I am a consultant of an IT consulting company. IT= information technology. What's the difference between information technology consulting and management consulting?
The object of service is the same: enterprises or institutions, and there are more corporate customers at present.
What about the content of the service? Many people think the two are different. It is believed that management consulting is to provide management consulting services to customers, including development strategy, management process, product positioning, market channels, listing counseling, tax planning and so on. IT is considered that IT consulting only provides customers with information construction planning, information technology knowledge training, application system selection and implementation, information construction project supervision, etc.
Is the above view correct? Judging from conventional thinking, ordinary people's thinking seems to be correct! However, from the perspective of thinking and information thinking in the information age, the view on IT consulting is one-sided or narrow.
In fact, developed countries such as the United States have entered the information society, while China is still in the primary stage of industrialization. "Realizing industrialization is still an arduous historical task in China's modernization process", and the state advocates "promoting industrialization with informationization and promoting informationization with industrialization". I want to say, just as we discussed the way of thinking under planned economy and market economy before, we should also realize that we should discuss the way of thinking under industrialized society and information society.
Saving in daily life is not only a virtue, but also involves the economy. Some people must tell their children to turn off the TV and order their husbands to turn off the computer in order to save 0/5 minutes of family dinner at home. Can this save electricity? It is said that it is wasted instead of saving electricity. It is said that the instantaneous power consumption is greater than the average power consumption of 15. In the United States, there are many appliances in the home, the windows are generally closed, and the air-conditioning water heater is on 24 hours. How do they solve the problem of saving electricity and money? There is such a company's door-to-door service, which specializes in household electricity saving. After investigating and testing at home, they put forward a solution and suggested adding some special equipment. The original monthly electricity bill in 500 yuan has become more than 100 yuan per month.
The above example shows the behavior of two ways of thinking. Let's call similar companies in the United States energy-saving consulting companies. According to our idea, how does the company operate and earn the maximum profit? How to develop sustainably?
Please think about seeing friends here! Just close your eyes and open your eyes. Very important!
Readers are advised to close their eyes and think about it. What should I do if I don't want my efforts to be in vain? This is to write an article to be published in the newspaper, not to stop and wait for the interaction under the stage. I really want to suggest editing serials, which will be broken down later. In fact, our sages have already taught us this idea. Luo Guanzhong and Shi Naian often stop at critical moments to give you a break. What seems to be a pause is actually to stimulate you to continue reading.
Don't want to waste my efforts! If only I were in an online forum or chat room, I'll stop and wait for interaction now, and wait for friends who see the above words to answer. In fact, I am in the branch network now, and I will really stop for a day or two to give my friends time to think. In fact, this is also a question of thinking. How can we maximize the role of this article? How to attract more friends to read my column Thinking in the Information Age? Use a little skill for a while. In primary school, I was always the first to throw a coin, because I had two coins bought from the magic shop-both sides were the same. Remind my friends, just like what I now call "technical processing", to understand the above problems, we need to start from the commercial environment of the current information society in the United States. ...
How does the company operate and earn the maximum profit? How to develop sustainably? After on-site inspection and testing, the energy-saving consulting company proposed a solution:
Scheme A: the scheme of adding power-saving control equipment, focusing on controlling time, which automatically controls the air conditioner to cut off power when people leave home; Heat the water heater XX minutes before people go home. ...
Scheme B: Change all electric heating modes and switch to gas heating and air conditioning. ...
It is important that the energy-saving consulting company does not provide technical services about equipment and its replacement and installation, but only provides solutions. If the equipment needs to be adjusted, the energy-saving consulting company can let the relevant companies provide on-site service. So what is the service benefit and future of the energy-saving consulting company? The service staff of the company gives the customer a registration form, and if the customer is willing to pay for this service, he "agrees" to pay 100 USD in one lump sum on the relevant questionnaire of the registration form; If the customer is willing to join the membership service of energy-saving consulting company, he "agrees" to pay the annual membership fee of $65,438+000 on the relevant questionnaire in the registration form, and promises to provide free energy-saving consulting service during the membership period.
This example is very interesting and really tests the thinking problem. Back to the concept of industrialized society, people often say "pricing by cost" or "pricing by marginal cost". Therefore, we take selling products as our operating principle, and make a lot of money by selling a product. We want to kill our customers with a hammer, and we don't want long-term sustainable development at all.
The cost of Americans is very high. If 1 person goes to a customer's home for investigation and testing, and the weekly salary is $5,000, then the half-day fee for one person is $250, and the fee of 100 is not worth the loss. Isn't the service fee of $65,438+000 a year a loss? According to American government statistics, in recent years, 65,438+07% people in the United States have moved at least once a year. Every time you move, you have to hire an energy consulting service company, and you have to pay a membership fee of $ 100 every year, which is also the fee for moving 10 times. This is an energy-saving consulting company that designs business models according to customers' needs! This business model never takes the profit of a service as the starting point, but focuses on building a member community of energy-saving consulting services in the United States, maximizing customers through CRM of information technology and B2C of e-commerce, and becoming the first in the industry. This is the idea of information society, from selling products to selling services, from quantity to quality (this involves the restriction of social environment on thinking, which will be discussed in another article, "Why did landlords bury money underground in feudal society?" ), thus solving the problem of sustainable development.
Let's go back. What's the difference between management consulting and IT consulting? The answer is:
Management consulting is the product of industrialized society, which can solve the problem of manual management; IT consultation is the necessity of the information society, and the problems it solves are methodology and software tools from manual management to information management. In other words, management consulting is to answer the control questions of organizations and people, while IT consulting can answer the control questions of computer (application system) and man-machine (computer) interaction in organizations. We can think about how traditional management consulting can help American energy-saving consulting companies.
