Recently I have heard/read that channel partners are competing with Big Consulting – PWC, Deloitte, Accenture, KPMG, Tata, Bain, McKinsey, BCG, Capgemini, and E&Y. Mostly Accenture and Deloitte are mentioned, so I assume their names came up somewhere in a partner conversation.
Having done my fair share of consulting, when companies are hiring Big Consulting, it is for the brand. Not because anyone can point to either firm to say that they excel at anything. They can consult to any project. They are the Walmart of Consulting. No one gets fired for hiring the big firms Despite the McKinsey Pharma-FDA scandal and the Arthur Anderson-Enron debacle, people still hire the Big Ten.
Most of what these companies do is around tax and management consulting. “Deloitte provides industry-leading audit, consulting, tax, and advisory services to many of the world’s most admired brands.” As an aside Arthur Anderson was a CPA firm that handed in its license over Enron. Accenture emerged from the ashes of Arthur Anderson.
Accenture and Deloitte each rake in $50 billion in annual revenue. At that size, the commissions off of telecom services are a pittance. This is the same problem CDW faces. At $18.5 Billion in revenue, even $48M in commissions is just 0.3% of revenue. Adding a million here or there is a hassle to account for, collect and in the case of commissions chase down!
Accenture has acquired 110 companies since 2019 – cloud services, cybersecurity, digital transformation, data and analytics, managed services, sustainability and ad agencies. “Accenture’s areas of expertise include management consulting, systems integration and technology, business process outsourcing and application and infrastructure outsourcing.” [channele2e]
People think channel partners compete against Accenture? Accenture is spending $2.5B on acquisitions this year. They could literally buy all the PE backed TSBs and then some.
Accenture wants the PROJECTS to keep their 700K employees billing hours! Accenture owns PaaS and SaaS platforms, but people think they are looking for the UCaaS sale? They could buy almost any UCaaS shop.
TEM and CPA firms are becoming referral partners for channel partners. Some of them are like SCTC members who will not take commissions because they must remain neutral. The Big Ten would get pissed wasting so much time collecting commissions. It would cost them more to pay a finance person to collect them than they would make!
Now if you mean that partners are up against them for network design or WAN/LAN consulting, I would say that is possible at the Fortune 500 level, but again unlikely. When I was involved in a data center project for a F5000 company, the brand name consultants did not have any CCIE’s or network architects in play. That was filled by a boutique shop that brought me along. Not many have actually experience with the service providers or on hot cuts or the PSTN.
I know saying we compete against the Big Ten is a great way to say that the channel has reached new heights – and that the PE investment is justified – but why? Is this to power the PE investment?
What difference does it make? Do you think Powered by Avant/Telarus/AppSmart is going to ring some bell in the halls of teh C-Suite at F5000?
Think this way if you want, but the clock is ticking for when the PE guys want their investment back. Maybe this is how you exit: Telarus ends up on the third floor in the PWC building in Tampa or in cubicles in some of the 100+ offices Accenture has globally.