(4):990–1029
Scheer (2017) Scheer marketplace—customization and service purchase. https://shop.scheer-group.com. Accessed 1 Mar 2017
Scott DM (2015) The new rules of marketing and PR: how to use social media, online video, mobile applications, blogs, news releases, and viral marketing to reach buyers directly. Wiley, New York
Slywotzky AJ (1996) Value migration: how to think several moves ahead of the competition. Harvard Business School Press
Slywotzky AJ, Morrison D, Weber K (2001) How digital is your business?. Crown Business, New York
Stampfl G, Prügl R, Osterloh V (2013) An explorative model of business model scalability. Int J Prod Dev 18(3–4):226–248
Stanko MA, Olleros X (2013) Industry growth and the knowledge spillover regime: does outsourcing harm innovativeness but help profit? J Bus Res 66(1):2007–2016
Swafford PM, Ghosh S, Murthy N (2008) Achieving supply chain agility through IT integration and flexibility. Int J Prod Econ 116(2):288–297
Timmers P (1998) Business models for electronic markets. Electron Markets 8(2):3–8
Veit D, Clemons E, Benlian A et al (2014) Business models. Bus Inf Syst Eng 6(1):45–53
Weill P, Woerner SL (2013) Optimizing your digital business model. MIT Sloan Manage Rev 54(3):71–78
Werth D (2016) Educating digital leadership: Zur Frage der Weiterbildung von digitalen Führungskräften. In: Scheer A-W, Wachter C (eds) Digitale Bildungslandschaften, 1st edn. IMC AG, Saarbruecken, pp 186–201
Werth D, Greff T, Scheer AW (2016a) Consulting 4.0 - Die Digitalisierung der Unternehmensberatung. HMD Praxis der Wirtschaftsinformatik 53(1):55–70
Werth D, Zimmermann P, Greff T (2016b) Self-service consulting: conceiving customer-operated digital IT consulting services. In: Conference paper proceedings of AMCIS 2016, San Diego
Yozgat U, Demirbağ O, Şahin S (2013) The impact of knowledge sharing and partnership quality on outsourcing success. Int Proc Econ Dev Res 63:50. doi:10.7763/IPEDR
Zeng Q, Li X (2008) Evolution of e-business transformation strategy: a four dimension model. In: International conference on service systems and service management, IEEE, pp 1–5
Zott C, Amit R (2010) Business model design: an activity system perspective. Long Range Plan 43:216–226
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Werth, D., Greff, T. (2018). Scalability in Consulting: Insights into the Scaling Capabilities of Business Models by Digital Technologies in Consulting Industry. In: Nissen, V. (eds) Digital Transformation of the Consulting Industry. Progress in IS. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70491-3_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70491-3_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-70490-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-70491-3
eBook Packages: Business and ManagementBusiness and Management (R0)