| Topic Name: |
Fortune Article |
| Message Name: |
whatever |
| Date Posted: |
05/27/2003 |
| In Reply To: |
http://www.fortune.com/fortune/articles/0,15114,450751,00.html
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| Message: |
I'm not sure if the final copy came out was the same as the advance copy I saw, but the rumors of consulting's death are greatly exaggerated. While some of the trends she mentions are true (companies beefing-up their internal strat orgs), the conclusions she draws have no basis in fact. She can't cite a single source for her ultimate conclusion that "many people" believe that M/B/B will "get a lot smaller," will "splinter," or will merge with an IT firm.
The latter point, that M/B/B face a threat from the IT shops is not being bourne out in practice. Accenture, EDS, and the rest are well-known for signing long outsourcing deals that look attractive but end up screwing the client later in the contract. They are not well-known for their strategy capabilities, except to say "outsource everything" (as Bain's Donahoe says) or now "offshore everything." If anything, the IT shops face a threat from M/B/B objectivly helping companies to run the economics on these long-term deals and realizing what happens in the latter years of long-term deals that look very attractive at first. And one need only consider the train wreck that occured at EDS when it bought Kearney supposedly in part for Kearney's strat expertise.
It's fun to speculate about the fate of successful companies like M/B/B. It's fun to predict their demise, as has been done since the 1920s. And, true or not, it probably sells magazines.
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