Requirements for Digital IT Consulting Services and their Provision through Digital Consulting Platforms - Results from a focus group study

Abstract

IT consulting companies deal with the digital transformation of their clients' business and services. However, the IT consulting business itself and, in particular, the IT consulting services provided, have so far only been digitized to a limited extent. Despite the increased research interest in digital transformation, the requirements for digitalization of IT consulting services are hardly known.This paper reports results from an exploratory study that used focus groups (FGs) of IT consulting practitioners to identify their expectations and requirements for digitalized IT consulting services and digital IT consulting platforms. Our study revealed 79 requirements and expectations that our FG participants deemed important for the successful digitalization of services in their organizations. Our findings are related to the structure of digital IT consulting services, the services provisioning process, actor collaboration, user experience and guidance, the sales and marketing process, technical conditions, and digital consulting asset protection and security.The central contributions of our paper are (1) the elicitation of requirements and expectations of IT consulting practitioners for digital IT consulting services and platforms, and (2) a catalog of functional, non-functional as well as technical requirements that can be used to develop scientific artifacts that could serve as digital transformation solutions and give impulses to IT consulting practitioners striving to digitalize their business.

Towards a Formal Description Language for Digital IT Consulting Products in Decentralized IT Consulting Firms

“…(1) For problem investigation, a systematic literature review (SLR) on the topic of the digitalization of IT consulting services will be conducted following the proposed trajectory of [28], [48], [49]. Based on the results of a SLR conducted by the author [6], we will conduct a delta review of the state of the art research related to the topic aforementioned. The SLR will provide a comprehensive understanding of the topic and reveal relevant insights for the research methods which will be conducted subsequently.…”

“…A preliminary literature review [6] has made clear that the understanding of the definition of service has changed significantly during the last 10 to 15 years. Coming from a goods-dominant logic, where products maybe come along with value added services [23], [32], the understanding has shifted to a service-dominant logic where everything is a service.…”

“…Another example is the "eService Store" which was created by the author as part of his master thesis. It focuses on the service system supported provisioning of SAP consulting services [6]. Hence, the concept of service systems is relevant in the sense of this work.…”

“…Currently, we are preparing the SLR as we believe that this is the necessary basis for the overall research project. Based on the results of a SLR conducted in [6], which was founded on [48] and [14], we are continuing our search of relevant literature in addition to [49] as well as dedicated guidelines on literature reviews in information systems research in general [28]. The rationale behind our decision is that for a Ph.D. research project, we believe, a more sophisticated method is required to ensure procedural rigor and to achieve better quality results.…”

“…(3) Based on the research questions and objectives as well as the results from step (2), follow the taxonomy of Cooper [14] to define the process, the sources, the coverage and the techniques for the SLR. The search terms used in [6] enriched by additional identified terms during the preliminary review. As of now we do not know when the results of the SLR would be suitable enough to stop the process once we have reached the saturation point [49] to end our search.…”