What Are Your Thoughts On Hiring Two Consulting Firms At The Same Time?

In the past year I ran into a situation (mid-project in the capacity as an independent consultant) where the client was incorporating materials from my deliverables plus information from one of the major, worldwide strategy consulting firms that was also working in the same area as I was. In this case, I think it was beneficial because it is a high-stakes strategy area which requires mutiple perspectives, innovation, and cross-checking.

Yet it made me recall some other situations where other consulting firms had been used in closely-related or overlapping areas. Highlight memories include:

  • Bringing in a partner consulting firm to round out industry-specific knowledge to complement our functional knowledge expertise
  • Having an internal consulting group monitoring the progress of a larger, external consulting firm
  • Having an adjacent room on the client site to a "competing" consulting firm
  • Getting the consulting firms to work out and remove overlapping work areas by request of the CEO
  • Having the consulting groups to exchange, provide feedback, and critique the other firm's deliverables and engagement progress
  • Setting up the upstream consulting firm (e.g., strategy) to complement that downstream consulting firm (e.g., IT implementation)

Although there are many trends by companies to try reduce the number of suppliers (even in the professional services area), there are benefits of using multiple consultants. Some tradeoffs and considerations:

  • Getting the consultants to cooperate
  • Inefficiency created by overlapping work
  • Benefits by factoring in best perspectives from each firm (similar to the way some of the most innovative firms use a larger network design architects to feed ideas)
  • Keeping each of the consulting teams on their toes

What are your experiences and thoughts about using multiple, management consultants and/or consulting firms?

*********************************************************************************************************************

Please enter your email address to subscribe to updates on Steve Shu's blog. Thanks for subscribing!

Musings On Conducting Competitive Intelligence Ethically

Competitive intelligence (CI) is an activity done by a wide range of professionals ranging from marketers to product managers to consultants to strategic planners. Now I’ve held back for many years on posting on the subject of conducting CI ethically. I tend to be more on the conservative side, and by posting my thoughts on this subject publicly, I’ve had concerns that some clients and future employers would see me as too soft on the issue. Would a client shy away from hiring me because I was unwilling to go the “distance” to get a job done?

In spite of my concerns, I’ve decided to address the issue here. In my experience with the business world, I’ve seen the topic of ethics (in the context of CI) discussed much less frequently than I would have expected, and that should change. Here I’ll provide some examples of bread and butter methods and more infrequently used methods for conducting CI. People should feel free to comment on other methods they have used. I’ll also provide some examples of activities that I either think are questionable or outright unethical.

Here are some examples of ethical, secondary research methods for performing CI:

  • Pulling annual reports and shareholder presentations on competitors from the web
  • Analyzing securities and exchange commission (SEC) filings and financial statements
  • Gathering marketing collateral information from trade show booths of competitors
  • Obtaining industry reports from investment banks and/or financial institutions
  • Reverse engineering the positioning focus of competitors from marketing collateral
  • Searching through LinkedIn to analyze salesforce profiles and reverse engineer likely go-to-market methods
  • Analyzing resumes of employees of competitor
  • Using Google satellite to analyze geographic profile and size of competitor facilities
  • Using Crunchbase or Techcrunch to analyze private companies
  • Using Compete, Alexa, and other web services to analyze web traffic
  • Analyzing advertising copy and positioning
  • Purchasing third-party reports (e.g., Gartner, Forrester, Parks Associates) to round out research
  • Looking through job postings by the company on the web

Here are some examples of ethical, primary research methods for performing CI:

  • Interviewing a distributor that has experience with competitors and asking questions whether client’s proposed offer would be competitive
  • Asking distributor to describe any non-confidential information that they would be comfortable sharing about either the competitor or distributor’s relationship with competitor
  • Visiting retail outlets of competitor to infer go-to-market methods, assess general profile of locations, etc.
  • Directly purchasing a competitor’s service or product
  • Surveying salespeople within client organization to get their feedback on what they’ve run into with respect to selling against the competition
  • Conducting focus groups with general customers to get their feedback on competitor’s products versus the client’s prospective offerings
  • Obtaining general information by calling into a competitor’s call center

