Sweden’s consulting market grows the strongest to almost €1billion (€944million)
- Nordic region viewed as a global digital leader by consultants – as revenues from digital transformation work approaches €1billion...
The growth of the Nordics consulting market has continued to accelerate - increasing 5.7 percent to reach a value of €2.77billion in 2017. All four countries in the region grew at a faster rate than in 2016, with Sweden—the region’s largest market—seeing the strongest growth rate of 6.9 percent to €944million.
Finland—the region’s smallest market – grew almost as strongly (6.8 percent). While the growth rate was slower in Denmark, and even more so in Norway (up 3 percent to €626million), consultants also saw increased opportunities in these markets.
These figures are published today (3rd May 2018) in a new report from Source Global Research, the leading research and strategy firm for the global management consulting industry. The report also reveals the importance of digital transformation, the market for which grew rapidly, with the region viewed as a global digital leader by many consultants.
Edward Haigh, a Director at Source Global Research, said:
“The Nordics consulting market continued to perform well in 2017, with every sector experiencing growth. However, everyone is rightly talking about digital transformation, which is now worth almost €1billion, or more than a third of all Nordic consulting market revenues.
Specifically, digitisation of the customer experience persisted as a big area of demand across the Nordics, and data & analytics became a fundamental part of many digitisation projects. Demand around RPA increased, but is still in its infancy compared to more advanced demand in other parts of western Europe.”
Olli-Pekka Lumijärvi, Managing Director—Accenture Strategy, Accenture —Finland Lead, added: “Digital, on a high level, drives a lot of the projects we're undertaking. Most of our clients are undergoing some sort of transformation. This is probably seen most in banking, but it's affecting every industry.”
Consulting revenues grew fastest in healthcare—the region’s smallest sector—as clients came under increasing pressure from an ageing population and the need to cut costs. The Nordics’ second largest market—financial services—was the next fastest-growing sector as clients looked for consulting support around compliance, dealing with new competition, and digitising their end-to-end operations.
Consulting saw growth across all service lines in 2017 as transformation programmes encouraged multi-disciplinary approaches. Technology was the fastest-growing service line, an unsurprising fact given technology’s role in clients’ digitisation agendas.
Hans Christian Westlye, from Enterprise Federation of Norway Virke, and Director of Virke Consulting and technology, commented: “The fact that Norway’s consulting market has continued to grow at all since the onset of lower oil prices has to be seen as an achievement in itself. The limited growth can partially be explained by the increasing talent crunch – the demand for skills is higher than the availability of the right people. It is a known challenge for the industry, that a lot of these professionals with key skills are recruited to the expanding digitisation and IT departments in the public sector.
Despite that, overall, consultants remain upbeat about the state of the market, and with work around digital transformation picking up across the Nordics and in every sector of the economy, things look well positioned for 2018. It’s also important that we are seeing both large and small firms benefitting from the digital transformation story.”
Type A firms (mainly the Big Four accountancy firms) saw the fastest-growth of all firm types in 2017, largely owing to their international reach and ability to blend technology knowledge and advisory capabilities. Technology firms also had a good year thanks to their strong positioning in the digital space and their greater focus on providing end-to-end solutions to the wider C-suite.
The Source report concludes by saying that while some consultants remain concerned about the potential for a slowdown in Sweden’s economy, the majority of consultants expect another year of solid growth in 2018, driven by ongoing disruption to business models and further large transformation programmes.
Sourced from Top Consultant- News