The Mid-Market Opportunity in the UK and Netherlands

economic impact

Mid-sized businesses (50–249 employees) punch well above their weight in economic impact. The UK has approximately 37,800 medium-sized businesses, comprising only 0.7% of firms but employing 3.7million people (13% of private sector employment) and generating £926 billion turnover (18% of private sector turnover) . Far from stagnating, these companies are outpacing larger firms ingrowth: recent trackers show mid-market business activity rising faster than the rest of the economy. NatWest’s Mid-Market Growth Tracker finds that mid-sized corporates have expanded output for 13 consecutive months, even amid inflation and uncertainty . Bank executives call mid-market businesses “an essential engine of UK economic growth” . New forecasts by BDO echo this, projecting mid-sized firms will create 1.9 million new jobs and account for 41% of GDP growth in the next three years . In sum, the UK mid-market is large, growing, and increasingly critical to the nation’s prosperity.

The Netherlands presents a contrasting but equally compelling case. Historically, Dutch SMEs (MKB)were called the backbone of the economy, contributing over 60% of GDP in the 1990s. Today, however, only 31% of the Dutch economy stems from SMEs (including medium enterprises) , the lowest share in the EU. Multinationals dominate the landscape, putting extra pressure on medium-sized Dutch firms to compete and thrive. This challenge is itself an opportunity: as policymakers recognize the need to support the mid-market’s revival, consulting partners can step in with solutions to unlock the potential of Dutch mid-sized businesses. Even at their diminished share, the Netherlands’ ~240,000medium enterprises (EU definition) still account for roughly 15% of employment and 18% of value added in the economy . Energizing this segment could yield outsized gains in innovation, job creation, and diversified growth beyond the multinational sector.

Why target the mid-market now? Simply put, it is a massive segment underserved by traditional consulting. Large firms have historically focused on global corporates, while mid-sized companies were left to patch together advice and tools on their own. Yet mid-market CEOs face equally complex strategic questions – digital transformation, talent shortages, customer engagement, sustainability –often without the specialized resources that big corporations enjoy. With the right support, many of these firms can become tomorrow’s market leaders. For consulting firms, winning in this segment means accessing a broad new client base and revenue stream. It also opens a pathway to develop future partners and leaders within the firm: as senior consultants build a business case around midmarket services, they create growth opportunities for themselves and their teams. In an industry where becoming a partner demands demonstrating new business, the £745 billion opportunity represented by UK mid-sized businesses alone by 2028 is a timely answer.

Challenges for Medium Enterprises in a Rapidly Changing World

global change

Mid-sized enterprises operate in the same storm of global change that buffets their larger peers – but often with less shelter. As VirtlX’s vision statement cites, “the world is changing rapidly as new technology and globalization disrupt entire industries,” while customer behavior and new-generation employee expectations are inconsistent and unpredictable. This makes it difficult for organizations to know what’s coming and how to prepare. Jack Welch’s famous warning rings true: “If the rate of change on the outside exceeds the rate of change on the inside, the end is near.” Medium businesses must become as adaptable as the environment around them. This means learning faster and responding more nimbly to feedback from the market and from employees.

However, adaptability requires insight – and many mid-market companies lack timely data about the very people who determine their success: customers and employees. Traditionally, businesses manage via inside-out metrics (internal KPIs, financials) that are lagging indicators of performance . While important, these measures assume a static world and can fail to flag emerging threats until it’s too late. What mid-sized firms need are leading indicators – an outside-in view of changes in customer expectations and employee engagement that presage where the business should head. Employees and customers are in fact a company’s best source of real-time insight, if only their voices are systematically heard. Capturing those voices and acting on them quickly is a major challenge that medium enterprises often struggle to meet.
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Data

Outside-in

Leading

Compounding this, mid-market organizations must juggle bridging three critical domains simultaneously:

Customer Experience (CX): Meeting and exceeding evolving customer expectations is non negotiable for growth. Yet mid-sized firms may not have dedicated customer insight teams or fancy analytics platforms. Many rely on infrequent surveys or complaint data, missing the full picture of customer sentiment. In a fast-changing market, this is a risk – declining customer satisfaction can quickly lead to loss of market share if not caught early.

