Consulting on the Cusp of Disruption with the Advent of Big Data?

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For instance, in order to find out the customers’ opinion about a new product in the market, a company can look into data in the social media for mentions and analyse the positive and negative sentiments. With on-the-go analytics, this can be done in real-time, while the traditional analytical methods on focus groups and phone interviews might take long time (weeks or even months) to produce statistical backups to help decision-making. In a number of ways, the mind-set required to sustain in the age of Big Data analytics is way fundamentally different that only new and tech-savvy players would be able to grasp it.

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Still, the arrival of Big Data analytics doesn’t completely eliminate the need for traditional business/ management consultants. Rather, business consulting, IT and analytics must work together to come up with great- numerically proven strategies. In-depth knowledge of business processes and customer behaviour is necessary to come up with right questions to the right people and pose the right hypotheses. Tech-based start-ups in the consulting industry will have to acquire these business knowledge and key business insights, or collaborate with traditional business consultants who already possess them.

At this juncture, it’s yet to be seen if the traditional consulting industry would be able to swim against the tide of disruption by strategizing their approach towards services and customer relationships - or if the start-ups (new and agile players) with completely new offerings will be in the driver’s seat. Recent history suggests that the changes would be fundamental - disruptive.

Reference: Harvard Business Review, Oct 2013: “Consulting on the Cusp of Disruption”, by Clayton M. Christensen, Dina Wang, and Derek van Bever. http://hbr.org/2013/10/consulting-on-the-cusp-of-disruption/

Submitted by:

Hermon Abisheak R,

Master of Management (2016-2018),

SJMSOM, IIT Bombay,

Email: hermon.abisheak@sjmsom.in