Finally, here are some examples of questionable or unethical methods of performing CI (and these topics come up somewhat frequently in my experience):

  • Misrepresenting oneself as a potential customer of competitor in order to get pricing information not made generally public
  • Asking a current distributor or employee of competitor to share proprietary information about competitors and violate non-disclosure agreements
  • Interviewing a competitor’s employees for the sole purpose of gathering competitive information as opposed to intending to consider such people for direct hire

One problem that I see organizations run into is that they can get focused on one single issue. For example, they may say “I must know exactly how competitor XYZ is pricing”. This type of logic can be dangerous because it tends to lead to one solution. It may also tempt one to try to take unethical shortcuts. If the problem statement is reframed around “getting a better picture of whether my client’s market offer is competitive”, then this can lead to more flexible and varieties of solutions. Tools like conducting customer focus groups, surveying salespeople, etc. then become possibilities for solving the real problem at hand.

As a closing note, in a framework I alluded to in a prior post, one way to think about activities are to classify them in two dimensions: (ethical – unethical) & (legal-illegal). The other framework that I use for weighing ethical issues is to determine how I would feel if my activities were plastered all over major press outlets. Would I be embarrassed by my team’s or my personal activities? Posing that type of question is often a nice litmus test for good behavior.

*********************************************************************************************************************

Please enter your email address to subscribe to updates on Steve Shu's blog. Thanks for subscribing!

Other Resources for Inside Nudging

These are other miscellaneous resources that may be of interest to readers of Inside Nudging.

  1. Video: Capuchin Monkeys and Fairness
  2. Loss Aversion Calculator
  3. Retirement Goal Planning System app
  4. Video: D-Light Club Card by Idmoo | Idomoo Website
  5. Video: Voya Financial Personalized Account Videos for Retirement Plan Customers
  6. Video: Personalized Pension Statement by Idomoo | Idomoo Website
  7. Video: Personalized Pension Statement by Mercer UK
  8. Video: Barclays Personalized Lending Video
  9. Video: Barclays Direct Marketing Award with Personalized Videos
  10. Video: The Aviva Reality Check | Shape My Future
  11. Video: Tobii Eye Tracking System
  12. Video: Wearable Eye Tracking, Tobii Pro Glasses 2
  13. iMotions: Biometric Research Platform (“plug and play”)
  14. Video: Orange FutureSelf Demo | Orange Future Self Site
  15. Whitepaper: Econs, Humans and the Perception of Risk
  16. Whitepaper: The Neglected Variable Affecting Portfolio Choices in the 21st Century
  17. Whitepaper: Using Decision Styles to Improve Financial Outcomes
  18. Whitepaper: Engaging Employees to Take Action in a Digital Age
  19. Working Paper: How Do Consumers Respond When Default Options Push the Envelope?
  20. Journal Article: Consumer Preferences for Annuity Attributes: Beyond Net Present Value
  21. Article: How Digital Tools and Behavioral Economics Will Save Retirement

Session Description for Nudge Units: Applying Behavioral Science

In this session we will explore the implementation of behavioral science initiatives and applications within commercial settings. Topics to be covered include frameworks and key takeaways in leading an organization that implements behavioral science. To make these frameworks concrete, we’ll also cover some detailed case examples of how companies have applied behavioral science to improve outcomes for constituents.

Downloadable Figures for Inside Nudging

These are downloadable figures for Inside Nudging.

 

 

Materials for Chapter 3 of The Consulting Apprenticeship

placeit 2Takeaway Exercise 2: If you have more time and want to spend more time on techniques, it is worthwhile to better understand how to establish the right problem-solving structure. Consider these resources:

  • McKinsey presentation on problem-solving and decision-making (covers core concepts like problem definition, issue trees, MECE, 80/20 rule): See here.
  • The McKinsey Way by Ethan Rasiel (especially Part 1, pages 1-45): This book also covers concepts like MECE, issue trees, 80/20 rule, and more. Visit Amazon here.
  • The McKinsey Approach to Problem Solving (McKinsey Staff Paper, No. 66, July 2007)