@ Linguini - re: Bearingpoint being 99% system integration.I’m going to sound like an old has-been, I know, but here goes……This is a cycle of life thing. High end “advisory” type consultancy doing high margin business tries to work out how to grow quickly. They see the high revenue achieved by SI companies through placement of techie teams with one rainmaker keeping 50 techies busy and think “we could do that”. They get into that business, often through acquisition to short cut the process, and then spend five years trying to integrate two completely different cultures, salary scales, skills bases, etc. Along the way they find that SI profit margins and consultant mark-up don’t compare well to their old advisory rates! What a shock!Ironically at the same time there will be a major SI somewhere, happy with their immense revenue figure, but jealous of the sort of margins made by high-end consultancies. “We could do that” they think and go about either buying a niche firm or hiring 20 top class MBA’s, breaking their salary structure in the process. They then spend the next five years wondering why they can’t cross-sell strategy work to their existing SAP/Oracle/CRM clients. The MBA guys end up sitting on the bench, or working at no margin on SI work that they hate before leaving in droves to traditional advisory firms (slagging the SI off on this forum in the meantime no doubt)I’ve worked for both advisory boutiques and SI’s and they both covet the others margin/scale (delete as appropriate). If PWC really are going to make this sort of revenue growth, I’ll put a £5 bet on them achieving it through changing their business model to take on more large scale work (SI, low end Bus Trans, outsourcing, etc). Bet it all ends in tears as well.
