
List of Productized Consulting Services - tacon
http://www.christophengelhardt.com/ultimate-badass-list-of-productized-consulting-services/
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aaroncohn
Ex-consultant turned founder here. Think productized consulting services are
really interesting as a business for three reasons:

1) consultants are traditionally _really_ expensive (as a 23-year-old, non-
technical little shit, my firm would bill the client at $200+/hr), so as a
result we could only be there for a few months. We'd come in, make things
better, and then were gone. So within a few months afterwards, things went
back to the way they were (aka a disaster). Productized consulting services,
on the other hand, are generally cheap enough to be perpetual.

2) Businesses generally suck at executing the consultant's recommendations.
We'd provide really rich data and detailed action plans to clients -- and this
powerpoint printout they paid a ton for would just sit on the desk or on the
shelf. It was frustrating. But other client priorities would get in the way.
At best, someone would half-ass our plan.

3) Consulting is a machine; 80% of what you do is the same for all clients.
We're taught to search internal databases for past work and frameworks before
doing anything from scratch. For that reason, it actually lends itself really
well to automation.

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mdorazio
I believe you're referring specifically to management consulting. There are
many consultants outside the McKinsey/Bain/BCG ecosystem who work specifically
on execution rather than just recommendation, at manageable rates to clients.
For example, the consultancy I work for primarily works on longer-term
software/strategy/change implementation, staffed by people who have been
around the block a few times.

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exelius
The consulting work he is referring to is rapidly disappearing. Mostly because
the big global consulting firms are execution-focused, and they're essentially
willing to give away the recommendation work for free as part of a bid for the
execution work. Buyers caught on, and realized that instead of hiring
McKinsey, all they really needed to do was issue an RFP for the implementation
and they would get what they needed. McKinsey/Bain/BCG have had to branch out
to other types of work as a result.

~~~
aaroncohn
Yep, agree with you that pure "strategy" is rapidly disappearing. I was at PwC
-- their whole mantra was "strategy through execution." Which is why they
bought all these strategy shops (Booz/Diamond/etc), because clients were
saying they were sick of Bain/McKinsey/BCG leaving them with strategic plans
they couldn't execute on. Deloitte is pursuing much of the same, evidenced by
the Monitor acquisition. And now EVEN the Big 3 MBB strategy shops are getting
into the execution side of the game to compete.

~~~
exelius
Yep; though for the purposes of consulting you have to consider the pure
execution shops as well (Accenture, Infosys, etc.) Those guys are throwing in
strategy for free as well; albeit with a different model (they just hire ex-
McKinsey/Bain/BCG partners to sell big projects for them, which often includes
doing any strategy work that needs to be done up front).

Scale will win since consulting (and the larger professional services market)
has both huge network effects and huge economies of scale/scope; so I'd look
for the consolidation trend to continue and the "big 3" strategy shops to
either merge with or form a close alliance with the remaining "big 4"
professional services firms (PwC and Deloitte have seen such a boost in
consulting revenue from the network effects with their tax and audit practices
that ENY and KPMG will be expanding consulting soon as well). There's too much
overlap in the overhead functions (travel management, billing, finance, HR,
training, branding, etc.) of any professional services business.

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rtpg
This guy also does awesome notetaking on MicroConf that are very interesting
to read (for example: [http://www.christophengelhardt.com/microconf-
europe-2015-not...](http://www.christophengelhardt.com/microconf-
europe-2015-notes-and-noteworthy/)).

As a side note, microconf has some exceptionally high-quality speakers if
you're thinking of bootstrapping. Healthy dose of realism from a lot of the
speakers.

Some vids are up on Vimeo for MicroConf talks
([https://vimeo.com/user12790628/videos](https://vimeo.com/user12790628/videos))

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munin
> Think a drunk UX expert is the worst challenge you can put your website
> through? You’re wrong. There’s one thing worse than that: Your mom. Here you
> can hire someone else’s Mom to torture your website.

ugh, vom. can we kill this already? my friends mom has forgotten more about
antenna design than I will ever know. my grandmother was doing computer based
typesetting since it was possible and remembers when LaTeX was new.

~~~
pc86
Neat. The stereotypical mother has never done antenna design, and I'm willing
to bet quite a bit of money most folks' grandparents are not exactly well
versed in computer based typesetting.

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wpietri
Yes, and the point is that the stereotype is stupid and demeaning to a lot of
people.

~~~
pc86
If you were to pick an octogenarian at random do you think it's more likely
that they have very little experience/comfort with computers, or that they
studied it in school and "remember when LaTeX was new"? That has nothing to do
with demeaning anyone, and someone doesn't lose their dignity because they
haven't been raised on a screen.

