Veteran Business Consultants Are Taking Their Expertise to Smaller, Nimbler Consultancies

Brian McIntosh’s Move to Digital-Experience-Focused BlastX Consulting Demonstrates Growing Appeal of a More Streamlined, Intimate Consulting Model

ROSEVILLE, Calif., BlastX Consulting today announced that Brian McIntosh, an expert in customer experience and digital strategy with more than 20 years of industry experience, has signed on as the group’s new Chief Consulting Officer. McIntosh’s decision to leave the sprawling world of Big Four consulting and focus more intensively on clients’ digital transformation is a sign of a broader shift in the marketplace: from a large-scale, broad-strokes approach—with its outlandish growth targets, methodological fads, and outdated partner models—to a tailored, data-driven approach aimed at solving client problems rather than prolonging the engagement. It also reinforces BlastX Consulting’s position as a compelling alternative in the customer experience and digital transformation area of the professional services market, a sector soon expected to reach $394 billion globally, according to Gartner reports.

McIntosh recently built and led a highly successful management consulting team at Avanade, a joint venture between Accenture and Microsoft, where he served as the North American Digital Enterprise Advisory Leader. Before Avanade he spent years developing his industry knowledge and leadership skills at Slalom Consulting and Hitachi Consulting. While BlastX Consulting will certainly benefit from the skill set and expertise McIntosh has gathered at those firms, McIntosh said of those larger settings, “I found the layers of bureaucracy frustrating. I had to postpone essential solutions and hold off on executing timely plans because of the red tape that’s simply a fact of life at any large firm. It’s like David versus Goliath—BlastX Consulting is small but mighty, and it’s a place where I can focus on making an impact, not just a sale.”

McIntosh’s arrival is a critical piece of BlastX Consulting’s strategic mission: to realize the group’s full potential by balancing rational growth with an unwavering commitment to clients’ digital experience optimization (DXO). This mission aligns with broader market trends toward more-focused consulting engagements. Clients of all sizes are seeking a more intimate and responsive relationship with senior leaders rather than being stuck with a pack of inexperienced consultants—and in some cases, an offshore digital team—once the hiring phase is over and the project begins.

Before McIntosh came onboard, CEO Kayden Kelly hired consulting veteran Mike Savage, formerly with Deloitte Digital and Merkle, as BlastX Consulting’s Chief Growth Officer. As Kelly observed, “In a time of limited resources, companies realize the value of boutique firms who will lean in and do the hard work with their clients rather than solutions that often don’t deliver the value and impact leading brands expect and deserve. When a new client knows they’ll have a direct line to a Brian McIntosh or a Mike Savage, they know they’re getting the most dedicated, creative problem-solvers around—and they can be sure that those professionals want them to succeed.”

About BlastX Consulting

BlastX Consulting provides strategic, digital experience advice and implementation services to help brands drive deeper customer relationships using data-driven insights to optimize the digital experience. Over the past 20 years we have assembled a seasoned team of consultants with deep expertise and experience across a wide array of strategic, technical, and operational disciplines who share a passion for helping brands be customer-centric, creating strategies to enable the ultimate user experience across all touchpoints. For more information, visit us at blastx.com.

Contacts

Dan Conley
Beacon Communications
[email protected]
312-593-8461