For years, the economics of much of the technology services industry were relatively straightforward. Find skilled people, deliver them at a competitive cost and make the difference on the margin.

It's a model that has created some enormous businesses. But it comes with a problem: when clients are buying people and capacity, price becomes an obvious basis for comparison.

A major technology services business recognised that its next stage of growth would require something different.

It had substantial technical expertise, longstanding client relationships and the scale to deliver complex work. What it wanted was to compete for a different kind of assignment, one where clients were buying expertise, judgement and solutions to important business problems rather than primarily purchasing delivery capacity.

That sounds straightforward. In practice, it raises some difficult questions.

What does the business know that clients would genuinely value? Where can it compete with established consulting firms? How does it move from responding to specifications to helping clients decide what they should do in the first place? And what needs to change commercially for clients to see it differently?

We developed the strategy for moving towards higher-value consulting, identifying where the business could compete and how its expertise could become a more important part of its offer.

This wasn't simply about introducing a new set of services. It was about changing the basis on which the business wanted to compete.