OPEN CONSULTING The way of doing Consulting needed to change.
If the big consultants still think that they can easily charge huge sums of money for their services, they are wrong.
These will be reduced to the largest customers, and only until they notice the transformation that our sector is undergoing.
The beginning of the change has started in the front-office , and is expanding like wildfire, as organizations begin to assume as natural the fact of not paying licenses, or bear heavy costs and archaic structures, more necessary in the Pleistocene age of our industry than in this time of social networks.
OPEN CONSULTING represents another way of doing Consulting, supported by high-impact changes that we will summarize briefly.
The open-source software used today is not that of 20 years ago. Let’s review some data:
- 1/4 of the Internet is made with WordPress (source: WordPress). The fact that the first 3 content managers – Wordpress, Drupal and Joomla – have a market share of over 65% (source: BuiltWith) , and these are open-source, says it all.
- The same goes for eCommerce and eLearning software, where Woocommerce and Magento outperforms IBM and Oracle together (source: Alexa & Tom Robertshaw), or where Moodle has a higher share than the sum of Oracle and SAP (source: eLearning Guild Research).
- Why even mention Kaltura, as a video back-end, with clients such as Bank of America, Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Princeton, Columbia or even MIT (source: Eric Markowitz & Kaltura).
- And if we talk about CRM, it is amazing to see how SugarCRM appeared, and therefore EspoCRM, Vtiger or SuiteCRM (100% open-source version that, deriving from SugarCRM, have consolidated as the best free options), to be considered by Gartner as the most “Visionary” alternative, very close to the leaders of payment SalesForce and Microsoft, and above Oracle or SAP. How should we interpret that IBM has relied on SugarCRM to support its sales force of more than 45,000 salespeople?
Open Sorce is no longer anything like 20 years ago, and being objective, it is fair to recognize that the Enterprise versions have also contributed to this, which has allowed for the combination of the new avant-garde model with the support formulas of the past, at least temporarily. in order to facilitate the use of a new model.
In the same way, the management of Infrastructures (hardware, communications, …) has been mastered through on-demand Cloud Computing . It has been a reality, for a long time, that at the click of a mouse you can adapt your environments to your needs, aligning the situation of each moment and optimizing the associated cost.
The same goes for the tools to do everything in less time and as standard as possible. I remember that for more than 20 years, the entire sector in which I have worked, has preached standardization only to end up, almost always, in mammoth projects that were made to measure. It is fair to recognize, that in the past I was also an accomplice, in some way. But now the power of our industry is beginning to be seen in the Accelerators and not in the big brands.
OPEN CONSULTING is based on new Delivery & Sales models .
Speaking of the former, we must recognize that it has nothing to do with the great hierarchical pyramids. Open Consulting supports and embraces the global open-source communities, allowing projects to be built anywhere in the world, without the differential factor being to take advantage of the low costs of emerging economies (India, China, …). Find the talent that may be in the last corner of our planet.
OPEN CONSULTING understands that the relationship with the client has also changed. This is logical. One does not speak the same to his son when he is 4 years old, than when he is a teenager, and even less when he is about to be emancipated. No doubt the customers have grown and you cannot try to sell them “old ideas”. The relationship requires a social approach, typical of the century in which we live. The client stops being the client and becomes another piece of the ecosystem, which also works for common objectives.
Reuse is the magic word, which is another way of “recycling” in the virtual world in which we move. With Reuse, it is no longer clear who plays the role of customer.
Regarding the new sales model that accompanies Open Consulting, it has to do completely with eCommerce and how it permits the showcasing of the differential factors of a product or a service, the best conditions and offers, as well as the associated references, with the effectiveness of the old sales forces. The Social aspect prescribes and influences more, making Digital Marketing our best ally. The old sales costs must be correctly reassigned. Today the community manager can bring more profit than the salesperson of yesteryear, who still resists change.
But, in my opinion, I would be deceiving you if I did not tell you that Open Consulting and Traditional Consulting still have a common point that will never change. Both models need passionate people to take them to the top.
PASSION continues to be the key element that allows Talent + Commitment to turn into Opportunities and Growth at all levels.
