Where Geeks Seldom Tread

But what will bring e-business into every facet of consulting will be the integration by companies of e-business into their entire organizations and the subsequent self-transformation. This will be in place of setting up e-businesses to run alongside the core businesses. "Barnes & Noble and Barnesandnoble.com are not integrated entities," says Sprinkle, "but this won't last long." Companies like this will require integrated solutions to deal with the implications of this change. At the same time, start-up Internet companies will begin to mature and face some of the same broad organizational issues that brick-and-mortar companies have been dealing with for years. Taken together, these developments are likely to rewrite the rules on career tracks and the skills necessary to be successful in all sectors of consulting.
Knowledge and skills. Skill development is an obvious starting point for changes caused by the rise of e-business. Not surprisingly, to prepare their staff for the spread and growth of e-business, many firms are rushing to offer some level of e-business training to their entire consulting staffs. For example, some 9,000 KPMG consultants and support staff have taken a 40-hour "e-101" course offered by the firm to make sure that all of its employees are at least conversant in e-business fundamentals and issues, according to John Higgins, partner in charge of consultant training and leadership development for KPMG in Montvale, NJ. In a sign of the importance of such courses to the firm, KPMG tied successful completion of the course to consultants' annual bonuses. Not surprisingly, the course has a 99 percent pass rate.

The strategic change consulting practice within PricewaterhouseCoopers has developed real-time workshops and Web-enabled case examples to provide consultants with a foundation for understanding the kinds of challenges and rapid change clients are facing in this e-business environment. But the practice recognizes that success in this environment will require something more than just knowing the lingo. For example, change management consultants are increasingly finding that their clients want help in evaluating emerging business opportunities available to them, as well as the client's ability to capitalize on those opportunities. "In the past, consultants were primarily advisors on the best way to implement what the client wanted," says Arthur Mazor, a director in PricewaterhouseCoopers' strategic change consulting practice in New York. "We no longer ask them what they want — we help them find out what they need."
Projects. In the e-business age, the answer to a client's needs does not always fall neatly within a given practice area or line of service. As a result, consultants will have to find ways to team with their peers in different service lines of business to deliver an integrated client solution across lines. "We used to offer one set of services at a time," says Mazor. "Now, we have a dialogue with clients to define the entire spectrum of their opportunities and needs, and then integrate the services necessary to meet those needs."
Even identifying client needs is not as straightforward as it once was. "In the past, we used to work internally within the traditional hierarchy" to deal with HR issues, says Hewitt principal Esther Laspisa, based in the firm's Lincolnshire, IL, office. "Now, we work with e-business companies that are so integrated that we not only deal with different parts of the organization, but we also collaborate with their business partners in other organizations" that are part of new alliance relationships which make up end-to-end processes.
The pressure on clients to move and succeed quickly will also spill over onto consultants. For one thing, it is likely that in the future consultants will rarely be working on long-term projects. Instead, consultants will find themselves facing an array of narrowly focused projects with faster time frames for delivery, predicts Mazor. As a result, project management, although always important, will become even more so in the future. "There is increasing excitement among clients, but there is anxiety, too," says Laspisa. "Client expectations are changing as they face internal pressures for faster solutions."

All this can appear to be a daunting challenge as consultants are expected to broaden their overall knowledge of new and quickly changing technologies. "There may be a fear among consultants that they have to become a totally different person and abandon their old ways of working, but that is not the case," says Mazor. It is important to remember that in this more integrated environment, a consultant does not need to have all the knowledge necessary to meet these diverse client needs. But it is critical that they be able to bring together a team of people who do.
Opportunities. Of course, with any change comes opportunity. And the growth of e-business provides plenty of those. "Once this gets underway, you won't have to worry about positioning yourself to get on the right projects," predicts Sprinkle. E-business "will be part of every project."
The good news is that because e-business issues are new to virtually everyone, it will not necessarily be years of experience that drive a consultant's ability to contribute to a project. "Firms must bring down the barriers by removing the years-of-service mentality," says Laspisa. After all, because less experienced consultants may actually be more comfortable with e-business and its technologies than are more established consultants, these two groups are often forming peer relationships on projects because each brings something important to the table. Established consultants bring a wealth of consulting, client, and overall business skills, while younger ones often have stronger e-business understanding and skills. When the two groups work together effectively, both can walk away with the skills they need to succeed in this changing environment.
When Hewitt's Christie began doing broader e-business work last year by creating e-business models for HR, "suddenly, the area of expertise I had developed was getting attention at a high level," he says. As a result, "I have had to ratchet up my skills in relationship management to be able to work effectively with a higher level of contacts and larger projects." To meet this challenge, Christie has teamed up with some of the firm's senior managers in what can only be called a synergistic relationship. "They learn from me and I learn from them," he says. "They have decades of consulting experience but are not as comfortable with e-business."
Thanks to this exposure, "I have leapfrogged a segment of my career," Christie says.
However, the opportunities caused by this career inversion will not last forever. "There will be another year or two of this window of opportunity for lower-level consultants to help lead this transformation," he predicts. It is up to consultants to raise their level of expertise as quickly as possible to take advantage of that.
His parting words of advice: "Continually look for different projects, and don't keep doing what you have done in the past. This not only keeps your skills growing, but also creates opportunities for others to get in on projects as you move on. And, finally, look for projects that are an opportunity to do something radically new and groundbreaking."