The Feature

Consulting at Far End of the Long Tail

June 23, 2006 on 8:13 pm | by Marian Crkon | In Ideas and Opinions, Worth Noting | Enter Comments |  Print |  Email

Let me join the Long Tail bandwagon and apply its concept to ERP consulting. The Long Tail idea was first popularized by Chris Anderson in his article in Wired in October of 2004 and grew into a blog devoted to the subject. The essence of the Long Tail is defined by the following chart:

The red areas in the chart represent the most commonly sought after markets, products and services. Think of them as the “bestsellers”. The yellow area represents the niche markets that only appeal to a small subset of people, and due to the lack of economies of scale, these markets tend to be under-served.

The concept of the Long Tail is that successful on-line businesses have thrived by providing adequate services to the people under the yellow area of the curve. You can go to Amazon to find the latest best sellers (red area), but you can also go to Amazon to find hundreds of thousands of titles that you won’t find at your local bookshop (yellow area). The internet is best situated to serve otherwise “hard-to-serve” people.

Let’s look at the Long Tail of ERP consulting. There used to be a lot of “blockbuster” implementation projects back in the 90s when companies migrated to new software packages and technologies. Action today seems to be in smaller engagements (upgrades, mergers and acquisitions, SOX compliance, etc.). As vendors provide more complex and comprehensive packages, the need for niche and specialized skills increases.

From service providers’ perspective, how do we service the clients profitably on short engagements? From the clients’ point of view, how can they find the IT talent that they don’t have in house for short periods of time when they need it? The ERP vendors are finding answers in providing modular, on-demand applications. Service providers and consultants need to do the same – become more flexible in providing niche knowledge when is needed and service the Long Tail of systems implementation work in the marketplace.