The consultant’s challenge with ‘as a service’ software world

“As a service software” platforms such as Salesforce demand a different type of consulting team – business architects proficient in mapping business processes to software capabilities rather than developing capabilities from scratch to fit processes.

Infrastructure development and maintenance services around the modern software stack has shifted to the cloud ISV ; which means the consultant plays a very different role than with traditional software services of yester years.

The giant consulting firms of today have built their businesses over the years, growing large teams that design systems from scratch, augment client staff and are well suited to build and maintain systems over long periods of time.  Rapid implementations with projects that start and end within weeks are not consistent with the operating models of the typical large consulting firms. They are having to pivot to continue to be relevant in the digital era with clients increasingly embracing platform technologies such as Salesforce.