IDC, the respected IT market research firm, has ranked Boston Consulting Group as a leader in a recent report it prepared on the IT consulting market.

More than that, IDC analysts placed BCG above most of its competitors. That’s a major win for BCG with the potential to meaningfully improve its sales prospects in the next year.

IDC is a highly influential firm that advises companies on which technologies they should buy to support their IT initiatives. The firm has the ear of countless chief information officers, which means getting its seal of approval is a big deal for both IT vendors and consultancies.

For its recent report on the AI services market, IDC took a look at BCG and the machine learning consulting segment’s 24 other largest players. All those companies generated more than $100 million over the past year in each of the major geographic regions where they operate.

After putting together the list of consultancies, IDC organized them into two groups: Major Players and Leaders. The report technically also includes a third category, Contenders, but that section was empty since all the analyzed consultancies are well-established market players.

BCG made it into the Leaders section of the report along with about a dozen of its top rivals. Moreover, within that group, it ranked in the top three along with Deloitte and Accenture.

IDC listed quite a few reasons for its decision to award BCG such a prominent spot. A few are worth pointing out.

IDC found that BCG has a “broad scope of technology alliances”, meaning it has partnerships with a lot of AI software suppliers. That’s important because an AI project at a large company can involve dozens of different vendors’ technologies, which means the consultancy leading the project needs to be familiar with each vendor’s solutions.

IDC also pointed out the quality of BCG’s consulting methodologies as a reason for its decision. That note, though a small part of the overall report, will have a lot of marketing value for BCG when it tries to convince potential clients of its know-how and professionalism.

Interestingly, IDC also listed “client adoption” as a reason for naming BCG as a Leader in the report. That would seem to suggest BCG’s AI services are seeing significant traction among its clients. 

“We are honored to be recognized by the IDC MarketScape as a Leader in artificial intelligence services,” commented BCG exec Sylvain Duranton. “Our BCG X team is proud to be a pioneer in building responsible and leading-edge AI and digital systems that transform our clients’ core businesses.”

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