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While most professional services companies are small, the companies that dominate the market are those that have grown their business in size, complexity and geography, through both organic growth and M&A.
Geographic expansion, by the nature of the professional services business, requires in-country presence. However, smaller, domestic firms that can provide the in-country service, but that do not have the corresponding international capability, will struggle to win business from globalising companies. As a result, large international players are gaining increasing market momentum.
The growing international nature of the professional services industry creates many pressures in addition to opportunities that affect both business and IT management. Examples of these are summarised in the following table.
In this mixed environment, the question is how ICT can best support a professional services business. IDC asked this question of a sample of CEOs of professional service companies in Europe, and the results are shown in Figure 1, showing what senior managers want from their IT managers.
Based on these results, IT managers in professional services companies need to focus on three points:
- Security — Security concerns are not driven solely by regulation, but also by the fact that the professional services business is based on trust, and investments in security are mandatory to maintain a good reputation. This is particularly true of international companies that have complex security issues.
- Information management — Three top priorities that emerge are related to information: security, access and privacy. Clearly these factors are critical in a knowledge-based business and information must be made available in real time, at any location that is required, and securely.
- ICT as an enabler of internationalisation — The other top priorities call for improvements within the IT department and a better alignment of IT and business initiatives. Here CEOs recognise that ICT solutions do not always fit business requirements. As companies grow in complexity and serve wider geographical areas, ICT shifts from a cost centre to an enabler of business enhancements. Connectivity and collaboration are key in order to transform a company into an effective and efficient international business.
As a company grows in size, becomes more complex, covers more geographies and extends its business lines, some new issues arise. IT environments become more complex, security requirements become more stringent, and the regulatory burden increases as more countries are covered. Those companies that grow through M&A also need to integrate separate IT organisations and infrastructures.
International Networking for Professional Services
Professional services companies can help themselves address these challenges by using advanced, flexible and integrated ICT solutions. For example, in August 2007 a major architectural design company decided to deploy a global MPLS-based IP VPN connecting its 10 sites, to facilitate file transfer between offices and clients, support remote access to the network, and prioritise critical traffic. Also, a Belgium-based marketing services company decided early in 2007 to converge its international voice and data communications onto a single IP network, to gain cost efficiencies and improve its services to clients.
Contracts such as these in the professional services sector attest to the cost-effective flexibility that cross-border IP-based network services provide. Furthermore, as networks and applications converge onto a single platform, international law firms, recruitment companies, business consultants, accountancy firms and others are finding that they can simplify the management of their voice, data, remote access, conferencing, storage and application functions by using one access and transport network as opposed to several, often managed by separate providers. In migrating from a legacy network (typically frame relay) to an all-IP environment, they typically see significant cost savings (or greater speed/functionality for the same cost) as well as improved flexibility. For the many business services companies that use the public Internet as their corporate network, with no service management or class of service, the improvements on offer include assured service levels, secure transport, traffic prioritisation and a service and support organisation. In addition, issues such as business continuity, disaster recovery, regulatory compliance and security demand ever more sophisticated networking solutions, and these are now predominantly provided via an IP network infrastructure.
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