Best of LinkedIn: Strategy & Consulting CW 28/ 29

00:00:00: Provided by Thomas Allgaier and Frenis.

00:00:02: Based on the most relevant LinkedIn posts about strategy in consulting, in calendar weeks twenty-eight and twenty nine.

00:00:08: Frens is a B to B market research company support consultancies with marketing competition perspective for example in commercial due diligence's CDD.

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00:00:33: You can find more info in the description.

00:00:34: And today's deep dive is really tailored specifically for you, The strategy M&A and investments.

00:00:39: professional.

00:00:40: we are...you know We're bypassing all the fluff to unpack the most critical shifts happening across LinkedIn right now everything from the repricing of advisory services To this sudden convergence of AI governance geopolitical trade

00:00:53: risks.

00:00:53: Yeah, and let's jump right into the deepest end of the pool.

00:00:55: first because the traditional business model of selling advice is basically breaking in real time.

00:01:01: Oh completely!

00:01:02: I mean Hugo Reimiger has posted this incredible insight that traditional consulting basically has about eighteen months left.

00:01:08: Wait

00:01:09: just eighteen months?

00:01:10: Eighteen

00:01:10: months before Agenic AI completely disrupts how these services are priced.

00:01:15: yeah Because the old days of diagnosing a problem dropping off a polished slide deck and then just, you know, offloading the execution risk back to the client.

00:01:22: that's over.

00:01:23: Right?

00:01:23: And you can actually see the panic in the numbers.

00:01:25: like Accenture shares hit their lowest since twenty seventeen recently and That's emitted drop-in bookings to nineteen point three billion dollars and roughly twenty two thousand roll cuts.

00:01:35: Wow yeah.

00:01:36: and McKenzie Just made its largest cut since two thousand eight plus.

00:01:39: if you look at graduate hiring across The Big Four it's plummeting.

00:01:43: I mean KPMG is down twenty nine percent, Deloitte eighteen percent EY eleven percent.

00:01:48: and on the flip side of all those cuts you have open AI launching this new deportment company.

00:01:53: right they're actually embedding their own engineers directly inside client organizations which

00:01:57: is wild.

00:01:58: it really reminds me that shift from selling paper maps to selling GPS navigation.

00:02:03: well

00:02:03: thats a great analogy.

00:02:05: Clients don't want a static map anymore.

00:02:07: They Don't Want the strategy of deck.

00:02:09: they want The live navigation system that actually you know drives, the car?

00:02:13: They want the deployment in the actual outcomes

00:02:15: exactly and hearty parora made an observation about this That I think is super relevant.

00:02:20: he noted that software companies And consulting firms are essentially converging into This Single new category.

00:02:26: He calls them organizational intelligence companies Organizational

00:02:30: Intelligence, okay?

00:02:31: I like that

00:02:32: yeah because the competitive advantage isn't just having the best AI model anymore.

00:02:36: It's the organizational knowledge The workflow redesign and the human adoption wrapped around it well

00:02:42: And its not all doom-and-gloom for the advisory space either.

00:02:45: Constantin M. Gall gave this update that EY Parthenon Just marked a year of massive growth

00:02:50: really Despite the broader industry cuts.

00:02:53: Yeah, exactly.

00:02:54: They added over sixty new partners and seven hundred people across Europe West.

00:02:58: But they did it by focusing strictly on end-to-end AI powered transformation.

00:03:02: So not just static advice

00:03:04: which means The mandate for the individual professional is changing too.

00:03:08: Mark Byershoder pointed out that your future career value isn't about you know working late to know more than the client,

00:03:16: right?

00:03:16: The billable hours grind

00:03:18: exactly.

00:03:19: It's about building your own personal AI ecosystem like an asset of your own judgment that gets smarter even while you sleep which pulls You away from just selling Your time.

00:03:29: but if the future of strategy is executing That AI deployment we have To look under the hood at the enterprise infrastructure because the hardest part isn't actually the AI models themselves.

00:03:39: No, not at all.

00:03:40: Tanmay Hoshing made this core argument that The Enterprise-AI war won't be won by whoever has a smartest model.

00:03:46: Models are basically commoditizing.

00:03:48: Yeah

00:03:48: everybody has access to them now

00:03:49: Right!

00:03:50: The real advantage is owning your trusted data Your business context and workflows.

00:03:54: And John Stenby had great defensive SAP.

