Doing business online with consultants - #1

This section is about the online presence of consulting firms: is it easy to business with them? In close cooperation with the Vrije Universiteit, we conducted a study in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, in the 2nd quarter of 2020. We studied the features of the websites of 18 consultancy firms: Accenture, Arthur D. Little, BAIN, BDO, CGI, Comatch, Deloitte, EY, Gigster, Globality, KPMG, Leathwaite, McKinsey, Newtonx, Protiviti, PwC, Wikistrat, and XMCS. A mix of Big-4, system integrators, strategy houses, and new entrants. We compared their websites in the USA, the UK, the Netherlands, and Russia.

We tallied the presence of their website features, which we divided into six clusters. We compared the consultancy brands to what extent they provided general information like a company profile, contact data, FAQ. Next, we verified to what extend there was specific information on the services they offered: the format in which the info got presented and the presence of business cases, downloadable data, and client reviews. Then, we looked for promotional activities like round tables, events, webinars, and conferences and whether it was possible to register for these online. Plus, we checked to what extent the website helped a user decide to go for that firm. We compared information, qualifying questions, or tools to help scope the client's problem, pricing information, ways to involve multiple practices in case of complex business issues, and assistance in composing a team of consultants. Next up was online ordering: was there a possibility to calculate the indicative cost and time of the necessary services, e.g., via a configurator? Was it possible to order something online, perhaps even in a webshop? Finally, we looked at after-sales options: was there a client help desk (e.g., a 1-800 number), and what about warranties and corporate social responsibility?

We saw vast differences in online functionality among brands, some differences between types of firms (e.g., Big-4 compared to the strategy houses), and hardly any differences in functionality among countries. Yet, all firms' scores seemed so low that we decided to compare it with a mundane, seemingly non-digital product like peanut butter. Couldn't consultancy firms do better than that?