German-origin consultancies book impressive ongoing growth

German-origin consultancies Porsche Consulting and Simon-Kucher & Partners have enjoyed an ongoing growth in 2019 with revenues up by over 16 percent.

Shortly after opening a second office in China, management firm Porsche Consulting has posted record revenues in excess of €200 million – achieving year-on-year growth of 17.4 percent for 2019. Porsche Consulting’s strong results follow on the heels of fellow German-origin consultancy Simon-Kucher & Partners, which last year grew by 16 percent to revenues of more than €358 million.

And neither is satisfied just yet. Having since the start of year expanded its presence in China from an existing outlet in Shanghai to new premises in Beijing, and backing that up with another new office in Paris, Porsche Consulting is according to a press release now planning a significant further expansion of its strategy and innovation work, supported by a dedicated innovation lab recently launched in Berlin.

The lab, the firm says, leverages cutting-edge technology to create innovative business models and product and service concepts in quick time. “What matters now are the power and speed of innovations,” said Porsche Consulting CEO Eberhard Weiblen. “At our lab in Berlin we demonstrate our clients new approaches to work that will make them faster at finding and implementing better ideas.”

Such ambitions have also seen Porsche Consulting revenues grow at pace. Initially founded in 1994 as an in-house consultancy for the iconic car brand, the firm in 2015 first broke through the €200 million barrier – growing over the past five years by a massive 139 percent. The firm has also grown its headcount to 670 spread across offices on four continents, with yet another branch in Frankfurt due to open in April.

Helped along in part by a healthy home consulting market now worth upwards of $35 billion, it may not be so incidental that another advisory experiencing such exceptional growth figures is fellow German-grown advisory Simon-Kucher, one of the world’s leading players in the sales & marketing segment. Hitting the €200 million mark in 2015, the firm is eyeing revenues of €400 million by the end of this year.

If Simon-Kucher hits its target, it would represent a quadrupling of revenues in the space of a decade – having already achieved a tripling of sales between 2010 and 2018. While impressive, the firm has even greater ambitions yet, with recently installed dual CEOs Mark Billige and Andreas von der Gathen now gunning for growth to €750 million by just 2025, placing it on the threshold of the US$1 billion club.

With the pricing and sales & marketing segment described internally as the ‘sunny side of consulting’, Billage believes that the sky is the limit. “Looking ahead, we have ambitious growth targets for the future. The potential for sustainable revenue and profit growth is almost unlimited in the digital world. We will remain true to our focus on topline topics, and we’ll also continue to expand regionally in a systematic way.”