You have gone through the interview process, you have signed the paperwork, and you are finally here at Agilytic.
Congratulations and welcome.
Agilytic tries to structure a way of doing things that will hopefully make this a great professional experience, but it can take some acclimation. This book was written by people who've been where you are now and want to make your first few months here as easy as possible.
Facts that matter
Agilytic in one sentence
Expect to read, hear, say, and write this one often:
Agilytic helps organizationsreach their goalsthrough the smarter use of data.
We carefully sweated the details of this sentence, and there is something to be said about each part:
- The "organization" encompasses the different types of clients (large, mid-corp, non-profits) and industries we serve.
- By "goals," we can describe the business results that our clients can expect when working with us. Those goals are usually best segmented by client persona.
- Finally, "smarter use of data" is about being creative and pragmatic about using data to reach the desired outcomes.
Agilytic is self-funded
Since the company's founding, we haven't brought in outside financing, nor we plan to in the future. 90% of Agilytic is owned in equal shares by the two Managing Partners.
Since our earliest days, self-funding has been incredibly important in providing the freedom to define our strategy and business practices.
Agilytic is more than a data science company
We started our existence as a traditional data science company. And we are still one, but with a hugely business-driven focus, which is great because we get to meet decision-makers, and we can also adapt to technological changes. We are a data science company. A consulting company. A development company. It is mostly a company full of passionate people who love what we do and the value we create for our customers.
Security is more than just a checkbox
We deal every day with lots of sensitive data for our clients. They trust us to take all necessary measures to ensure their confidentiality and security. Failing to do so will inevitably lead to an error that could lead to irreversible damages to Agilytic.
We like to develop a sense of humor here, but we don't joke about security. Treat all matters regarding security, confidentiality, and privacy with your undivided attention.
Seniority does not mean authority
Hierarchy is great for maintaining predictability and repeatability. It simplifies planning and makes it easier to control a large group of people from the top down, which is why military organizations rely on it so heavily.
But when you are a services company that has spent the last couple of years going out of its way to recruit the most intelligent, innovative, talented people, telling them to sit at a desk and blindly execute obliterates 99 percent of their value. We want people willing to improve Agilytic, which means maintaining an environment where they'll flourish.
That is why Agilytic's organizational structure is flat. It is our shorthand way of saying that we don't believe in multiple layers of management and having people "reporting to" other people. We do have two "Managing Partners," and they will sometimes have the final word, but this shouldn't be an excuse for you to shy away from your potential impact. This company is yours to steer — toward opportunities and away from risks. You have the power to initiate things. You can lead projects.
A flat structure removes many organizational barriers between your work and the customer enjoying that work. Every company will tell you that "the customer is boss," but here, that statement has weight. There is no red tape stopping you from figuring out what our customers want and then giving it to them.
If you are thinking to yourself, "Wow, that sounds like a lot of responsibility," you are right. And that is why hiring is the most critical thing you will ever do at Agilytic . Any time you interview a potential hire, you need to ask yourself not only if they are talented or collaborative but also if they can run this company because, one day, they will be.
Assume positive intent
Working with people from different cultural backgrounds sometimes leads to misunderstandings. For example, we tend to prefer short, action-driven communications. But for those of us from Latin cultures, such short messages may feel unsympathetic at first.
Parents, teachers partly raised us to be careful who we trust, to be suspicious, to think that if something seems too good to be true, it probably is. And if someone disagrees with us or calls out an area where we might need improvement, we may become defensive because we feel threatened or criticized both on a professional and personal level.
Assuming positive intent means consciously trusting our co-workers to operate to the best of their ability and act with the company's best interest and their colleagues in mind, without a hidden agenda. Trust us. Everybody here has better things to do than play office politics.
Market dynamics
"What the hell did I get myself into?"
Business consulting is evolving
Management consulting is a €200 billion industry. It is big, profitable, and about to be disrupted. Business consultants are a staple of professional life. Over 700.000 firms worldwide provide services in all aspects of business: from defining the strategic direction to merely serving as an additional pair of hands for outsourced work.
