Banking Tech vs Consulting

Originally Posted by Unregistered

I’m very curious, what value add does a consulting firm provide ? Do the proposal provided give u additional 30% (example) more revenue ?
How they should go to market , etc ? Isn’t these what marketing & sales people should do ?

Yep it may or may not. But consulting firms exists because of this simple problem: people at the top dont know how to best steer the company forward. This could be due to several reasons eg. Lets say you took over as the CEO, and you discovered that 1 of the method for you to save this sinking ship is to cut operations in countries where it costs more to sustain the operations than what it is actually bringing in terms of profits.

So whats the next step? Well you can straight away tell the whole company that you are removing operations in those countries. Or you can engage the help of a consultancy first, bring them in to do the research, interview people, do zero-based budgeting, so on and so forth. Then ultimately if they do come to the same recommendation as you, it would be easier for you to implement the decision to shut down operations in those countries. So the consultancy acts as a safeguard for you to implement the tough decision of cutting manpower around the world and destroying their livelihoods.

Would you, as the CEO, do this without engaging the help of consultants?

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Yep it may or may not. But consulting firms exists because of this simple problem: people at the top dont know how to best steer the company forward. This could be due to several reasons eg. Lets say you took over as the CEO, and you discovered that 1 of the method for you to save this sinking ship is to cut operations in countries where it costs more to sustain the operations than what it is actually bringing in terms of profits.

So whats the next step? Well you can straight away tell the whole company that you are removing operations in those countries. Or you can engage the help of a consultancy first, bring them in to do the research, interview people, do zero-based budgeting, so on and so forth. Then ultimately if they do come to the same recommendation as you, it would be easier for you to implement the decision to shut down operations in those countries. So the consultancy acts as a safeguard for you to implement the tough decision of cutting manpower around the world and destroying their livelihoods.

Would you, as the CEO, do this without engaging the help of consultants?

Lets add another POV on why consultants are needed.

Lets say you are a lowly worker, you have been complaining for ages to your boss that this tech system is very unfriendly in terms of UX, and needs an overhaul. This is affecting your productivity for the longest time and you are very close to quitting.

After 2 years of complaints, your boss decided that it is time for an overhaul and decides that a new implementation has to take place. So your boss contacted Group IT, then has the matter raised all the way to the Group CTO. So the Group CTO asks the Group IT whether they are capable of consolidating all business requirements from business teams around the world (your company has global presence), translate them into technical implementation steps and then implement them with minimal and zero disruptions to BAU activities.

What do you think the Group IT's response would be?

Basically consultants rubber stamp and help organisations justify their s hitty decisions because the C-Suite (1) are too spineless to make the call, (2) can hide behind external advice, and (3) can blame somebody if it all goes to s hit.

You know what they say about consultants right - they'll borrow your watch to tell the time and then charge you for it.

They're the ultimate shills. Just go read up about McKinsey and all the dubious third world governments with poor human rights records they're involved in helping. Oh, go read up McKinsey's role in the US opioid crisis too.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Basically consultants rubber stamp and help organisations justify their s hitty decisions because the C-Suite (1) are too spineless to make the call, (2) can hide behind external advice, and (3) can blame somebody if it all goes to s hit.

You know what they say about consultants right - they'll borrow your watch to tell the time and then charge you for it.

They're the ultimate shills. Just go read up about McKinsey and all the dubious third world governments with poor human rights records they're involved in helping. Oh, go read up McKinsey's role in the US opioid crisis too.

So if there isnt a demand for consultants, would they still exist? As much as we hate consultants because of a million reasons, they exist because our corporate world is imperfect. When you are sick you go to a doctor. But when a company is sick, they would go to consultants. Plain and simple. You can continue having the belief that all they do is powerpoint slides but bear in mind if you really satki enough to not need them, then they would cease to exist. Are you satki enough?

Originally Posted by Unregistered

So if there isnt a demand for consultants, would they still exist? As much as we hate consultants because of a million reasons, they exist because our corporate world is imperfect. When you are sick you go to a doctor. But when a company is sick, they would go to consultants. Plain and simple. You can continue having the belief that all they do is powerpoint slides but bear in mind if you really satki enough to not need them, then they would cease to exist. Are you satki enough?

