Close-up
on Consultants
Examining today’s consulting challenges to find tomorrow’s success
The findings below highlight exactly why Ardoq was created – to empower consultancies with a scalable enterprise architecture experience that aligns with client objectives, accelerates project delivery, and frees up consultants to focus on high-value strategic initiatives.
Speed of change
Todays consultants live in a world where change isn’t just constant — it’s accelerating.
Technology, strategy, and client expectations are evolving at an unprecedented pace. That’s why the name of the game — if you want to come out on top — is now adapt, evolve, and adopt new ways of thinking and working.
To better understand how consultants are keeping up, we commissioned research to uncover the key trends, challenges and opportunities they’re facing, what tools they use to effectively do their jobs and their understanding of enterprise architecture… and how these differ across regions and between levels of seniority.
The research included 6 in-depth interviews with senior consultants working across the UK, US, Netherlands and Canada; and a survey of 527 consultants, split across various practice areas, job level and size of consultancy.
Dive into the outcomes of our research below, and discover the perils of staying stuck in the past versus the possibilities that open up when you and your consultancy explore today’s innovations.
The Challenge of Change: Three Key Shifts
1. Embracing Advancements
From AI to data analytics and cybersecurity, consultants now operate at the forefront of a technological revolution – which requires new levels of expertise. Remote and virtual consulting, once optional, are now expected.
The role of consultancy is changing every day due to the rise of artificial intelligence, which is being used to make decisions.
2. Evolving Roles
Consultants are no longer solely relied on to be problem solvers — clients increasingly look to you as strategic advisors to help them navigate the intricacies of a fast-moving business landscape and drive their long-term success.
There is now a need to carry out the overall development of strategic services for the business rather than a single issue.
3. Expanding Skillsets
The market is hungry for adaptability, diversity, and sustainability. Consultants now need to possess additional, specialized skills along with the agility to keep up with the ever-changing needs of clients.
Consultants are now expected to have expertise in areas such as data analytics, artificial intelligence, and cybersecurity.
Challenges & Priorities
Within this shifting landscape, consultants are having to grapple with a diverse range of challenges.
When we asked consultants what the biggest pain-points are in their role, the similarities that emerged show us that the obstacles are fairly consistent even across multiple regions.
The biggest pain-points consultants face in their current role:
United Kingdom
Unclear objectives, limited resources and scope-creep
Unrealistic timelines/deadlines
Technical challenges
Canada
Time constraints
Scope creep and unrealistic timelines
Resistance to change and organizational politics
United States
Unclear objectives
Resistance to change and scope-creep
Organizational politics
Netherlands
Time contraints
Organizational politics
Unrealistic deadlines
Consultants are clearly feeling the impact of digital – recognizing the importance of innovation and new technology as a top priority and the joint-prioritization of cloud migration and automation tools.
The highest priority for consultants or their business:
Seniority and organizational size also influences these priorities, shaping consultants' focus and challenges in complex digital transformation projects.
When we compare regions, a nuanced shifting of priorities emerges, but a focus on new technologies is a consistent trend:
United Kingdom
Innovation and new technology
Up-skilling / training staff
Transition to cloud infrastructure
Canada
Sustainability and ethical practices
Innovation and new technology
AI and automation
United States
Innovation and new technology
Enhancing customer experiences
AI and automation
Netherlands
Transition to cloud infrastructure
Sustainability and ethical practices
AI and automation
By identifying the areas where consultants need the most support to deliver their most common of initiatives and projects, consultancies can better prioritize how they invest in project delivery tools.
Areas where consultants need the most support:
Understanding the Obstacles
From grappling with excessive admin tasks to finding ways through the labyrinth of data
organization and platform preferences, consultants are running into many roadblocks.
This, as you can expect, is creating a lot of frustration.
say admin takes up too much time
say sourcing / organizing data takes up too much time
say creating slides takes up too much time
Key Challenges – Ways of Working and Project Delivery
Biggest pain-points consultants face in their current roles:
“Right now it's incredibly difficult to find information, find where you find information, who is in charge of that information and then also to ensure things are moving through this system with transparency and with speed and, honestly, accuracy a lot of the time.”
"A lot of times it's tough for [our clients] to understand exactly what they're looking at the way [tool/platforms] display the information once it's in there. We're a very design-focused company and people, so if the UI and visuals don't look great it kind of loses some esteem”
Our research shows that the challenges actually vary depending on a consultant’s level of seniority and the size of the consultancy:
43% of business owners suggest ‘internal resistance’ to change is the top challenge
At Board, C-suite and Managing Director level, the top challenge is ‘technical challenges/errors’ (40% and 39% respectively)
65% of mid-managers suggest ‘data quality issues’ is their top challenge
41% of Directors/senior managers suggest ‘limited resources’ is their top challenge
Barriers to Adoption:
The obstacles that stand in the way of new tools or technology are wide-ranging – with integration issues just about coming out on top.