00:03:57: That illustrates this perfectly.

00:03:58: I mean SAP's stock hit a fifty two week low.

00:04:01: They lost Cognite to Schneider Electric for three point one billion dollars.

00:04:06: So people are counting them out?

00:04:07: Sure,

00:04:07: the optics weren't great

00:04:09: but their moat is incredibly deep.

00:04:11: because The hard part of AI isn't building a chatbot.

00:04:14: it's possessing the decades of knowledge about how a rebate accrues or How a month and close actually works across forty different entities in Three currencies.

00:04:24: right no startup can just buy that institutional knowledge exactly.

00:04:28: And even if you have that knowledge Rodney Coutinho pointed out something fascinating from the insurance sector.

00:04:36: He said, eighty percent of data lake initiatives fail because companies just sit around waiting for perfect data.

00:04:42: Oh!

00:04:42: The endless data cleaning project?

00:04:44: Yes

00:04:45: instead he says they should start with structured ontologies basically telling the AI exactly what risk categories and features to look for in say a forty page submission.

00:04:55: so clean data becomes the output of the AIs work not the prerequisite.

00:04:59: That's a massive mindset shift, but having a great AI model without aligned enterprise definitions while I mean it's like having a bullet train with mismatched

00:05:06: track.

00:05:07: Yeah this is going to derail faster Right.

00:05:09: Rune Lake Keltzen called the semantic layer problem.

00:05:13: So think about for the sales team revenue means booked orders But for finance It means recognized revenue post discounts.

00:05:21: And AI doesn't fix that disagreement

00:05:24: No!

00:05:24: It just exposes those conflicting definitions instantly.

00:05:27: Like, the second an executive asks a chat-bottle question.

00:05:31: The AI just picks one definition and runs with

00:05:33: it.".

00:05:33: That's terrifying for governance which by the way if you want to make sure you catch all our future additions keeping you ahead of these exact trends take a second to subscribe on whatever app your listening right now.

00:05:42: Definitely!

00:05:43: And speaking about that governance response Kevin Zang noted that Delight.

00:05:46: Just Validated Agent Governance is standalone product category.

00:05:50: Oh wow so... they launched a unified framework on Omnia.

00:05:54: Because right now, something like seventy-nine percent of enterprises lack mature AI governance.

00:05:58: it's huge gap in the market

00:06:01: and an expensive one.

00:06:02: Diana Kearn's Matalatos brought up this financial warning about these workflows.

00:06:07: As agentic AI rapidly expands, it is constantly pinging systems for data so companies might suddenly get hit with new unexpected toll-gating fees just to access their own system of record data.

00:06:19: Wow!

00:06:20: Paying a toll to read your own ledger?

00:06:22: Exactly.

00:06:22: and that concept of sudden toll gating perfectly bridges into the macro environment because actual physical toll gates and borders are rapidly shifting right now, forcing a total rethink of supply chains in M&A targets.

00:06:34: Yeah Daniel Rongo highlighted this massive physical trade shift on July.

00:06:38: first The EU effectively ended the era of duty-free imports for cheap goods.

00:06:42: That's

00:06:42: a huge deal for e-commerce

00:06:43: Massive.

00:06:44: last year four point six billion parcels under one hundred fifty euros entered the EU duty free And nine to one percent of those were from China.

00:06:52: Yeah,

00:06:52: and now they face a flat three euro fee which will transition to full tariffs by twenty-twenty eight.

00:06:57: The free border is just dead.

00:06:59: it permanently alters drop shipping in e-commerce pricing models

00:07:02: though It's interesting.

00:07:03: Pete Mendoff pointed out that there might be some US release.

00:07:07: The White House is apparently exploring a US-China board of trade to ease tariffs on nonsensitive goods.

00:07:14: So focusing higher duties strictly on national security items?

00:07:17: Exactly,

00:07:18: the debate is moving from how many tariffs can we apply to which tariffs actually make sense.

00:07:23: But even if some tariff's eaves up...the legal risk just skyrocketing.

00:07:28: Tosca Derek had this great takeaway from the new DOJ and DHS trade fraud guide.

00:07:33: Trade compliance isn't just some back office customs function anymore,

00:07:37: right?

00:07:37: It's elevated.

00:07:38: now

00:07:38: it's a boardroom enterprise.