It's like any time someone mentions something that is statistically the most
common scenario people can't wait to come out of the woodwork to exclaim how
they had a different experience, so clearly the OP is wrong/mean-
spirited/sexist/racist/ageist/whatever rather than just acknowledging they had
a different experience.

The idea that older people, _on average_ , are less comfortable with
technology is not some meme that needs to die. It's a statistical reality.

~~~
munin
it costs you nothing to say "less sophisticated user" and it captures the full
range of your problem. you're not specifically trying to make your website
easy for octogenarians to use - you want it to be usable by everyone, with no
assumptions. why say something in an exclusive way when you could say it in an
inclusive way?

~~~
pc86
Because context is a thing. Here, I will rewrite the text from the article
with your suggestion:

> Think a drunk UX expert is the worst challenge you can put your website
> through? You’re wrong. There’s one thing worse than that: _A less
> sophisticated user_. Here you can hire a less sophisticated user to torture
> your website.

Not to mention the fact that the website in question is literally
_theuserismymom.com_.

~~~
munin
if I were branding a usability testing website I probably wouldn't name it
"the user is my mom" but rather name it "we built a better idiot" or
something. boom! now we're not sexist or ageist and it's clearer what the
purpose of the website/company is.

~~~
groovy2shoes
That's really insensitive. One of my best friends is an idiot, and I don't
appreciate you putting a whole group of people down. There are a lot of idiots
who are genuinely good people.

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wodenokoto
Why do so many publisher insist that share buttons are more important than
content?

[http://imgur.com/7sNqo28](http://imgur.com/7sNqo28)

A lot of pages have the share buttons on top of text almost in the middle of
the page.

~~~
TheLogothete
Because people share content before reading it. Oftentimes they would just
glance over the first couple of paragraphs and hit a share button.

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jo909
This is very focused on website and marketing (and has some services I would
not count as "consulting"). I would be pleased to hear about some productized
consulting services in the development and operations sector.

I mean something more novel than "traditional" I/P/SaaS ala AWS or any old
API.

~~~
aaroncohn
Would like to think that our little concept qualifies as novel -- it's an AI-
powered workplace culture consultant
([http://worknice.co](http://worknice.co))

His name is Charlie, you interact with him like you would any other consultant
via email or Slack, and he's focused on executing culture initiatives that
make people happier @ work.

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codeulike
Does he not know that Here Comes The Airplane is satire? (or do I just not
know that it's for real?)

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TheLogothete
He outsources his blog management to a "productized consulting" firm from his
clearly very exclusive and top-tier list.

~~~
itengelhardt
LOL. Thanks, you made me lol :-)

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CiPHPerCoder
Unless I'm wrong and this person is relevant to the community, this looks like
SEO/copywriter blog spam to me.

The old "Here's a list of products/things with a 'catchy' headline to
incentivize linkbacks and boost my search engine ranking for the words in said
'catchy' headline" trick.

But the contents of the article are kind of empty. And as codeulike said, at
least one of the entries is satire. The quality is questionable at best.

Or maybe I haven't had my morning coffee yet and I'm overlooking a crucial
detail. Please fill me in if that's what's happening.

~~~
TheLogothete
Buzzfeed and QZ make regular appearances on HN. I saw Seth Godin once. I saw
the daily mail on several occasions. Do not put HN on a piedestal.

~~~
jethro_tell
Sure, but HN isn't facebook (yet), that's why I come here.

I think we can also probably point it out here as relevant discussion to the
linked content. That's what might give HN a stay of execution on being ALL
buzzfeed.

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ap22213
Anyone know of a productized 'Advanced Math' consulting service?

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MakeUsersWant
Reply because I can't find your mail in the profile. Advanced Math consulting
sounds like a job I'd like to work. I'm a pure maths postdoc turned data
scientist, more info on request. Can you hook me up?

~~~
kaitai
Me too!

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bdcravens
There's a lot of productized services out there. This list looks like it's the
circle of people and services that you hear about if you listen to popular
internet marketing / bootstrapper podcasts. (not a criticism of those
services; I'm a fan of many of those podcasters/frequent guests, but I'd look
at this list thinking if I want to start a productized service it's supposed
to be in the Wordpress or marketing space)

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fudged71
Correction: One-day landing page is no longer accepting requests

~~~
itengelhardt
Thanks! I'll fix that

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desireco42
devEngine is on hiatus, but it would fit this list nicely