Continuous Learning & Skills Development: As industries change, so do the skills needed to compete. Mid-sized businesses often have significant skills gaps. A recent Chartered Institute of Management Accountants survey found 79% of SMEs reported skills gaps in their workforce. Two-thirds of employees in these firms received no formal upskilling in the past year ,despite 82% of employees saying they want to develop new skills. This gap is partly due to resource constraints – many mid-market companies lack a robust learning & development program – and partly due to uncertainty about which skills to build for the future (e.g. digital, AI, etc.). The result is a workforce that may not be fully prepared to deliver on evolving customer needs or adopt new technologies. In the UK and Netherlands, where competition for talent is intense, mid-sized firms that fail to invest in continuous learning risk falling behind more agile rivals.

Employee Experience (EX) & Engagement: Medium enterprises depend on retaining their key talent and keeping employees motivated, especially since they cannot always match big corporate salaries. High employee engagement has been empirically linked to better customer outcomes and profitability. For example, Gallup studies show companies with highly engaged employees achieve 10% higher customer loyalty and a 23% increase in profitability on average . Engaged employees deliver superior service and innovation, creating a positive feedback loop for customer satisfaction. On the flip side, disengaged staff can erode customer experience and increase turnover costs. Mid-market firms often lack consistent tools to measure engagement or gather feedback on issues affecting morale, meaning problems like burnout, misalignment, or insufficient training can fester unnoticed. In both the UK and Netherlands, surveys indicate a disconnect between employers and employees on engagement –many employees feel in the dark about their company’s direction and their own development path. Bridging this gap is essential to unleash discretionary effort and retain talent.

These three areas – CX, continuous learning, and EX – do not exist in silos. They are deeply interrelated. A dissatisfied customer experience might be caused by an under-trained employee or a disengaged team. Conversely, a well-trained, empowered employee is more likely to delight customers, which then feeds business growth. Mid-sized enterprises need to connect the dots between these domains to truly become futureproof.

What holds them back? Often, it’s a lack of integrated process and tools. Many rely on ad-hoc methods: an annual customer survey here, a standalone learning portal there, quarterly HR reviews elsewhere – none of which talk to each other. This fragmentation means insights are lost. As VirtlX notes, using many disjointed tools becomes “expensive and messy,” with data unable to be cross referenced for effective decisions. It also burdens employees with multiple logins and duplicative processes. The outcome is that improvement efforts are inconsistent and slow. A medium enterprise might implement a new training program, but not tie it to customer feedback data – so they can’t measure if the training actually improved customer satisfaction. Or they might track employee engagement in a survey, but not use the findings to inform managerial training or process changes. In a world where change is continuous, such outdated, siloed approaches are too slow and reactive. Mid-market businesses require a way to monitor and manage improvement areas continuously across CX, learning, and EX – and to do so at the speed of business.

Making Medium Businesses Futureproof: Requirements for Success

Learn and adapt

To thrive amid rapid change, medium enterprises must embed tools and processes that allow them to learn and adapt continually. From the analysis above, several key requirements emerge for a successful mid-market strategy:

1. Real-Time Customer & Employee Insight: Futureproof companies run on data that tells them what customers and employees are experiencing right now, not last year. This means regular(even continuous) listening posts: e.g. short “pulse” surveys of customers after interactions, frequent employee sentiment checks, and feedback loops at critical touchpoints. Crucially, these insights should be leading indicators – signalling emerging issues or opportunities. For instance, a dip in employee confidence in using a new software could predict a drop in customer service quality; a spike in customer suggestions might indicate demand for a new product feature. Organizations need tools to capture these signals easily and turn raw feedback into actionable intelligence using analytics or AI. As one VirtlX user put it, having an “overall picture” in one place lets you “immediately address any customer issues and ensure employees are satisfied with their work environment and levels of training”. In other words, integrated insight enables prompt action.
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Mindset

