XN Top 10 June 2023

Welcome to our first XN Top 10 stories (or news!). Our goal is to share with you interesting news and perspectives on the market and the exciting things that we are doing as a global network and marketplace for specialist management consultancies.

Cautious optimism   

Management consulting has grown into a US$300B+ complex global industry and despite current headwinds projected to grow at 10%+ CAGR to 2031 (Source Insights). Businesses everywhere are facing are period of unprecedented and exponential change driven by an acceleration of technology and digital adoption, the war for talent (or the war for people, Josh Bersin), and the of course, the immediate challenge of high and sticky inflation.  

Some of the large consultancies are tightening their belt (Accenture releasing 19k or 2.5% of the workforce) after a period of post covid high growth. Accenture are still forecasting 8% growth in 2023 and the MCA (UK) is forecasting growth of 13% in 2023 and 12% in 2022. The opportunities are there…..

Tectonic disruption   

Management consulting is (at last!) facing a period of tectonic disruption. Digital innovation is finally hitting management consulting just as it has hit and transformed many other industries, and businesses and the larger consultancies are waking up to this change. Some point to the Freelancer and Knowledge platform disruption but they have been around for some time, continue to evolve but did not really move the consulting market.

There is no question, generative ai and assisted technologies will have a fundamental and transformational impact on the consulting market. Many large consultancies already spending hundreds of millions of dollars on research, the development of new products and services for the clients and assessing the impact on their own business model, which will be significant. Add the future of the Apple Vision Pro and imagine the future of management consulting…..

A new way (thank you Graham for the term)    XN is building a