But underneath myriad offerings, methodologies, tools, and firms lie some vulnerabilities that challenge the consulting business model itself — disruptions that other industries like photography, publishing, and many others have experienced.
An industry becomes susceptible to disruption when it becomes entrenched in its longstanding ways. Disruptive innovations provide more straightforward or more elegant solutions to existing problems, enabled by new technology, often at a lower cost. Think Amazon versus bookstores or digital cameras versus film.
Management consulting is not immune to the dynamics of disruption. Arguably, the industry is in the mature stage of its life cycle. And when the basis of competition becomes efficiency versus innovation and new solutions, disruption lies on the horizon.
Five flaws of the consulting industry
Here are five inherent qualities of the management consulting industry that make it susceptible to technology-driven disruption:
- Labor intensive. Most consulting services rely on humans as the fundamental source of research, analysis, recommendations, process definition, process management, and facilitation.
- Billable time-based business model. Billable days are the driver behind the fee structure underlying most consulting services. It encourages lengthy, overstaffed engagements to maximize revenue.
- High margins (if all goes well). The cost of "goods" in consulting refers not to products but people. The billable rates exceed the consultants' employment costs. The consulting firm must reach a given billable time ratio to generate margins that it can later reinvest in growing the practice.
- Time-bound value. With the increasing pace of change, as soon as we finish a project delivery, its currency and relevance rapidly diminish as new trends, issues, and unforeseen disrupters arise.
- Knowledge commoditization. The models, templates, and tools of the consulting trade have historically been kept "secret" by consultants as intellectual capital. The "democratization" of just about everything, including management information and knowledge, will continue so that anyone can access and apply "best practices" on their own.
Paradoxically, even with these fundamental flaws — all of which are contrary to clients' best interests — the industry continues to grow. Last year, for example, the management consulting industry saw a 4.1 percent growth rate.
So why be concerned?
Intersecting trends drive disruption.
Rapidly emerging trends have created a new breed of competitors — even if the industry doesn't yet view these upstarts as competition. Firms like Domo, Looker, Qlik, Radius, and CBInsights tap into the converging trends shaping the future of business and the world. By creating solutions at the intersection of big data, data analytics, the cloud, cognitive computing, visualization, and cross-platform anytime access, these firms provide a glimpse into the type of automated, scalable data gathering, insights, and decision-making made possible by next-generation technology.
The first to feel the detrimental effects of disruption will likely be the incumbent research and advisory firms such as Gartner, Forrester, and IDC. With models that rely on armies of analysts, PDF reports that become outdated the moment they are published, and significant annual subscription fees, these firms embody the most significant vulnerabilities of the larger consulting industry. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Just about any consultant or firm that conducts primary or secondary research will see the value of these offerings — and clients' willingness to pay for them — diminish significantly.
While many consultants and consulting firms have established practices advising clients on strategies to leverage disruptive trends and technologies, few apply this to themselves. Investing in technological innovations and next-generation business models is a fundamentally paradoxical concept in an industry driven by billable hours, billable days, and closely held best practices in the form of "knowledge capital."
Eat your dog food.
We need to think about "knowledge assets" as a strategy to scale our business. We start capturing and codifying intellectual capital as processes, methodologies, tools, and templates. This book is part of this essential effort.
Many clients hire us to tap into strategic thinking — seeing the big picture, identifying scenarios, choosing options, and creating game plans. Yet, a gaping void exists when addressing strategic questions to ourselves.
We're not going to revolutionize overnight, but here is a set of questions that can help jump-start new business models in the next decade:
- Transformative problems. What emerging client challenges exist that, if addressed, would transform their business by 10x or even 100x?
- Radical intelligence. How do we leverage data, AI, collaboration tools, etc., to create a step-change in the level of knowledge and insight we deliver?
