PwC earns most of its money from consulting on IT projects, a business that has slumped with technology spending. And PwC Consulting had a second, more urgent problem. The collapse of Enron and the passage of a new law through Congress has made it near-impossible for accounting firms to sell audit and consultancy services to the same client.
IBM's consultants, say rivals, have a fine grasp of the technical issues, but less mastery of the higher-level strategic thinking. That used not to matter much. But the networked computer has put technology at the heart of strategy, and vice versa. The choices that face a car company as it designs and manages its supply-chain IT infrastructure, for instance, have become the source of its competitive advantage. Retailers live and die by the design of their inventory-management systems, and their skill in mining customer information. The IT platform no longer simply serves the firm: it has become the business.
