Digital Technologies in Consulting – Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic

The increasing digitalization of the economy and society has triggered drastic changes in companies and confronted them with enormous challenges. The consulting industry has also been deeply affected by this digital transformation. In order to show the influence of digitalization on business consultancies and which digital technologies are currently being used in those firms, we conducted an exploratory study. To this end, we conducted an online survey with 186 consultants about their assessment of digitalization and the use of digital technologies. Further attention was also paid to the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic on the use of digital technologies and digitalization in business consultancies. Our results revealed that many business consultancies had already relied heavily on digitalization and used a variety of digital technologies in all phases of the consulting process. We were able to show that digitalization increased significantly in business consultancies during the COVID-19 pandemic and that the majority of participants understand digitalization as an opportunity for change. Nevertheless, the business consultancies are currently using digital technologies that primarily support communication and collaboration (like audio/video conferencing tools or mobile computing applications). Although consultants are aware of the growing importance of advanced technologies (such as generative AI), business consultancies are currently reluctant to use these technologies and tend to rely on well-established digital technologies.