Biggest barriers to adopting a new tool or piece of software:
These obstacles vary depending on the size of the firm: 35% of consultancies with 100-499 employees find ‘committing time and resource to train staff’ as their biggest barrier, whereas 41% of consultancies with 2,500+ employees want to avoid the risk of being seen to 'push' tools on their clients.
When we compare regions, we see there are some surprising differences in who the decision-makers are when it comes to choosing which platforms and technology to use.
- In the UK and US, 37% and 33% of senior managers or Principals respectively say they have the most influence on which tools/technologies are used.
- In France, 38% at Partner level have the most influence.
- Individual consultants in the UK have the most say in the tools and platforms they use (20%) versus only 4% in the US.
On the plus side, it appears that consultants have far greater autonomy over the choice of platform they use when it comes to project delivery:
of consultants say they decide which tech will best support delivery
feel clients have influence over the project delivery tools / platforms
In terms of what consultants are looking for from their project delivery tools, data management comes out on top – which does not come as a complete surprise when they are citing data quality issues as the top challenge for ways of working.
What consultants want most from technology partners or tools:
Clash of Mindsets
Consulting tends to be viewed as quite a ‘traditional’ industry. But we can see that consultants are now actively looking at more modern approaches that support their work and mesh with the changing expectations of clients.
Our research highlights a clear division between traditional and progressive approaches, which has a knock-on effect in terms of prioritization:
Framework vs. Bespoke
There are two opposing schools of thought: using tried and tested frameworks that ensure high-quality delivery, versus focusing instead on developing flexible and bespoke approaches that map to the individual needs of each client.
Strategic vs. Tangible
Providing broad strategic guidance to senior stakeholders – which risks not being implemented – versus delivering more tangible and immediately actionable recommendations – which may not ladder up to wider organizational objectives.
Office vs. Alternative
Most consultancies rely on MS Office software like PowerPoint and Excel, but a growing number of consultants are seeing the value in exploring alternative delivery tools to save time and meet the changing expectations of clients.
Taking a closer look at the mindset of today’s consultants, you see that many appear to want to stick to what they’re familiar with, instead of adopting new tools and technologies that help them to adopt a more bespoke approach to project delivery.
Broadly, 39% of consultants we surveyed identify as having a more traditional mindset versus 12% who have a more progressive approach.
Based on these questions, we can loosely measure ‘progressive’ tendencies amongst consultancies
Measurement variables
- Having a more bespoke approach
- Focussing on tangible do-ers rather than strategic overseers
- Focussing on alternative delivery channels than office software
Consultants with more progressive mindsets place a higher value on new tools, with 45% saying that ‘innovation and new technology’ is their highest priority – compared with 39% of less progressive consultants.
The Middle Path
Through our research it became apparent that there is a real opportunity for consultancies between the two poles of tradition and progress — to find and harness an effective balance between the two.
Flexibility and agility empowers consultants to bring together more traditional methodologies with new and innovative approaches to meet the fast-evolving needs of your clients with greater impact.
Adapt and Succeed
During the course of our research, it’s interesting to note that many of the respondents regard enterprise architecture as just another cloud transformation tool for the IT team.
But, as more and more companies set themselves to digitizing their operations, Enterprise Architecture has stepped up to help them meet this challenge.
It now involves a wider group of stakeholders outside of IT, and has become key to understanding the impact of change across applications, teams and capabilities to deliver successful business transformation. Complex organizational data is now accessible across key stakeholders and decision-making is democratized.
This means Enterprise Architecture is no longer a tool — it’s a game-changer.
Your Guide Through the Maze
As the world continues to experience huge changes, consultants and consultancies need to adapt with strength and work with the tools designed to lead you forward into the future instead of clinging onto the past.
Here at Ardoq, we know exactly what you’re up against. Our core team used to be consultants themselves and have first-hand experience of the same frustrations highlighted in our research, like spending too much time interpreting complex or incomplete data, or formatting Excel tables and PowerPoint decks.
That’s what makes us uniquely ready to provide you with the support you truly need, and why we built Ardoq – a more progressive solution that enhances traditional approaches to consulting delivery, and helps consultants to become truly strategic assets for their clients and gain the competitive advantage.
See a Use-case in Action
With Enterprise Architecture at our platform’s core and a range of use-cases aligned to key projects that consultants commonly work on, it’s more than just another piece of consulting software — it’s a powerful and vital tool for effecting change, streamlining workflows, and simplifying complexity.
If you’d like to see a use-case in action, choose one from our list and consider the difference it could make to every consulting challenge when you choose to Ardoq it.
