One on One with PA Consulting's Peter Skarzynski

Skarzynski: Since the early days of the pandemic, I think both we and the clients have gotten better at navigating things. It's a new normal in some senses for the client. We have done projects and are doing projects that are 100% remote, and we're very proud of what we've been able to do while working remotely. It's particularly helpful in our world because we have studios where we build things, and we've been able to go into those studios with some of our folks to keep working on projects. 

There are hardships. I feel it viscerally for my six grown children. Our oldest works full time, her husband works full time, and they've got a baby. That's not always an easy thing, it's not always smooth sailing inside the house. We encourage our teams and I know our clients do too, that you have to create breaks for yourself in the house, walks, don't always be on-screen. That's a pain point I think is still there and is going to be consistent and people still have to work on that.

Consulting: What effect have you seen COVID have on clients' growth aspirations?

Skarzynski: I think COVID to an extent, with the clients I'm familiar with, in some ways was a shake-up and a wake-up call to say we can think differently, and we can think about our business differently. If you're a CPG company and one of your products doesn't stay on the shelf, in the early days they were just focusing on that. At this point in time in the evolution of what we're all experiencing clients are absolutely looking for growth. They look at it in different ways, across core, adjacencies, and sometimes digitization. There seems to be more than reasonable appetite for that across what I'm seeing.

Consulting: What are some of the unique challenges clients are facing over the foreseeable future?

Skarzynski: Issues with supply chains, for one. There's a big push for direct-to-consumer that hasn't changed. If you look across all sectors, the extent to which digital is proliferating is really dramatic in some industries, impressive in others. That's going to stay, and new habits are being formed. Another that I take to heart is if you look at disruptions that last a while like this has, surprises happen with new businesses that are created and start to scale. It's invisible as you're looking at it, but if you look at what's going on with relatively new startups there's going to be some really interesting things 3-4 years from now. That's always been the case in the last 3-4 downturns.

Consulting: With a lot of companies experiencing supply chain issues during the pandemic, might a reimagining of how that all works be on the horizon? 

Skarzynski: I think some sets of changes in supply chain are going to be permanent depending on the industry. There will be, and it's starting already, a reimagining of what that should be, and it won't be just-in-time as universally as it was going forward. You've probably read about CPG companies are saying they're warehousing now, and they're doing that because they don't want to be without product especially heading into the holidays. They also don't want the mess in the early days of COVID where people were picking up 400 rolls of toilet paper. That's a very big change. It's being done both by the clients and by partners of the clients who are taking advantage of the opportunity and helping the company with a more reliable supply chain in this era of uncertainty. If COVID stopped tomorrow and everybody magically got a vaccine, that would not go away in the next 3-4 years.

Consulting: Have you seen a change in client demands since COVID hit?

Skarzynski: In terms of what they're looking for there's a set of categories. We need to go much faster on digital. That means what is the experience, what is the way in which we're going to serve our consumers or customers in a more effective way. There is reimagining of the supply chain. The other thing we've seen is subset of clients is asking us what's next? What is going to surprise us next? We want to look at the new technologies that are out there, how are they evolving, and what does that mean for our business in terms of threats and opportunities. It's kind of strategy-meets-scenario planning. 

Consulting: How is PA Consulting uniquely suited to help clients through this crisis and beyond?

Skarzynski: We believe that clients want and value a partner who can take them from 'we need to grow' all the way through the end. Which, simplified, spans what are the plausible futures we want to create, what are the opportunity spaces, which ones are most attractive given our capabilities, where would we be stretching, and what would be the initial cut-in. We've got a portion of our practice which looks at a particular area, finds problems in what people are doing today, and thinks about how we could make that better or very different. That's our starting point. We then go out and talk to real humans who would use this if it was functionally working and just keep moving until we can get the product start to scale.