WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 15—Today West Monroe announced it is on track to be one of the fastest-growing digital consulting firms in the United States. In doing so, the firm revealed sizeable investments in digital consulting services, including a new global platform for digital product development as it focuses on helping clients become digital.
Unlike other consulting firms, West Monroe believes digital transformation is a myth—digital is not a project, a team, or a destination, it is instead a mindset and way of working. West Monroe continually moves clients closer to running a digital organization.
The $250 million investment in digital will cover the following:
- A global product development platform that creates the scale and efficiency needed to design, build, and manage digital products for Fortune 1000 and mid-market clients. The firm has aggressive acquisition plans for product development firms around the globe.
- Training and skill-building programs for all West Monroe employees to deliver world-class digital consulting services for select industries.
- Technology and assets that help West Monroe deliver faster, better consulting services to clients, including investments in its Intellio® suite
This represents the first time West Monroe has leveraged a global talent pool to serve North American clients.
Driving the investment is outpaced demand for digital consulting services and specifically, the need for a consulting partner that helps companies deliver integrated experiences. According to Source Global Research, demand for digital consulting is growing at double the rate of traditional business consulting. West Monroe’s sales in digital product consulting were 76% higher in the first half of 2021 compared to all of 2020.
“Our new platform will leverage world-class product developers and managers, regardless of location, to create digital products for our clients,” said Tom Bolger, chief strategy officer for West Monroe. “This is exactly the kind of scale that’s needed to execute the market-leading strategies designed by our product and experiences experts.”
Companies are increasingly challenged to deliver customer-centric experiences that seamlessly integrate in-person and digital interactions and that are also backed up by agile, data-driven operations. West Monroe’s unique approach to consulting is rooted in industry-led multidisciplinary teams that are fluent in digital. This includes industry experts who intimately understand the challenges and opportunities unique to a sector, functional experts who go deep in their craft, and technologists who are just as involved in the strategy as they are in execution. This approach is proving to be in high demand and leading the firm to post one of its strongest years on record. West Monroe is projecting 50% growth in revenue year over year.
“Our clients increasingly compete and win based on their technology—a trend that existed before the pandemic but was certainly accelerated by it,” said CEO Kevin McCarty. “With agile development and custom technology playing such a critical role to success, we’re placing big bets to deliver on what we know our clients need to be successful with their digital mandates.”
Previous acquisitions and corporate moves have been instrumental to reaching this point. In 2019, the acquisition of Minneapolis-based GoKart Labs incorporated digital products and experiences into the firm’s technology-led services. The acquisitions of Waterstone (2019) and Two Six Capital (2020) added commercial growth and predictive analytics capabilities that help define growth for clients. And the addition of Pace Harmon in 2020 deepened and widened the firm’s capabilities in the IT strategy work that’s necessary to transition from a traditional operating model to a digital operating model.
The current strategic move is a part of West Monroe’s goal to become a $1 billion organization by 2025 and its imperative to help companies become digital.