Duncan indicates here that Gartner is shutting down its consulting division in Asia Pacific.
This is after all little surprise, given the lack of focus (and understanding) shown by the Borg has shown for consulting (see links below). Consulting is lower margins and less repeatable than RAS (Research and Advisory Services) which can be produced once and sold many times. However, consulting was the fastest growing P&L item at META Group... Gartner's recent strategy is all about milking customers by increasing repeat business (hence the focus on customer satisfaction to drive up renewals) and creating "silo products" to sell the same research to users having different roles within a same corporate client. Call that milking or turning analysts into sausage factory workers.
What is odd is this quote found in one of the articles linked by good old Dunc:
"A Gartner Australia spokesperson said the closure of the consulting division was based on the company's lack of resources in a market littered by hundreds of competitors, including; Accenture, and IBM Global Services." (from Axe falls on Gartner's consulting division, Computerworld)
It is curious indeed to see what business they think they are in.
Links:
Thursday, 17 May 2007
The Borg recedes in Oz and turns into high-tech sausage factory
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3 comments:
On a similar subject, IDC just axed their Australia/New Zealand Managing Director, Chris Fell, who took the rap for their slump this fiscal - he'd been leading the charge there for 8 years. No doubt they will put more focus into their low-cost saussage factories in SE Asia and India to pump out low-cost data products and move even further away from "strategic consulting"...
Ah well... sign o' the times I guess
APAC in general remains a crappy place to sell consulting, let alone analyst services. Aside from EMEA and NA multinationals, there truly is no business.
Most of us in APAC believe we can get the reports for free and are to cheap to buy the consulting services
That can't be true - people want decent consulting in APAC, just not the garbage you get from IDC or Gartner... Frost & Sullivan's entire business model is based on consulting (for example) in APAC and they do reasonably well (depite being crap too)...
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