Evaluating the strategic impact of pivoting offering from custom solutions to products for an IT consultancy
Moilanen, Eero (2025)
2025
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Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2025052315246
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2025052315246
Tiivistelmä
IT consultancies have experienced challenging market environments in the past years. Due to economic challenges and technological development. The demand for traditional IT consultants has decreased and customers have become more aware of alternative approaches to solving IT problems. Consultancies – which grow as the result a steady and growing number of billable hours – are dependent on increasing the number of employees, the number of customers, the hourly rates and quantity of hours billed.
IT consultancies are known to create customer value through tailored IT-consultancy projects or competence-based staff augmentation. The thesis objective is to define the criteria for an IT consultancy product concept and evaluate the strategic fit of pivoting customer offering to prod-uct concepts from traditional consulting.
Theory framework introduces the dilemma of time and material consulting and how the concept of productization is used in various industries to transform services into product-like-concepts. The literature review additionally covers frameworks for the creation of new offering, its relation to company strategy and briefly presents the concept of product management.
Research methods focus on thematic interviews. The sample represents business professionals in the consulting industry. Supporting research was done by benchmarking companies in similar situation and reviewing previously documented material.
Findings of the research indicate opportunities to pivot towards a product business approach but also highlight the potential risks if required changes are not made in the strategy.
Conclusions offer clear changes to begin the transformation to a product-oriented business itera-tively. Findings from the thesis research indicate the inability to effectively operate both as a consultancy and product business simultaneously. Therefore, it is recommended that the two businesses are separated into their own organizations to enable clearer focus, leadership, suita-ble goals and relevant metrics.
IT consultancies are known to create customer value through tailored IT-consultancy projects or competence-based staff augmentation. The thesis objective is to define the criteria for an IT consultancy product concept and evaluate the strategic fit of pivoting customer offering to prod-uct concepts from traditional consulting.
Theory framework introduces the dilemma of time and material consulting and how the concept of productization is used in various industries to transform services into product-like-concepts. The literature review additionally covers frameworks for the creation of new offering, its relation to company strategy and briefly presents the concept of product management.
Research methods focus on thematic interviews. The sample represents business professionals in the consulting industry. Supporting research was done by benchmarking companies in similar situation and reviewing previously documented material.
Findings of the research indicate opportunities to pivot towards a product business approach but also highlight the potential risks if required changes are not made in the strategy.
Conclusions offer clear changes to begin the transformation to a product-oriented business itera-tively. Findings from the thesis research indicate the inability to effectively operate both as a consultancy and product business simultaneously. Therefore, it is recommended that the two businesses are separated into their own organizations to enable clearer focus, leadership, suita-ble goals and relevant metrics.