Digital may be the defining force of a consulting generation… and double-digit demand has firms scrambling to define, structure, expand, deploy and differentiate their digital-consulting offerings. 

What, exactly, is digital consulting?

This pressing question generates an evolving set of answers. Digital consulting is blurring delivery channels, expanding across client functions, driving acquisitions of digital and design agencies, injecting more agility into consulting playbooks, and notching double-digit growth rates. Annual digital consulting service revenues are projected to increase more than 12 percent this year, according to ALM Intelligence; that’s more than twice the 4.7 percent projected annual growth rate for all overall, global consulting services.

This demand has firms scrambling to define, structure, expand, deploy and differentiate their digital-consulting offerings. Some firms are doing so via formal practices with P&Ls and nifty new names. Others are intentionally forgoing that type of structure in favor of digital networks and “ecosystems.” Despite the variety of digital-consulting definitions and delivery mechanisms streaming into the market, digital consulting leaders agree on the offering’s potential.

“We think of digital as the defining force of our consulting generation,” says EY Americas Advisory Digital Leader Woody Driggs, who has three decades of consulting experience under his belt. Sanjay Srivastava, Senior Vice President and Chief Digital Officer at Genpact, drops the phrase “world-changing” when describing his firm’s approach to digital consulting. “We don’t say this lightly,” Srivastava continues. “We think that the combination of Lean principles, design thinking, and process-centric digital technology, coupled with deep business domain expertise, gets to results faster.”

C-level buyers across all industries are hungry for these types of results, which are being delivered through technology- and design-related engagements whose unique qualities are cementing digital’s status as a prominent consulting practice.