00:07:39: risk enforcement is expanding way beyond administrative penalties into actual criminal prosecutions And civil false claims act actions for things like trans shipment or false origin declarations You

00:07:51: can't you say oh my supplier messed up nope.

00:07:53: Claiming ignorance of your upstream supplier is explicitly no longer an excuse.

00:07:58: That's going to terrify M&A due diligence teams, and countries are having adapted their tax strategies into this environment too.

00:08:05: Eric DuVissen posted about how Switzerland is handling the OECD global minimum tax...

00:08:09: Because they have to charge fifteen percent now right?

00:08:11: Yeah so to maintain their edge for foreign direct investment, Switzerland is pushing these qualified tax incentives QTIs – basically innovation-based refundable credits.

00:08:22: It's

00:08:22: just adding so much complexity.

00:08:24: Which aligns with what Willem Blom and I, Tyra Lynn Kubica shared from EY's twenty-twenty six global tax policy report.

00:08:31: Tax complexity whether it is from AI digital reporting or shifting trade has mutated

00:08:36: its outgrown the tax department

00:08:38: entirely!

00:08:38: Its now a business wide strategic challenge.

00:08:41: So With borders closing supply chain risks rising And Ai requiring all this capital How are CFOs and Capital Allicators actually navigating these cross currents?

00:08:51: Well, DeBopper Team Day shared the Deloitte UK CFO survey and there is this fascinating tension right now.

00:08:58: Seventy-three percent of CFOs are highly optimistic that AI will improve business performance...and ninety three percent expect to increase digital investment.

00:09:06: Okay so they're bullish on tech?

00:09:07: Extremely!

00:09:09: Yet they list geopolitics as absolute biggest external risk for their businesses.

00:09:13: It's like flooring a gas pedal while staring at a cliff.

00:09:16: Pretty much.

00:09:17: And you see this tension playing out globally.

00:09:19: Rumky Majumdar shared that India's business confidence index is actually weakening due to geopolitical uncertainty and a week monsoon.

00:09:28: But wait, India has having a massive boom in global capability centers right now.

00:09:32: Exactly the paradox.

00:09:34: They added over three hundred GCCs and FY twenty six alone, massive foreign investment.

00:09:39: yet local business confidence is shaky which

00:09:42: really makes you wonder if the financial institutions are pricing in this risk accurately.

00:09:46: Dr Philip Wackerbeck shared their strategy.

00:09:48: retail banking monitor And European Retail Banks look solid on paper for twenty-twenty five top line up three percent profit of six percent.

00:09:57: but

00:09:57: Is it sustainable?

00:09:58: That's the urgent question.

00:10:00: Will this performance hold when the current interest rate support inevitably fades, and when private credit markets shift?

00:10:05: Right because central bank realities are driving a lot of this.

00:10:08: Gregory Docko analyzed Fed Chair Kevin Warsh's testimony And The Fed is clearly prioritizing its commitment to price stability over signaling any near-term rate moves.

00:10:18: So the base case just holding steady?

00:10:20: Yeah!

00:10:21: This was perfectly highlighted by a fiercely split June dot plot.

00:10:25: You had exactly nine participants seeing hikes and nine seeing no further tightening.

00:10:30: It is completely

00:10:31: split.".

00:10:31: So when the data is split?

00:10:32: fifty-fifty, what do the capital allocators do?

00:10:36: Omar Ali and Budwein Schulmer's.

00:10:38: Hoinkven Popendrecht reported from Fundforum that despite all this slowing growth in complex geopolitics wealth and asset management AUM continues to hold up.

00:10:48: Really!

00:10:48: That's surprising

00:10:49: It is.

00:10:50: But legacy risk culture is becoming a major constraint, these investment firms are scrambling to move away from heavy process driven governance toward operating models that actually allow for rapid capital allocation because in highly unpredictable times speed is survival.

00:11:04: Wow and I think That leaves us with the really provocative final thought For you consider Because as AI commoditizes both technical forecasting models And basic advisory services The ultimate premium In strategy and M&A won't be generating data.

00:11:17: No VA will do that instantly

00:11:19: Exactly.

00:11:19: The premium will be human conviction, it's going to be the willingness of a leader to step up and underwrite geopolitical an operational risk when data is split perfectly.

00:11:30: fifty-fifty

00:11:31: If you enjoyed this episode new episodes drop every two weeks.

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00:11:37: Thank You so much for joining us on This Deep Dive.

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