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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.

- Chief Technology Officer, UK

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.

- Director of Digitalization, Canada

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.

- Middle Manager, Canada

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

United Kingdom

33%

Unclear objectives, limited resources and scope-creep

32%

Unrealistic timelines/deadlines

30%

Technical challenges

Canada

Canada

32%

Time constraints

30%

Scope creep and unrealistic timelines

28%

Resistance to change and organizational politics

United States

United States

28%

Unclear objectives

25%

Resistance to change and scope-creep

24%

Organizational politics

Netherlands

Netherlands

29%

Time contraints

28%

Organizational politics

26%

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:

#1 Innovation and new technology
41%
#2 Sustainable & ethical practice
35%
#3 Enhancing customer experiences
33%
#4 Transition to cloud
34%
#5 Ai & Automation
34%
#6 Streamlining project processes
32%
#7 Entering new markets
31%
#8 Up-skilling / training staff
30%
#9 Adapting to hybrid working
30%

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

United Kingdom

45%

Innovation and new technology

35%

Up-skilling / training staff

34%

Transition to cloud infrastructure

Canada

Canada

41%

Sustainability and ethical practices

41%

Innovation and new technology

34%

AI and automation

United States

United States

48%

Innovation and new technology

39%

Enhancing customer experiences

35%

AI and automation

Netherlands

Netherlands

38%

Transition to cloud infrastructure

38%

Sustainability and ethical practices

36%

AI and automation

Consulting Complexity

The kinds of projects consultants are working on are becoming significantly — and rapidly — more complex:

Most common initiatives and projects consultancies are working on

Cloud migration
47%
Application portfolio management
41%
Business capability modelling
39%
Business capability rationalisation
38%
Application rationalisation
36%
Data lineage
34%
Strategy to execution
32%
Application lifecycle management
26%
Application integration management
21%
IT cost management
20%
Infrastructure technology lifecycle management
19%
Application hosting
16%
Technical capabilitymodelling and realisation
11%

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:

Project type
Ranking top of those workings in the area
Ranking top overall market
Application rationalisation
45%
16%
Application portfolio management
36%
15%
Cloud migration
33%
16%
Business capability modelling
28%
11%
Data lineage
28%
11%
Business capability realisation
27%
10%
IT cost management
24%
5%

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.

39%

say admin takes up too much time

39%

say sourcing / organizing data takes up too much time

37%

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:

#1 Integration and compatibility challenges
44%
#2 Technical challenges / errors
35%
#3 Limited resources
35%
#4 Unclear / ambiguous objectives
34%
#5 Time constraints
33%
#6 Client scope-creep
31%
#7 Internal resistance to change
31%
#8 Unrealistic timelines
30%
#9 Organisational politics
29%

“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.”

- Director, Programme Management (USA)

"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”

- Director, Programme Management (USA)

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:

#1 Integration and compatibility challenges
33%
#2 Concerns around data security
30%
#3 Poor flexibility / difficult to customise
30%
#4 Committing time resource to train staff
30%
#5 Risk of being seen to ‘push’ tool on a client
29%
#6 Low cost-to-benefit ratio
29%

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:

73%

of consultants say they decide which tech will best support delivery

27%

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:

#1 Making it much easier for me to find and understand data that is required for the delivery of my client work
38%
#2 Significantly reducing the amount of time I spend creating slides and reports for clients
23%
#3 Enabling me to produce significantly higher quality visualisations in my work
20%
#4 Significantly reducing costs associated with the work I do
11%
#5 Making the outputs I produce simpler and easier to implement for my clients
4%
#6 Providing me with an additional professional certification to instill trust in potential customers
3%

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

Framework 70%
Bespoke 30%

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

Strategic 75%
Tangible 25%

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

Office 73%
Alternative 27%

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
Not progressive
19%
Less progressive
39%
Semi-progressive
30%
Progressive
12%

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.

Animation depicting two people having a text conversation over computers

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.

Two men and a lady look at a range of animated charts

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.

Animation of a man following wayfinding signs

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.

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