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Accenture grew out of Arthur Andersen (accounting), while BearingPoint used to be a part of KPMG. Currently BearingPoint is going down like a rock and Accenture is on the hideout to catch a bit of pray. Wonder if it will bring any good to ACN or BearingPoint.

The current economical situation has a nice side effect; crap consultancy companies go down first. The Washington Post has an article about BearingPoint (which is no surprise that they are filing Chapter 11). BearingPoint has been in trouble since the beginning of this century. And no major improvement in organisation, culture, quality or even image has been made. It can’t be surprise that they are going down hill. But this makes me wonder which other (IT) consultancy will be next ? I am not completely in touch with ACN, CAP, IBM and all the others… someone any ideas ?

As I mentioned two days ago I have been very busy at a client in the financial industry. In August last year the size of the problems became quite clear and I was asked to dive into the ’shit’. At first I wasn’t really looking forward to this assignment, it was more or less doomed to fail (although the scale of the problem was not completely clear yet).

After two relative busy months (60+ hour per week) I thought everything would cool down again and I would roll off. Surprisingly but not unexpected, I was asked to stay on board. And since my employer thought that was a great idea, I stayed on (with no clear assignment or project). At first it was all very unstructured and slightly confusing; why the hell was I asked to stay and what was expected from me ? Since it’s not the first time this happened, it was a sheer surprise to what extend I was given freedom to do what I thought that needed to be done. Did nobody care what I did ? Did nobody want to know what I did ? Did they just want to hide and hope I would sort things out ? After weeks of quite unproductive activity I jumped on board of their most struggling business parts. What I stumbled upon was one big f*cking mess. Without going into detail; the plug was pulled out of a couple money-burning (IT) projects. Some of them had a burn-rate of approx 500k per day without any tangible results in the pipeline, nor a succesful ending.

At this moment in time everything seemed to have cooled down a bit so that’s why I can blog again (and twitter ). I have no idea what to write about… I don’t even remember what I used to write about. Throw me a message (dutchconsultant (at) gmail.com) or leave a comment if you have suggestions of topics.

Flying used to be fun, it used to have something special. But for a couple of years ago it is just so mainstream. With the budgetliners everybody flies on short weekend breaks across the globe. It’s a good thing that it is possible nowadays… but it killed off the romance and excitement of flying completely.

Especially in consulting you tend to fly a lot more than the average person. Before you start a career in consulting this sounds very exciting and great. But it’s not. Flying sucks. It’s a waste of time and energy. The only constructive thing you can do an a flight: sleep. Even reading a book or putting together a powerpoint is better done elsewhere. Some people just can’t handle the stress and (strict) regulations of flying. This is the latest result of that on YouTube. Go crazy!

It’s not that I don’t like new technologies, but so far I dont see the point of Facebook, Myspace and micro blogs like Twitter. But since you don’t know unless you try… here it goes: my twitter!

btw. This does not mean I will start a Facebook or MySpace to show photo’s of my drunken nights out

Hi all, just a quick post from me. The last 6 months I have been incredibly busy and to be completely honest, I didnt feel like writing anything on my blog.

As some of you already guessed; I am working for one of the top5 financial institutes on the globe. And yes, they are hit. Hit hard. So instead of blogging I was busy fighting fire. More constructive and insightful posts will follow in the next couple of days!

A couple of weeks ago CNN Money published their new Fortune Global 500. Ofcourse there are no big surprises in the top 10; but with my strong track record in Finance and Retail it is quite interesting to see Wal-Mart as the biggest of the bunch and ING Group on a impressive 7th position while the rest of the top10 are basicly oil-related energy companies.
At least as interesting are the Top 20 Money Losers and the Top 20 Money Makers. Money makers are obviously in the oil/gas industry… So the top 20 consists of only a couple of outsiders. Ofcourse Microsoft is raking it in, but the big surprise to me was seeing Vodafone in the top 20 of Money Makers. It has only been 5 years ago that Arun Sarin’s head was on the line but apparently he took all the advice on board and it stearing in the right direction, think I’ll send him my congratulations
One of the reasons I find Vodafone’s accomplishments surprising is that fact that competitors are well represented on the loser-bench. At number 2 within the money losers list is Sprint Nextel who is losing 1+ million customers per year…Number one in the losers list is General Motors, although I have no experience in that industry it didn’t surprise me. But as the number 9 in the Top 500 list, it is no surprise they can take a big hit and move on (slowly but surely… but not to slowly). Others billion-losing-companies are (in)directly related to the American car industry or hit by the credit crunch.

Thanks to the Top-Consultant forum I have a nice little movie to start the day with a smile and it can be found (obviously) on YouTube. Enjoy and thanks Tony.

In one of the comments someone requested the link to the consultancy forum I keep mentioning here. For some reason I assumed everyone already knows the Top Consultant forum ? Ah well…

Sorry, sorry, sorry. Since I am working in the financial industry at this moment (large European bank involved in a merger) I am way too busy for my blog. Basicly that sucks! But then again, this blog doesn’t pay my bills…
I bumped into this great little cartoon about the current credit crunch (and how it all could happen). Spot on!