Ebrahim
Laher - IT Consulting Businesses have to Change Their Models:-
The age of digitalization has brought
about broad and many changes across all industries and societies as a whole.
Quite interestingly, one of the industries that have been at the forefront of
the digital age is one that still has not fully grasped the extent and
implications of the Digital Age.EbrahimLaher is a well
known IT consultant, strategic
advisor, and digital entrepreneur with years of expertise at EOH as CEO.
According to EbrahimLaher, Business
Consulting or IT consulting has now for
many years played the role of trusted advisor and architect to the largest (and
all others) corporations globally , helping them map out a vision for growth
and profitability. This has traditionally been achieved through strategy formulation, business process design,
and change management and system implementations (to name some of
the key activities).
The
global market for IT consulting is
estimated at around $ 50 billion annually. This is a significant proportion
of the Economy and part
of the expenditure of corporations globally. Even more significantly , IT
consulting makes up about 20% of all consulting work.
Being
well experienced in both IT consulting and Strategic advisory ,Ebrahim Laher has
formulated many strategies to strengthen many businesses with digital evolution
in the making. EbrahimLaher
talks about the C-suite executives of ICT Consulting businesses in
the Middle East and Africa (where most of EbrahimLaher’s work is
done).
Of
note, he was surprised by how many of them still hold on to the traditional models of consulting and
revenue lines such as time and material sales of consultants, overinflated
system implementation projects and strategic consulting to Government and
larger Private Corporations.
He has
direct thoughts on the Cloud, the Digital Economy, Mobile
Computing, and most importantly digitally-empowered business people and their
customers. EbrahimLaher iterates
that this traditional business model employed by IT consulting businesses
is just not sustainable into the future.
In fact ,
the very existence of these businesses is in
question. Unless there is significant re-work of what the digital economy demands
from IT consulting firms.
He is strongly believes that
firms such as Accenture have
for many years been reinventing what constitutes their business and their lines
of revenue. Some of these make no sense in the traditional consulting fields.
However
,you take a closer look , and then you understand the transformation that
is taking place and also the extent of what needs to be done.
EbrahimLaher’s advice
on traditional models of business being
followed or used was to bring about a dramatic shift or change in the way we
look at it by incorporating and embedding the digital world within
the existing businesses and then to visualize and see the outcomes such asgain
of profits or revenue in leaps and bounds.
The smart
ones are already deep on their journeys, and the rest of us need to catch up
soon, or run the risk of being left behind.
EbrahimLaher with
rich expertise in IT consulting,
regularly writes or pens down on his thoughts on this topic.