Wtf is wrong with you? The guy literally listed 3 reasons as to why there’s demand for consultants.

Originally Posted by megalomaniac

Nope, the consulting one is about 25% higher. So yes I see that as compensating the risk and poorer WLB.

Consulting = long hours, higher salary ceiling, potentially challenging work and decent exit opportunities

Banking tech = regular hours, lower salary ceiling, menial work and terrible exit opportunities

If go banking you either get out early or you stay for life. If you want to exit at lets say AVP level, your salary is too high for the work you do, so you might have trouble jumping ship without significant paycut.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Consulting = long hours, higher salary ceiling, potentially challenging work and decent exit opportunities

Banking tech = regular hours, lower salary ceiling, menial work and terrible exit opportunities

If go banking you either get out early or you stay for life. If you want to exit at lets say AVP level, your salary is too high for the work you do, so you might have trouble jumping ship without significant paycut.

Got to be one of the greatest misconceptions around. Consulting isn’t as exciting as you think of it to be - trust me, most consulting projects these days are more or less the same (tech implementation like moving operations to cloud systems etc). As for banking tech/BO, it can get really interesting. Just look at the tech that is emerging/has emerged in banking - blockchain, emphasis on UI/UX, AI and more. DBS and JPM are great examples of how innovative banks have become (surprise surprise, McKinsey has published a report detailing how digital transformation is most mature in the financial + TMT sectors). You will obtain relevant tech/pm experience that will enable you to hop to not just other FIs, but Fintechs as well.

Whatever it is, just follow your heart OP. Best of luck!

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Basically consultants rubber stamp and help organisations justify their s hitty decisions because the C-Suite (1) are too spineless to make the call, (2) can hide behind external advice, and (3) can blame somebody if it all goes to s hit.

You know what they say about consultants right - they'll borrow your watch to tell the time and then charge you for it.

They're the ultimate shills. Just go read up about McKinsey and all the dubious third world governments with poor human rights records they're involved in helping. Oh, go read up McKinsey's role in the US opioid crisis too.

Yes I kinda agree with the rubber stamp portion but they do have their disclaimer as well.
It’s kind of ironic right, some company like to hire people with consultancy background. but at the end of the day, they still hire external consultant to provide the “backing” on whatever proposition that the “employee” or “C-suite” wants to implement or change.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Yes I kinda agree with the rubber stamp portion but they do have their disclaimer as well.
It’s kind of ironic right, some company like to hire people with consultancy background. but at the end of the day, they still hire external consultant to provide the “backing” on whatever proposition that the “employee” or “C-suite” wants to implement or change.

Simply because once the consultant is hired into the company as an employee, that ex-consultant loses his/her association and backing of that consultancy. Whatever he/she recommends would be deemed as coming from himself only, and not part of whatever consultancy he/she comes from.

Eg. Your company hires a mckinsey guy, after onboarding to your team he diagnoses your business process problems and recommends a solution. Would your team listen to him more because he is an ex-mckinsey? Or would your team just deem it as nonsense, how can a new guy know better about our processes than us who were around for more than 10 years???

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Simply because once the consultant is hired into the company as an employee, that ex-consultant loses his/her association and backing of that consultancy. Whatever he/she recommends would be deemed as coming from himself only, and not part of whatever consultancy he/she comes from.

Eg. Your company hires a mckinsey guy, after onboarding to your team he diagnoses your business process problems and recommends a solution. Would your team listen to him more because he is an ex-mckinsey? Or would your team just deem it as nonsense, how can a new guy know better about our processes than us who were around for more than 10 years???

Which proves one of the above poster's point that consultants are only used for external validation.

Speaking from experience, I trained and worked briefly as a lawyer before moving to a semi-consulting & analysis type role. The commonalities are always the same in both fields. In-house expertise is valued but at the end of the day, management will always engage an external "expert" to validate internal findings and cover their ass. In the end, we usually end up checking the external expert's work, which is sometimes far off the mark and so riddled with disclaimers and assumptions that its practically useless. Good grief man!