Find out in this article how to propose a full-blown new offer to your clients and leverage your existing talent pool to strengthen your offerings via analytics in consulting. More than a solution this is a new revenue stream multi-pass.
An industry survey showed that 2019 was a good year for consultants. 7 out of 10 said that business performance met/exceeded expectations – 76% expect growth in the next 12-24 months. Technology, particularly, is leading the way with 86% expressing an optimistic view. This is not the growth we’ve seen in the past months, but we believe you can get your Q2 sales back now, here’s how.
Definition OEM Analytics :
OEMs (for Orginal Equipment Manufacturers) are companies that manufacture spare parts that are then sold to another company to improve a product or to enable the creation of a product. In our case, OEM analytics refers to a company providing an analytical platform to another company for inclusion in its product offering.
For example, a consulting company could very well buy a data visualization tool to enrich its offer and offer a better consulting service to its customers.
Concretely thanks to embedded analytics technology, it is possible to integrate Analytics Dashboard into another application.
What is analytics in consulting?
You are already positioned as a key partner for your customer’s business growth. With the addition of data applications, you create an interface that delivers insights to your customers in an “easy-to-read, easy-to-use, and implements” format, like any apps they use on their phones every day.
Yes, the traditional 200-slide PPT is now replaced by a smartly designed app, ready at your customer’s fingertips, where they are autonomous to navigate on a personalized scenario you’ve built.
OEM’s analytics makes it easy to weave data analytics into your consulting business because it’s simply a digital product! This approach requires no technical development and only days of configuration by a consultant. Once built a data application template can be used to serve the needs of hundreds of customers facing the same challenge, with no delay in service delivery.
What would this application be capable of? And how would it add value to help grow your consulting business? In a nutshell, data tools for consulting can:
- Facilitate your sales process: demonstrate the impact of your services using pre-built reusable applications, customizing as needed. The striking point is you’re making a difference not in theory but in a tangible way: an easy-to-use app in the hands of your users and at 0 costs for you. It could even open up new customer categories like SMEs, who may not be able to afford your full-fledged service suite but can invest in a custom insights bouquet
- Increase your productivity: empower your consultants with a tool that helps them build up from previous works through templates while customizing per client as needed. Productive and automate all you can so your team focus only on high-value-added customizations.
- Attract talents by offering them to build know-how in last-generation analytics tools
- Build up your valuation since prepackaged software companies typically receive a higher valuation per asset when compared to consulting
4 Tips for Getting Started with Adding Data Analytics in Consulting
1. Leverage your customer and business expertise
As a consultancy business, you’re already well-prepared to build a customer-centric product. You know their exact business problems, unique patterns, and probable solutions. Bring in all of this expertise in a range of analytics products you can sell “off the shelf”.
Several product companies start off as a consultancy businesses, gradually expanding into the product landscape in a bid to increase customer reach and accessibility. OEM’s analytics achieves a similar outcome. You can build an app on top of your company’s customer knowledge, creating an actionable tool that is designed for easy recall in a competitive market.
As Michael Wattine, co-founder and CEO of DataLift says :
2. Empower your consultants and leverage bench time!
Did you know those in-house developers aren’t a prerequisite for building analytics products in consulting?
In a fast-paced market landscape (that’s constantly shifting in response to the pandemic), you may not be able to invest in recruiting developers. What you can do is equip your consultants with a data storytelling studio. Consultants can use their benched hours to build insightful customer-facing stories using OEM data analytics.
As time is money, this method can get a new -data tool offers out of the gates in just two weeks.
3. Make the best out of the consulting and SaaS worlds
SaaS strength steams from the ability to build once and sell many times. It comes with standardization. But as a consulting company you know the value that comes from customization. Studies suggest that customers are willing to pay around 20% more for a custom product.
With OEM analytics you create a vast library of reusable scenarios, that can be applied every time you come across a previously-faced business problem and used as a case study to prove the value of your offer. You spend less on acquiring new customers and delivering your services.
At the same time, you keep the ability to perform deep customization when needed.
4. The right partner could make all the difference
Choosing a capable OEM partner when injecting analytics into your consulting business is critical.
Take a leaf out of Bain’s playbook.
Bain & Company has a history of intelligently selecting tech partners to bolster the value of its consulting services. In 2018, Bain worked with price optimizer, Price f(x), to offer its clients greater visibility into pricing decisions. And just last year, Bain used OPEX Engine’s proprietary benchmarking technology to help its clients plan better in line with industry/peer benchmarks.
By partnering with an OEM analytics specialist, you provide your users with easy-to-use data storytelling tools that require minimal technical know-how. This will get a brand-new offer to the market faster, and definitely smarter.
True Story: Datalift Builds an App for its Consumer Goods Clients in 2 Weeks
Michael Wattine, co-founder and CEO of DataLift, a consultancy that helps Consumer Goods customers optimize their business and market data strategy, tells us why he trusted OEM Analytics to add value to his product and bring new revenue to his company. As the technology area is thriving, the analytics-driven consulting business is already a reality, and Datalift is a part of that.
“Until now, we met our customers’ requirements with tools such as excel. The tools we built were aimed at analysts, so they loved it. But we wanted to build a tool aimed at top management – and they want something they can access on mobile, with an easy-to-grasp UX,” said Michael Wattine, co-founder and CEO of DataLift.
Recruiting developers was out of the question, says Michael, but at the same time, Datalift wanted a highly customizable app that could be used by top management.
“Toucan does the job: it’s a full-blown application with a chat, sharing features, etc. One of our consultants, built it [the prototype] with limited support from Toucan in less than 2 weeks. We’re now working with our data partner to plug our data into the application. Next, we’ll commercialize this data application as a new Datalift offer completely branded for our customers,” Michael adds.
The bottom line is this: analytics in consulting is a no-brainer, especially as your clients navigate a fluctuating business landscape. OEM’s analytics makes its implementation dramatically easy, without necessitating developers or heavy time investments.
Assured of a quick time-to-market, you can reimagine your consultancy product for a new generation of clients, gaining from reusability, cost efficiency, and demonstrated value.
Feel free to ask any further questions on analytics in consulting at florent.rambaud@toucantoco.com or simply click below for a demo.
ABOUT TOUCAN TOCO
Our mission: tell Business Performance Stories through interactive Data and Data Storytelling.
Our users: Marketing, Production, Finance, Human Resources, SalesForces, and Top management of Big Companies.
From 4 partners to 90 employees in 5 years, we were self-financed until 2019, thanks to the support of more than 100 clients, for more than 300 projects, including Renault, Crédit Agricole, Elior, Icade, Nexity, EDF, GRDF, BNP Paribas, Heineken, Marques Avenue, Euler Hermes, BIC, SNCF… We have completed our first funding from Balderton Capital and the former founder of Business Object to accelerate our development in the United States.
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