Right Now

Feedback

2. Agile Skill Development & Knowledge Transfer: In a fast-changing environment, medium businesses must be able to rapidly upskill and reskill their people in line with market demands. When new insights (from step 1) reveal a gap – be it a customer service skill, a technical competency, or a soft-skill like cross-team communication – the organization should quickly “close the loop” with learning interventions. This requires a robust but nimble learning platform: one that can deliver relevant training content (e.g. micro-courses, how-to videos, or even AI-generated training modules) without long development cycles or high cost. It also means fostering a culture of continuous learning, where employees are motivated and empowered to improve. Given that 82% of SME employees want to upskill, companies should capitalize on this appetite by providing clear development pathways. They may also need to broaden what “counts” as training – not just formal workshops, but peer learning, coaching, and on-the-job experimentation should be encouraged and tracked. The speed of learning is key: for lower-resourced mid-market firms, training must target the right needs and show results. If an insight today shows customers are unhappy with response time, within weeks the company should have rolled out a focused training (or process change) to address it, and then measure improvement. This kind of responsive, continuous improvement cycle keeps a mid-sized business one step ahead of outside changes.
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Upskill

Reskill

Close the Loop

3. Employee Engagement and Performance Alignment: To sustain improvement, medium enterprises need to bake feedback and learning into their performance management. That means setting up processes to monitor and manage progress on new competencies and behaviours consistently – not as a one-off project. For example, if a new customer-centric selling skill is trained, managers should have tools to assess how employees are applying it and to get employees’ own feedback on their comfort and confidence. Regular 360° reviews, manager check-ins, or appraisal metrics tied to these new competencies can reinforce the change. Additionally, tracking employee experience metrics (like engagement scores, or wellbeing indexes) provides a health check on whether employees feel supported in their development. Mid-market businesses often lack a formal HR analytics function, so they benefit from simple integrated dashboards that show, for instance, training hours completed vs. employee engagement vs. customer satisfaction – all in one view. By correlating these data, leadership can spot what’s working. (Are increases in training leading to higher customer satisfaction? Is employee morale improving as they grow new skills? If not, why?). This systematic approach turns continuous improvement into a manageable, measurable process. It also recognizes employees as stakeholders in change: when staff see that their feedback leads to action and that the company invests in their growth, engagement naturally rises. Conversely, companies should measure if improved engagement (say, from a new flexible work policy or recognition program) is translating into better customer outcomes – creating a virtuous cycle. In short, embedding improvement into the management system – through KPIs, regular reviews, and transparent communication – ensures that bridging CX, learning, and EX isn’t a one-time initiative but a continuous practice.
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Monitor

Track

Embed

4. Cost-Effectiveness and Efficiency: All the above must be achieved within mid-market budget realities. Medium enterprises cannot afford heavy, months-long consulting projects for each problem, nor can they license enterprise software costing hundreds of thousands per year. Lower margins and leaner teams mean solutions must be affordable, user-friendly, and quick to implement. Any tool or process added should simplify work, not create extra overhead. This is where technology can play a transformative role. Modern AI-driven platforms can automate data collection and analysis that used to take armies of analysts – at a fraction of the cost and time. For example, a single AI tool might replace separate survey software, analytics staff, and content creators by automating feedback analysis and even generating training content from it. Medium businesses need such leveraged solutions to level the playing field with larger competitors. By using tech to amplify their capabilities, they can get big insights on a small budget. The ideal scenario is a “plug-and-play” solution that integrates into their workflow with minimal setup, so they can start capturing value immediately. Indeed, solutions designed for the mid-market advertise top-tier engagement tools at a fraction of the cost of traditional corporate systems. Consulting firms must keep this efficiency principle front and centre: to win mid-market clients, you must deliver impact quickly and cost-effectively, often by leveraging ready-made technology rather than bespoke, manpower-heavy approaches.
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Afordable