Therefore, on the road from industrialization to informationization, in order to achieve leap-forward development, we must first solve the problem of thinking. Marx said that to solve the problem, we must first find the problem. To be exact, to solve the problem of the proletariat, we must first find the problem of the bourgeoisie. I also want to ask: can we solve the problem of informatization with the thinking of industrialized society?
Whether IT is management consulting or IT consulting, customers are interested in the so-called strategic planning, but because of different perspectives, the focus of "strategy" is different.
We have always regarded the landlords in feudal society as a laughing stock, but seldom thought about why.
Why? Because the landlord doesn't know that money can make money, he only knows how to grow grain and exchange grain for silver. His eyes are on several acres and hundreds of acres of land, so he either buys land with silver or buries it underground. Similarly, it is difficult for us to convince some business leaders to truly realize that information is a resource and information can make money; Informatization construction is the accelerator of enterprise development. ...
1At the end of 1999, a friend was promoted to assistant manager of headquarters in an insurance company (the insurance company of team a A), and the former IT consultant in Southbound provided him with a bold planning case. The core of the case is to use the information resources of bank customers, that is, the database of bank card users and depositors, to analyze and find the target insurance object. Banks are responsible for the distribution of related insurance service leaflets and the disbursement of insurance funds, which not only ensures the interests of banks, but also expands the intermediary business of banks to improve their participation. What insurance companies should do is to develop bank customers and build relevant information systems. This motion was partially adopted, but unfortunately, the proposal of supporting information system construction put forward by IT consulting has not been implemented.
At the beginning of 2002, Taiping Life Insurance Company "opened an old shop" and its Shanghai branch took the lead in "grabbing the beach" in the Shanghai banking market. Its secret weapon is the same as the above-mentioned IT consulting ideas, but it is superior. The first move is to take a stake in Industrial and Commercial Bank of China's largest commercial bank, and the intention is self-evident; The second measure is to introduce foreign advanced management technology to create IT advantages. Therefore, "dancing the banner makes waves everywhere, fighting the sword and asking who the heroes in the world are." In just one year, the annual premium income of Taiping Insurance (four branches in Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou and Chengdu) is nearly1700 million yuan. 65.438+07 billion yuan is not too big, who dares to ask "who is the hero"? However, the investigators in the insurance industry are dumbfounded: this is the cost that the premium income of life insurance projects means that individuals pay. If one person pays a high premium of 3,000 yuan per year to develop three insured persons, it is calculated as:1700000000/3000/3 =188888 (person); That is to say, 2 million policyholders have been developed in one year.
The bosses of conventional insurance companies can't sit still, more puzzled:
How many insurance salesmen does it take to develop 2 million new policyholders a year? At least 20 thousand!
How many people does it take to handle so many orders? At least 50 people!
……
In 2002, Taiping Life had no more than 200 employees.
In 2003, with the approval of the China Insurance Regulatory Commission, Taiping Life Insurance set up the second batch of branches in 20 large and medium-sized cities in China, including Dalian, Nanjing, Hangzhou, Zhengzhou, Shijiazhuang, Jinan, Shenyang, Shenzhen, Ningbo, Qingdao, Foshan, Dongguan, Zhongshan, Zhuhai, Huizhou, Deyang, Mianyang, Leshan, Neijiang and Ya 'an, and will open in the year, entering the second stage of the company's strategic development.
Under such a big development strategy, how many people does the order processing center in Shanghai need? There are 20 people in the order processing center, using advanced network technology, database technology and visualization technology. , to automatically check and process structured order information, and order information that exceeds the "warning line" will be submitted for manual intervention ... As for settlement and premium transfer, that is the bank's business. Banks are willing to expand intermediary business, while insurance companies save people and money. Mr. Xie Yiqun, Chairman of Taiping Life Insurance, said: Taiping Life Insurance has three major competitive advantages. Firstly, the advantages of mechanism: China Insurance Holdings, China Insurance International and Fortis International are the main shareholders, and the multi-shareholder background of state-owned enterprises, listed companies and foreign-funded companies is conducive to the company's standardized operation and the introduction of foreign advanced management technology; Secondly, the talent advantage: at present, the company has gathered a group of middle and senior managers who are familiar with the life insurance market in China and have rich experience in the operation of insurance companies, and their professionalism and professionalism are highly praised in the industry; Third, the advantages of operation management and IT: centralized underwriting and unified billing process and system are conducive to controlling underwriting risks, improving operational efficiency and building the core competitiveness of backup service management.
Think about the above two situations!
The senior management of Taiping Insurance has rich overseas market experience, and moved the international advanced business model to China. The IT advantage has made the latecomers catch up. The excellent idea is firstly that cognitive information is a cash cow, and secondly, building a ladder of information technology. If the First Insurance Company and other conformist insurance companies still don't change their traditional thinking, still follow crowd tactics to develop the market, and don't adopt information technology to break through management, the crisis is just around the corner.
In addition to management consulting and IT consulting, some internationally renowned "Big Five" have also seen scandals in recent years; Some have been reorganized. In addition to traditional management consulting services, companies have increased IT consulting business and highlighted the promotion of IT strategic consulting. Why? There is a changing trend behind the phenomenon, that is, with the deepening of society from industrialization to informatization, and with the drastic change of consulting demand from manual thinking to information technology, the helplessness of traditional management consulting is obvious, and IT consulting will surely emerge suddenly. The it consulting industry is just like we are concerned about the development of Taiping Life Insurance. Let's wait and see.
Finally, I want to talk about thinking in the information age. If we still stick to the conventional management consulting thinking, regard information technology as a simple management tool, and resist "information construction is the accelerator of enterprise development", it will be difficult to see the world from the top of the mountain.
An excellent IT consultant can tell corporate customers how to break through the traditional industrial model and make money with information, which is very important.