Goals of the project

Executive summary

The report proposes the assessment of the possibility of implementing the cloud consulting business model in Russia. The assessment was done on the basis of wide literature review (academic publications and business sources), and six in-depth interviews with IT managers of large Moscow companies.

In literature review there is an overview of the IT consulting market in Russia, origins of the consulting as a separate area of business, and an attempt to define the cloud consulting and its place in the taxonomy of various business areas. After thorough review it was found that the cloud consulting is a form of crowdsourcing, which is done through an online platform for a substantial reward and with the ceratin type of problem solvers (Experts). Moreover, literature revealed Russian managers perceptions of innovations, and made it possible to anticipate how managers from certain categories might behave, map out the most suitable group of managers (“innovators”) and target them first. Finally, examples of pioneers in cloud consulting brought solid picture of the business model that might be successfully applied and implemented in Russia.

After reviewing literature relevant to the topic of the research the methodology of the data gathering and analysis follows. Considering the specificity of the studies, we applied a qualitative research method based on the interviews with managers from Russian companies. Description of the methodology, primary data gathering approach used, overview of the interview content, and method of data analysis and limitations was provided.

Report was finalized with the detailed overview of three successful companies operating in areas with closest fit to the cloud consulting. Based on litereature review, interview results, and review of the companies’ models, there is an attempt to suggest our own model, combining the best practices of those companies.

Table of content

Executive summary. 2

Goals of the project 5

Introduction. 5

Part I: Theory. 6

Literature review.. 6

Consulting. 7

History of Consulting. 7

McKinsey. 8

Overview of crowdsourcing. 9

Consulting market in Russia. 11

Market overview and dynamics. 11

Market structure. 12

IT - consulting. 13

Players in IT – consulting market 14

Strategy. 15

Blue Ocean strategy. 15

Importance of the startups. 17

Management in Russia. 19

Examples of successful crowdsourcing companies. 21

Innocentive. 21

NineSigma. 24

Rocketmind Expert Network (Rocketmind) 25

Conclusion. 26

Part II: Methodology and Data Analysis. 27

Methodology. 27

Research approach. 27

Case study research. 28

Qualitative exploratory research. 28

Significance of personal contact 29

Length of time required. 30

Sample. 30

Interview content 30

Limitations. 30

Data Analysis method. 32

Results of Data Analysis. 32

Part III. Roadmap and Conclusions. 34

Roadmap. 34

Benchmarking. 35

Foundation for business model 37

Review of the companies. 38

Innocentive. 38

NineSigma. 46

YouEncore. 49

Summary of the models. 54

Business model suggestion. 55

General description and main idea. 55

Platform.. 55

Profile of experts. 56

Finding experts. 57

Role of ABC.. 57

Reward scheme. 58

Conclusion. 59

Conclusion. 60

References. 60

Part IV: Appendices. 65

Summary of interviews. 65

Interview with Vasilii 65

Interview with Sergey. 65

Interview with IT director 66

Interview with Kirill 67

Interview with German. 68

Special interview with Alexander 69

Goals of the project

This consulting project is done for the IBM company in the form of this report and personal presentation. The central goal of the project is to assess possibilities of using “cloud consulting” model in Russia. Stating more specifically, the breakdown of the central goal is the following:

1. Сonsulting business (theory) - types, genesis etc.;

2. Analysis of the consulting market in Russia;

3. Access possible market for “cloud-consulting” companies;

4. Develop Roadmap for IBM - how to use such technology;

Since the goals are rather general, some of those were specified and adjusted during the project making, based on the literature reviewed, continuous discussions with both Academic and Company supervisors, and taking into account limitations that the team had.

Introduction

Almost 100 years ago businessmen started to realize that trying to resolve all the issues occurring in work by their own was not possible anymore. Since 1930, businesses started to use the help of external experts - consultants. During the decades consulting grew and developed from an outsourcing service into one of the most widespread, highly demanding, and powerful industries in the modern business.

Traditionally consultants are used for large and complex projects, such as advisory and control on the whole process of acquisition and merger of companies. However, today there are multiple minor tasks occurring in companies and the volumes of those are high. Those tasks might not be continuous and may “pop-up” unexpectedly, and require high or unique skills and knowledge. One of the largest difficulties managers face is to quickly find an expert. Hiring an expert for a full-time position is worthless, cost-ineffective, and takes a lot of time. The similar case is with attracting consultants who would do the project fast, but will require high reward for that. IBM found that its current business model, as well as ones of many large consulting firms, is based on a large project approach, which does not support customer demand for small tasks.

Being more specific, issues with fulfilling small specialized tasks for managers are:

· Complexity of planning and budgeting of small, but urgent problems

· Unacceptably long public tender and contracting period for each contract to be signed

· Complexity of expert quick search and employing with the necessary, sometimes rare competencies

· Traditional business model of consultant which is built on the sale and implementation of large projects, does not fit to that demand.

One of the best solutions for management to satisfy the increasing demand for resolving small specific tasks and projects is the crowdsourcing and its newly appeared form “Cloud consulting”. This report is an attempt to define cloud consulting, find its origins, describe it, discover the successful representatives of cloud consulting companies, and try to co implement it in Russia for IBM.

The report consists of 4 parts:

· Part I: Theory – review of the literature available on the topic and study of the existing theoretical frameworks;

· Part II: Methodology and Data analysis – description of the research methods applied, the way data was collected, how the analysis was done, and results of the analysis of data gathered;

· Part III: Roadmap and Conclusions – providing practical roadmap for IBM in implementing cloud consulting business in Russia and discussion of potential and existing obstacles and limitations. This part is finalized with conclusions and recommendations.

· Part IV: Appendices

Part I: Theory

Literature review

This part is a profound one for our research. Reviewing literature available and examples of the companies that succeeded in cloud consulting will allow us to better understand the concepts of cloud consulting, on which stage of development is it now, which industries should we focus on, and which questions should be asked for interviews with CEOs. Literature review is divided on 5 parts:

· Consulting – describes the two appearances of cloud consulting, which are crowdsourcing and open innovation;

· Markets – discussion of the materials available and recommendation of the choice of industries for further research;

· Strategy – description of the concepts of the Blue Ocean strategy and study of the relevance of startups;

· Management in Russia – discussion of Russian managers’ approach to work and perception of the radical innovations in business;

· Examples of companies - The last part of the review is examples of 3 successful companies providing cloud consulting services.

Literature review is finalized with the conclusion, exact definition of the term “Cloud Consulting”, and the list of references.

Consulting

This section of literature review discusses the publications that studied the crowdsourcing managerial implications. Since the term “Cloud consulting” is not present in literature, we equate it to “Crowdsourcing” as the most similar concept described in literature with notion that in Cloud consulting experts do the work, not randomly selected people.

Date: 2015-12-18; view: 673