Consulting for the Digital Economy needs to change. Here’s how.

Almost 9 months have passed since we left our very successful digital agency business we have been creating for the past 14 years. Although that was a tough decision, we felt that we needed to go beyond the advertising business. Pursue something bigger, more challenging, that would focus on the real problems businesses face and could have an impact on their bottom line.

The market gap

We saw over and over again, many businesses struggling to keep up with the transformation needed for the digital economy. From the way they build products and market them to consumers, to developing the right teams and creating innovation.

But why struggle? I would break it down to some major factors:

• Inability to hire, train and retain the right talent
• Extremely slow development of digital products and go-to-market timelines
• Lack of “digital / tech” knowledge and inability to embrace a “makers” culture inside the organization
• Inefficient communication and obsolete ways of working, both internally and with external partners/vendors

So, while the digital economy is changing the world, companies struggle to keep up with the pace of change. This is also true of the companies that help other companies, consultancies. They are big, slow, expensive, and their delivery is usually below standards.

In my understanding, the market plays out like this:

On one side, there are the Big4/MBB Consulting Firms. They have extensive C-Level business connections, very good (traditional) business understanding, good technical & data departments, and enjoy clients’ trust. But their consumer understanding, creativity in solving problems, agility, time-to-market, and understanding of product development for the digital economy is subpar.

On the other side, there are Digital / Communication Agencies. They are great to understand consumer needs, deliver exceptional campaigns, good UIs and creative thinking. Usually, their implementation & technology capabilities along with the business understanding are mediocre. That’s why you usually get great ideas & visuals that don’t work as expected.

Then you have strong technology companies. They make things that technically work. They can deliver any digital product. They may be more agile in working, but they seriously lack business & consumer understanding. They don’t have analytical skills and usually, they are too “technically focused” that they miss entirely the end-user experience.

On a global level, everyone is racing to buy capabilities through acquisitions. Big Consultancies buy digital & creative agencies. Communication Groups buy technology & data companies along with smaller consultancies. Everyone is trying to consolidate and integrate every capability into something huge. And while good in theory, the end result usually misses the mark.

If you ever tried to integrate different cultures, people with another way of working, and legacy with new technologies under one roof and one common goal, then you know what I mean.

Where we come in

We believe traditional consulting needs to change.

To do so we are launching REBORRN.

A new breed of consultants & makers to challenge how a modern consultancy looks like in the 21st century. REBORRN is headquartered in London and also has offices in Greece.

To build this new breed of consultancy we are getting onboard world class Creatives, Engineers, Analysts and Entrepreneurs instead of traditional consultants & project managers. And what we make is Experience-first. Data backed. Beautifully engineered.

Consultants & Makers

I think the most important element of our culture is the “Makers” philosophy. The problem with traditional consulting is that most consultancies are paid to do just that. Consult.

The usual process is identifying the problem, analyze and understand it, and consult the client on how to solve it. Then it’s usually up to the client to follow the suggestions and execute on the plan.

This approach may work OK, for example, with financial consulting & auditing, where the client has the necessary resources in-house along with years of experience to execute on the problem.

The same approach won’t work in the digital realm. Organisations are not usually digital-savvy nor have the required capabilities in-house. They work with a number of external partners and specialists (agencies, tech companies, product dev etc) but they can hardly end-to-end manage them or understand what their partners are doing.

Sometimes they may build nice “customer-facing” products but they lack the tech, processes, and culture to manage the whole customer journey and provide a unified and exceptional experience for their consumers.

And while Digital Transformation means lots of different things to different people, organizations have a hard time finding out what it means for them and quickly & efficiently execute on a plan.

We want to be there all the way for our partners.

Not just consult but also get our hands dirty when necessary. To be able to connect all parties under a common goal. And we can make that a reality because we understand what it means to be an agency, how the technology works, how long things should take, what’s feasible or not.

How we approach things

Our service portfolio focuses on 3 main pillars; Strategy with capability in Data/Analytics, Digital Strategy and Digital Transformation services; Products which starts from service and product design and can go as deep as end-to-end product management; People with a practice that focuses in Talent recruitment of Digital Natives, Training, and Transformational HR.

REBORRN will also attempt to blur the boundaries that define the core business of a consultancy. Besides Digital Transformation and Product Development, we are looking for Joint Ventures and Startup investments. We see it as one more way to put our skin in the game of real business. Having said that, we are about to launch our first Joint Venture with a Private Equity in the next two months.

We know that this a David vs Goliath story and most often such stories don’t have a happy ending. It’s not going to be easy as we are trying to change very traditional structures against huge competitors.

But this is what makes it interesting. And who knows, maybe history will repeat itself :)

Stay tuned or visit reborrn.com for more