13

Oct 2016

Disruption in the Professional Services sector…

By: Odyssey In the Press
Tags: Disruption, Fintech

The (On-Demand) Professional Services Experts are coming!!!

If you’ve been thinking you have time to develop your skill set as your compliance revenue streams dry up then it might be time to think again. That space is already being filled.

Any sector that has fixed assets/resources is likely to suffer from disruption. This week we look at the disruption by Expert360 in the professional services sector.

Founded only in July 2013, Expert360 is a global digital platform that provides businesses with access to the independent professional services consultants.

In a recent report by Expert360, nearly 80% of the businesses surveyed said they are currently experiencing a skills gap and more than 50% will increase contract and freelance workers to fill those gaps.

Looking into the future close to half of businesses surveyed (48%) said around one-fifth of their workforce will be contingent in the next three years, with nearly 40% of enterprises say they will ‘always’ use on demand workers to fill skills gaps.

As we mentioned in previous blogs, it’s no secret that the workforce is more flexible and more mobile than ever before, and this trend is only going to increase into and beyond 2025.

So the next phase of Enterprise growth is likely to come from increased reliance on “on-demand” hyper specialists.

So what’s the threat/opportunity from Expert360. Certainly there is funding for this disruption of major management consulting firms. This is the same type of disruption that has occurred from freelancer.com disrupting coding and design, and Uber with transport and logistics.

Law and accounting firms are scrambling to respond to the so-called gig economy. PwC launched talent exchange to match PwC clients with freelance workers – which the firm predicts will eventually make up 10 per cent of its consulting workforce. So PWC now has an online marketplace where freelance workers can upload their resumes and apply to work on projects for PwC clients. And world’s largest law firm, DLA Piper, has partnered with Lawyers on Demand to tap into the growth in freelance workers, as traditional professional service firms face disruption.

There is certainly a lot of disruption in the professional services sector, and the trend is set only to continue. Expert360 was founded by two 25 year old consultants, so in effect this is change being created from within.

We can only anticipate that continued ongoing change will continue to affect all fixed assets/resources business from within, continuing the disruption in all sectors, including compliance.

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