Quick

Inexpensive

In summary, medium enterprises become futureproof by becoming data-driven, learning-oriented, people-centric, and tech-enabled – all at once. It’s a tall order. However, meeting these requirements is feasible with the right support. This is where consultancy firms can step in as partners and guides, embedding the tools and processes that make the above a reality. The next sections will explore how consultancies themselves need to adapt to serve this market, and how a platform like VirtlX provides an integrated solution that neatly fits the mid-market playbook.
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Consultancy Firms at a Crossroads: Adapting to Deliver More with Less

DUAL pressure

Large consulting firms today face a dual pressure: disruption from technology on one side, and the need to find new growth avenues on the other. The rise of advanced AI and analytics is automating many “bread and butter” consulting tasks – data gathering, analysis, even aspects of strategy formulation – that firms historically charged significant fees for. As one former Big Four partner observed, within 3–5 years “most structured, data-heavy tasks in audit, tax, and strategic advisory” will be automated, potentially eliminating about 50% of those roles. Clients are already beginning to question traditional consulting value when AI tools can provide instant answers that once required teams of consultants . Moreover, AI is driving expectations of lower costs and outcome-based pricing rather than open-ended hourly billing. In this climate, consulting firms must practice what they preach about agility and innovation. They need to specialize and pivot to remain relevant, focusing on services where human expertise combined with technology truly creates value beyond what an algorithm alone can do.

Serving the mid-market is a prime example of such a pivot. It requires consultancies to be more nimble, tech-savvy, and cost-efficient – but in doing so, it aligns perfectly with the new realities. Mid-market clients won’t pay for large teams to camp at their offices for months; they demand quick results and practical guidance. By embracing AI-enabled platforms and templatized solutions, consultants can drastically cut delivery time and cost, making mid-market engagements profitable. Notably, the same AI that threatens old consulting models can be a boon to midmarket-focused consulting. Industry insiders point out that AI “diminishes smaller firms’ previous disadvantages” by reducing the need for an army of junior staff and expensive internal tools. In fact, boutique and mid-tier consultancies are already leveraging technology to out manoeuvre bigger rivals. Casey Foss, an executive at West Monroe, noted that smaller consulting firms can use new tech “faster and more iteratively to serve clients differently,” and they are attracting talent excited to deploy these tools creatively . This is a wake-upcall for the Big Four: the playing field is levelling. To compete, they must empower their teams to deliver tech-enabled, high-impact solutions at mid-market price points.
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Nimble

Savvy

High-Impact

Another challenge is cultural and internal. Big consultancies are typically geared towards large engagements; serving mid-sized clients might require adjustments in approach and mindset. Partners will need to develop expertise in mid-market industries (which can differ from Fortune 500 needs)and train their staff accordingly. It means enriching consultants’ competencies – e.g., more hands-on implementation skills, familiarity with cloud SaaS tools, or knowledge of SME finance – to credibly advise smaller businesses. Just as medium enterprises must upskill, so too must consulting firms “fast-track” learning for their own people in this new segment. The firms that can quickly assess and learn the expectations of medium businesses and adapt their service offerings will have an edge. This could involve creating new consulting playbooks for mid-market digital transformation, or specific frameworks for improving customer and employee experience in organizations of 100 staff instead of 10,000.
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Develop

Train

Assess

Crucially, consulting firms should use the same technologies and feedback loops internally that they propose for clients. By doing so, they become more agile themselves. For example, a firm might deploy a platform like VirtlX for its own consulting teams: to gather client feedback on engagements (a form of customer experience data), to get consultants’ input on what training they need, and to deliver new learning modules to upskill consultants in emerging areas. In essence, the firm becomes a living example of a futureproof, continuously learning organization – which strengthens its value proposition to clients. This reflexive use of tech can help big consultancies overcome the inherent difficulty of pivoting large organizations (“pivoting a huge organization…is definitely harder”). It injects some of the agility of a start-up into the established firm’s operations.
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Agile

Living

Strength

In summary, to seize the mid-market opportunity, consulting firms must transform how they deliver services: leveraging AI and integrated tools to reduce cost; focusing on outcomes and speed; and constantly refining their own capabilities based on feedback. This is not a small change, but the upside is significant. Firms that adapt can open a vast new client base, diversify their revenue, and ensure their consultants remain in demand in the age of AI. The pieces are in place – what’s needed is a catalyst solution that brings together the threads of customer insight, employee development, and efficiency. This is where a platform like VirtlX enters the picture.

