Expertise pays the bills
The value proposition of professional services firms is anchored on de-risking ambiguity and framing the future. So it’s is ironic that the industry is confronting unprecedented disruption and an opaque outlook.
Trends around talent retention, technology disruption, evolving ESG expectations and blurring competitive lines have origins that pre-date COVID and are here to stay. Consolidation, new entrants, regulatory changes, and emergent technologies are redefining the landscape and the market’s winners and losers.
However, two resilient truisms remain: size matters and expertise pays the bills.
This has led to the emergence of mega-players that play across multiple segments of professional services. These market-leading firms set the standard for inorganic trends, investments in new tech tools, delivery models, and employee value propositions.
But scale is only part of the story. Because expertise still pays the bills, there is a long list of market participants that have selectively established defensible niches that can support above-market returns.
So, bigger is better, but being the best is better still.
The industry continues to offer an abundance of opportunity. But the difference between recognizing your potential and realizing your potential can be difficult to decipher. With so many opportunities, it’s critical to prioritize which to pursue and which to discount.
How Pointe can help
Pointe has been helping professional services firms develop winning strategies for nearly 20-years. Our approach is unapologetically evidence-based and grounded in our deep industry expertise. This ensures we have an unmatched view on the market’s direction and can help to clarify the path forward and enable you to move forward with conviction.
Pointe’s solutions include:
We support professional services firms in several key areas:
-
Mergers & Acquisition: We help validate and empower intended inorganic strategy by identifying acquisition candidates, diligencing specific targets, and executing on consolidation mandates.
-
Growth Strategy: We create value by identifying available white space and assessing attractiveness and feasibility of associated opportunities. These range from immediate adjacencies to more transformative plays (e.g., globalization platforms).
-
Market Analysis: We bring clarity to strategic processes by mapping market landscapes, sizing addressable segments, tracking critical trends, benchmarking competitor capabilities, and predicting industry evolutions.
-
Customer Insights: We provide deep learnings around customers, including customer characteristics, sentiment, and demand by developing archetypes, to enable our clients to craft product, marketing, and pursuit strategies tailored to customer preferences.
-
Talent: We support professional service firms in their development of winning employee value propositions and the identification and recruitment of top-tier resources.
Success Stories
-
A global professional services firm required an understanding of the size and growth outlook of the global sustainability services market across Assurance, Tax, and Advisory services; focused on direct or discrete sustainability services. Pointe developed a market analysis and model for the sustainability services business, as well as an assessment of the competitive landscape and buyer needs and key purchase criteria going forward. The client was able to prioritize key investment/growth areas, including embedding sustainability/ESG in other existing services, thus tapping into a much larger opportunity.
-
A professional services firm was expanding its position to the US West coast via a series of acquisitions. Pointe provided support in identifying and prioritizing potential candidates. After which, Pointe supported in the outreach and initial diligence of each prospective target.