- Scalable relevance. How do we scale our tools and methods while ensuring applicability to the broadest possible audience?
- Knowledge democratization. How do we make models/tools/resources ubiquitously available while building a sustainable business model?
- Collaborative ecosystems. What networks can we build or join that exponentially elevate the value we create and deliver?
In the field of business strategy, the "tyranny of success" is a well-known dynamic: what led to today's success will ultimately lead to tomorrow's failure. Individual consultants and consulting firms that recognize the limitations of their existing business model while exploring opportunities that tap into emerging technologies and new delivery models will have the best chance of thriving in the future.
Our clients
Organization sizes
We help "organizations," which can mean many things. In terms of company size, we have three broad categories:
- Large companies usually have a project scope in mind and are already aware of data science's potential in their business, often relying on analytics professionals.
- "Mid-corps" are profitable businesses from 10 to 500 employees. They don't use data to its full potential; data is still in silos. In mid-corps, we often have to "evangelize" about our approach before considering submitting an offer. Many of these organizations are still family-owned, implying that the decision-making power is centralized in very few managers/owners.
- A "greater good" drives non-profit organizations. Their challenge is usually a commercial or an optimization one.
People
In each organization, we (thankfully) deal with human beings. Usually, the decision-makers are from the business side (marketing, sales, finance), not the IT. However, it is essential to understand the role of everyone. It is a good idea to empathize with every person's roles and responsibilities (from the director to the production line worker), as they will shape the way they interact with us.
You will find more information about how we use personas in this book's marketing section and Confluence.
Our competition
Data Science is a "trendy" topic. You were probably too young to care, but it is reminiscent of the web industry in the early 2000s, with many small players starting up in an uncharted field.Again, let's broadly segment the competitive landscape of "data-driven consultancy" and explain how we plan to stand out.
Small structures
Between 2 and 20 employees, some of them are very ambitious. Others are happy staying the way they are (nothing wrong either way). They are usually very tech-driven (a result of their founders being tech experts).
Examples: Python Predictions
→ We differentiate by focusing on the business result, not on the technology.
Mid-sized specialists
From 20 to 100 people, they have been around for a while and enjoy a good reputation. We respect them, especially since we'd like to be successful enough to join their "league"… Driven by clients' requirements and growth targets, they sometimes have to hire less talented profiles.
Examples: Keyrus, Business & Decision
→ We differentiate by delivering projects that promise comparable — if not better results in a smaller package thanks to our team members' quality and our projects' agility. Usually, larger organizations have specialized profiles (e.g., a SAS expert) staffed over longer periods (6 months or more). In contrast, we tend to emphasize shorter-term impact with more flexible profiles.
Big firms (and their subsidiaries)
Big companies love other big companies. To paraphrase the adage, nobody ever got fired for hiring McKinsey. They develop dedicated analytics practices whose projects often match the contents of ours.
However, two things hold them back. First, it is challenging to push for radical changes if your business model depends on staffing ten other consultants year-round. You might have a conflict of interest between the staffed consultants and the efficiency to gain from analytics. Second, for big companies, big deals make the most economic sense. And third, those are the deals they are used to chase. So, projects sized under a given threshold won't even register on their radar.
Examples: McKinsey, Deloitte, Cap Gemini, Accenture, but also subsidiaries from larger groups like HighMind (Quanteus/House of Marketing), BCG Gamma or Quantum Black (McKinsey)
→ We differentiate by selling similar results in smaller phases, focusing on knowledge transfer.
On "coopetition" and "frenemies."
There might be times when interests align. When a competitor is urgently looking for our expertise or resources, don't freak out. It happens all the time in business. If Apple is OK to put Samsung screens in its iPhones, we should be OK, granted the appropriate collaboration is in place.
We have a carefully opportunistic (in the good sense of the word) view of business partnerships: we don't actively seek them, but if the right opportunity presents itself, sure, let's work together for a while and see what happens.