VirtlX: An Integrated Platform for Engagement Excellence

Three-step flywheel

VirtlX is a cloud-based engagement platform purpose-built to connect the dots between customer feedback, employee engagement, and learning & development – exactly the nexus that medium enterprises (and their consulting partners) need to manage. Described as “more than an Engagement Platform,” VirtlX creates a reinforcing cycle that makes organizations smarter, faster, and more adaptable. It achieves this by unifying tools that are typically siloed: it is at once a customer experience survey system, an employee feedback and appraisal system, and a learning management system – all driven by AI on a single, plug-and-play platform.

At the heart of VirtlX is the concept of Engagement Excellence, operationalized in a three-step flywheel: PERCEIVE – REFLECT – ENRICH. This mirrors the continuous improvement loop a future-ready business needs. Here’s how it works:
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REFLECT

ENRICH

PERCEIVE

PERCEIVE: The cycle begins with collecting feedback from customers on how they perceive the organization’s products, services, and people. VirtlX makes this easy through multiple channels – it can deploy customer engagement surveys via email, SMS, WhatsApp, or even Microsoft Teams, all integrated into the platform . The platform also captures various forms of employee feedback (we’ll detail that in Reflect), but the key is getting rich outside-in data. VirtlX includes tools for customer satisfaction surveys, net promoter scores, and even automated Google review prompts . By consolidating customer feedback in one place, a midmarket company can immediately see what issues or opportunities customers flag. These insights are the leading indicators – pointing to areas where the business might need to change a process, introduce training, or adjust strategy. Instead of guessing, managers can base decisions on real customer sentiment. As VirtlX’s founder notes, treating customers (and employees) as valuable data sources yields involved, happier customers and more loyalty – benefits that “reflect in your bottom-line”
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REFLECT: Next, VirtlX facilitates a 360° analysis of the feedback by engaging employees and managers. The platform provides pre-built tools for employee engagement surveys, pulse checks, line manager upward feedback, and 360° peer reviews. In this “Reflect” stage, the organization looks inward to diagnose root causes for the issues uncovered. For example, if customers reported slow service response, VirtlX’s employee surveys and competency assessments can pinpoint whether there is a clarity issue (unclear processes), a capability issue (skills gap), or an attitude issue (low engagement) contributing to that. The platform’s Developmental Framework includes Skills Gap Analysis, Training Needs Analysis, and Competency assessments that tie directly back to performance outcomes . Essentially, VirtlX helps answer: what do we need to change internally to improve these external perceptions? Because all the data lives in one system, patterns emerge easily. The platform’s AI (a bot named Nemo) “decodes insights” from the surveys , saving managers countless hours in analysis. Nemo can highlight, for instance, that teams in Region X have lower customer satisfaction ratings and also self-reported lower training on product knowledge – indicating a clear area to address. VirtlX’s ability to cross-reference customer and employee data is a game-changer: it “provides a snapshot view of what’s affecting your business, both from inside and out” so you can address pitfalls and build on strengths . All of this can be done rapidly – VirtlX advertises that it delivers “unique & comprehensive insights…within a single day” by combining these data sources. Speed and clarity in the Reflect stage means a mid-market firm can move from problem identification to solution much faster than traditional consultative analysis.

