Objective
A US based management consulting firm was interested in building a billing rate benchmark of consulting industry by regions and service lines. The client was competing with a wide mix of competitors across various services lines and geographies. With little to no visibility on peer pricing, the client was struggling with a declining proposal conversion rate. The aim of the research was to help them build an internal benchmarking model, that would guide their future pricing strategy. The client’s core competitor set comprised of 16 different players across different service lines and regions.
Methodology
We leveraged a combination of primary research and secondary research to address the client’s research needs.
Phase 1 was focused on building an understanding of the client’s service portfolio and identifying key competitors across each service line and geography through internal stakeholder interviews.
Considering the nature of the project, an exhaustive list of former employees was identified to be interviewed. The contact list was carefully generated to ensure they were former employees who recently worked at the target organizations.
In-depth interviews were conducted with the identified prospects and the discussions were based on a combination of quantitative and qualitative elements.
A selection of customers were interviewed to triangulate and cross-check the data collected in interviews with former employees.
Outcome
The research results helped the client to benchmark its consulting rates with its peers, identify the best practices used by industry peers and where there were gaps in the client’s processes. Based on the research findings the client was able to improve its operational performance significantly over a 6 months period using a better pricing model.
