US cross-cultural training providers

Who are the consultancies in the U.S. that provide cross-cultural training and coaching, especially for India and China?

Consulting in France

Bryan from Top-Consultant. Just seen another anonymous request for a thread. This time we've been asked for comments on market trends in France:

"I'd be interested to see a thread on the consulting market evolutions in France : trends in market size by segment (strategy/organization/IT/HR, etc.), by type of clients (big corporations, middle market, public clients), trends in recruiting, etc."

Can anyone help?

Consulting in the Middle East

Hi again - Bryan from Top-Consultant. I was just browsing through the blog (it's been a long and busy day once again) when I saw this request for a thread:

"I would like to know some details regarding Consulting business in Middle East and Saudi Arabia. Who are are the key players and what type of talent they look ? Any suggestions for the companies / recruiters currently hiring from North America for the assignments in Middle East or Saudi Arabia."

In response to this anonymous posting, I'd suggest she/he has a look at Serco Middle East - who've recently been running a campaign on the site. Good luck!

BPM thread

Hi everyone - Bryan here from Top-Consultant. Stephen Hamilton has suggested we start a thread on BPM..:

"I would like to see a thread on the different points of view related to BPM. Many of the industry analysts only look at BPM from the IT perspective, while not mentioning the Business perspective. The client market is more and more confused from all of the Software hype. Many do not realize the steps they must undertake as an enterprise prior to deploying a BPM technology solution."

What are your thoughts?

Capgemini expects strong growth rebound in 2005

Capgemini have just released their latest results and the picture looks encouraging. The second half of 2004 represented a considerable strengthening over the first half of 2004 - and revenue growth of 10% is being predicted for 2005. Retention rates have deteriorated a little, so this should point to quite a few career opportunities for Top-Consultant readers in the coming months. There's a video interview with CEO Paul Hermelin on Capgemini's site, discussing these results and the prospects for the next 12 months. Click here to view the webcast interview with CEO Paul Hermelin

Tony

Work / life balance the new key to keeping consultants happy?

Yesterday's careers event for consulting candidates was fascinating for all sorts of reasons. 13 major consulting brands were there and that gave us some great insights into the changing dynamics of recruiting & retaining consultants.

The biggest thing that struck me though was the focus on getting the work-life balance issue right. Just about every firm present stressed the initiatives they were working on to improve the consultancy lifestyle. And I really think the firms were being genuine...

... every one of them recognised that consulting is consulting and that the client is king. So consulting is always going to be tough and there was no attempt to hide this. But there was also an acknowledgement that graduates leaving University are now much more concerned about having a good quality of life than they were 10 years' ago. And that encouraging women back into consulting after a career break is a key strategy for addressing the current skills shortage.

Encouraging working from home, installing broadband, stressing to clients that consultants might only be on site 3 days a week... these were just some of the many initiatives the firms are putting into place to make the consulting lifestyle more palatable.

I think most agreed they hadn't done everything they could do and that they're constantly on the look-out for new initiatives to improve things further.

Any readers got any examples of great policies that are in place at your firm? Things that really make a difference and make the harder sides of the career more bearable? Please do post your contribution using the link below... Tony

Consulting Times launches tomorrow!

Post updated 18th Feb. The first edition is now available at:
http://www.consulting-times.com/currentedition/1.aspx

********

Be sure to check your inbox on Friday 18th Feb. This is the launch date for our new monthly consulting magazine Consulting Times, which will be distributed free to all Top-Consultant subscribers.

This launch edition features a couple of exclusives including "the 20 fastest growing consulting firms" plus the fascinating results of our bonus & salary survey (over 1,500 consultants polled from firms like McKinsey, BCG & Bain; Accenture, Capgemini & Deloitte).

With the demise of paper-based consulting magazines during the last recession, we've had a lot of feedback from readers that the industry would benefit from a new monthly publication. Our aim is to quickly grow the readership of this publication to over 200,000 professionals. Future editions will be available in PDF and potentially also distributed in paper copy via the post.

Hope you like the new publication! Tony

Scottish consulting market booming

A post today in Edinburgh's Evening News makes for encouraging reading for those UK consultants with aspirations of pursuing a consulting career outside of London. In a detailed commentary on Accenture's scottish business, the paper looks at the growth story of Accenture's Edinburgh office - established just last year to complement the Aberdeen office and service Edinburgh's increasingly important FS market with consultants based in the city itself (rather than parachuting consultants in from other offices, as presumably had been the norm prior to that).

Could we be seeing a growing regional market for consulting in the UK? If your firm is also expanding in the UK regions, do post a comment here - would be interesting to see how widespread a trend this is... Tony

US Strategy Consulting - why are so many firms looking for strategists?

Hi there - Bryan here from Top-Consultant.

I was approached by a journalist from 'Time' last week who was researching a piece on the state of the US strategy consulting market. He was particularly interested in why there's been such an upswing in recruitment activity for strategy consultants by firms that 2 or 3 years ago we would not have thought of as being interested in recruiting in this area.

I suggested that many consultancy clients see some consulting services, IT for instance, as increasingly commoditised, and consultancy firms selling these services have taken to focussing not on killer applications but killer service. IT houses have taken to trading upwards and are effectively giving away strategy services on the back of larger IT project wins.

Is this your reading of what's happening? Is this sustainable? How are the strat-houses countering?

Upturn in global consulting market predicted

Came across an interesting report this morning - Kennedy Information's "The Global Consulting Marketplace 2004-2006: Key Data, Trends & Forecasts". Here in the UK we've seen the consulting market rebound for 18 months or more - and particularly so these last 9 months. But this report sheds light on the global picture.

Kennedy's report suggests industry growth will run at 5% through til the end of 2006, a healthy improvement on the stagnant growth of recent years. The 3 fastest-growing areas for consulting are predicted to be healthcare(1), public sector(2) and financial services consulting(3) - which together with Retail and Comms / Media will make up the 5 largest market segments during the period.

Any readers with a view on how their country's consulting market is recovering, please post your comments on this blog...

Salary / Bonus survey results to be published

A quick heads-up for those of you who've been asking when we would be publishing our latest salary / bonus survey analysis. We've been number-crunching and there are some pretty interesting figures have emerged. All will be revealed in the first-edition of our new publication Consulting Times due out next week (all newsletter subscribers will get a copy). Tony

Accenture - forthcoming London events

I've just heard Accenture has some really exciting London events coming up in March. Just as soon as we've got the full scoop you'll be the first to know - check back here later this week for full details. Tony