Consultancy 4.0 – Barney’s version

Is consultancy the real protagonist of digital transformation? 

From observing reality, if we exclude the usual international Bigs of consultancy, we realise it is not so. Indeed, we record that in the dominant culture is the software houses and IT departments to present themselves as protagonists of this shift, and not consultancy. But is it really like this?

If on the one hand it’s true that this transformation is only possible thanks to the digital revolution, on the other hand it represents only its basis, as steam was for the first industrial revolution, electricity for the second and the internet for the third. Thus, we can say that the skills to lead the change management that implicate the new organisational models are not in the order of skills of software houses (unless they gear up for organisational consultancy), nor of the IT departments which are part of the organisation, and therefore, part of the problem.

So, that digital transformation is a matter of organisational consultancy should prove almost consequential, but it is not. Can we ask ourselves why? Is it maybe because it itself feels technologically weak unless equipped with departments that act as software houses? Let’s try then to define better the work field where each actor keeps their propulsive role up updated for the 4.0 revolution.

Organisational consultancy, aka Consultancy 4.0

Every company, even medium and small ones, must understand that to provide the so-called Consultancy 4.0 is not necessary to be expert ICT developers, but it is necessary to know the purposes and limits of digital technological solutions. This means giving access to tools such as cloud platforms and having available organisational methodologies 4.0, which in turn, do not require specific IT expertise (like writing lines of code!).

Software houses and ICT departments then, need to migrate towards new programming languages and need to be ready (in my opinion they already are) to respond to new users’ needs gradually as they change, under the expert guidance of the consultancy that deals with people and work. And so, even software houses have a strong need for 4.0 consultancy, before other companies, to develop a new role within the digital transformation.

But then, what are the adjustments required to the current consultancy, already very expert in empowerment, lean organisation, smart organisation, data driven organisation, etc, to bring about the revolution?

Some advice for Consultancy 4.0

Essentially, we are talking about filling the lack of infrastructure and methodology. For example, it can be easy to suggest decentralising offices or smart working, but then it would be necessary to provide the collaborative environment, the infrastructure and work methodology appropriate to improve the performance. Environment, infrastructure, and methodology which would constitute the shared work field, mainly between business management, consultancy, collaborators and, on-demand, software houses.

SweetHive offers to entrepreneurs, CEOs and consultancy agencies, the integrated cloud system of collaborative environment and infrastructure BusinessRM and the original methodology Context Oriented Management (in short COM), both digital natives for the organisation of the fourth industrial revolution. The system BusinessRM and COM creates the profitable work field first of all between business management and organisational consultancy.

Here is the perfect team according to SweetHive: Entrepreneur/CEO + BusinessRM + COM + Consultancy 4.0 + Collaborators.