What Do Clients Want/Like

                       Bain's Look at Selected Services

On the heels of that last post, here's another bit of data to digest. A very interesting graphic from consultancy Bain & Co. appeared recently in Global Services magazine (see: "More Satisfaction: Outsourcing or Offshoring?" in May 2007, www.globalservicesmedia.com). In the context of the article, this graphic shows that offshoring is more satisfactory to executives than outsourcing while the latter is used more frequently.

I thought the graphic Bain came up with told a far more interesting story for services and managment consultants. It showed a number of consulting offerings and the degree with which clients used them and how satisfied they were with them.

My take-away from this 2X2 graphic was that some initiatives (lower left quadrant) are best left to specialists who can target their marketing efforts to those firms who'll want those services and can deliver a bang-up job of exceeding client expectations. The top-right quadrant identifies initiatives every consultancy should offer and do well. I thought Mergers & Acquisitions looked a little lonely in the bottom right quadrant. However, with M&A, just because most firms don't do a lot of deals, the ones that do are often frequent, serial deal-making machines.

More consultancies should survey their client base like Bain did if only to find out what clients want and how well their services are satisfying clients.