ENRICH: The final step is where VirtlX truly differentiates itself – it turns insight into action by automating the creation and delivery of training and development content. Based on the gaps identified in the Reflect stage, VirtlX’s AI (Nemo) can generate targeted training materials (SCORM-compliant) and quizzes, and deploy them through the integrated learning management system (LMS). For example, if a capability gap in “customer complaint handling” is found, the platform can produce a customized micro-learning video module to upskill employees in that area. It can also schedule follow-up quizzes to reinforce knowledge. This is done with remarkable efficiency using generative AI – VirtlX includes an AI training video generator and AI quiz generator that produce content specific to the organization’s services and products. The result: training that might have taken weeks of instructional design (or expensive external courses) can be rolled out almost immediately, and tuned to the exact needs revealed by the data. VirtlX effectively serves as an in-house training academy guided by real-time feedback. As employees complete the training, the platform tracks their progress and can tie it back to improvements in engagement or customer metrics. This closes the loop: once the new skills are applied on the job, another cycle of feedback begins, and the organization climbs to a higher level of performance . Over time, this flywheel of perceiving, reflecting, and enriching keeps spinning, propelling continuous growth in capability and customer value.

All of this happens on one unified platform, accessible via web browser (no heavy IT install needed). VirtlX was explicitly designed to avoid the pitfalls of juggling multiple tools. It “seamlessly integrates customer satisfaction and employee engagement into one powerful platform; just select the type of engagement you’re looking for”. For a medium enterprise, this means ease of use and quick deployment. The platform is offered as cloud software (available on Azure Marketplace and other app stores) and even supports integration with Microsoft Teams and Outlook for easy user adoption. Importantly, VirtlX’s pricing is structured for businesses of all sizes – delivering enterprise-grade features at a fraction of the typical cost . It emphasizes “no extensive implementation or consultancy” required , aligning perfectly with mid-market firms that need fast results on a budget.

VirtlX’s value has been proven in practice across various industries, including those similar to consulting clients. For instance, a Nissan Training Academy executive noted, “Using VirtlX, [we] gained valuable insights into employee training as well as employee engagement and feedback…we better understand our training landscape and can make meaningful decisions based on the presented data.” . A COO of a financial services company similarly remarked that VirtlX “enables us to have an overall picture of our company, so we can immediately address any customer issues and ensure our employees are satisfied with their work environment, levels of training and general wellbeing.” These testimonials highlight how VirtlX delivers on the holy grail: connecting customer issues to employee development and well-being in one view, and enabling decisive action. This is precisely the outcome that mid-sized enterprises are looking for – and that consulting firms aim to facilitate.

A Partnership That Ticks All the Boxes

unlock markets

For consulting firms looking to build a compelling mid-market offering, partnering with VirtlX provides a ready-made solution that aligns with all the critical success factors we identified:

Unlocking a Huge Market with Data-Driven Insights: VirtlX equips consultants with a tool to quickly diagnose a medium enterprise’s pain points across CX and EX. Instead of lengthy up front studies, a consultancy can deploy VirtlX in a new client to gather instant data on customer satisfaction, employee morale, and skill gaps. This not only impresses clients (who see evidence-based findings within days), but also allows the consulting team to ground their recommendations in hard data specific to that client. It addresses the mid-market need for affordable, rapid assessment – essentially giving big-firm consultants the agility of a boutique. The platform’s AI does the heavy lifting of analysis, enabling consultants to focus on interpretation and strategy. In short, VirtlX helps the consultancy “work faster and smarter,” providing a snapshot of what’s affecting the business inside and out, which can be translated into immediate action plans.
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Integrated Solution = Comprehensive Improvement: Because VirtlX combines feedback and training, consultants can offer a one-stop improvement program. They can go to a mid-sized client and say: “We have a solution that will measure your customer experience, gauge your employee engagement, and then automatically upskill your team where needed – all in one package.” This is a very attractive pitch to resource-constrained companies. It effectively bundles what might have been multiple separate consulting projects (customer journey analysis, HR engagement study, training program development) into a single, coherent solution. For the consulting firm, this means cross-selling opportunities and more continuous engagement with the client (since the platform encourages an ongoing cycle, not a one-off project). Notably, VirtlX’s holistic view of organizational health aligns with how consultancies like to frame high-level impact. Partners can confidently say their approach will address both top-line (customer loyalty, growth)and bottom-line (productivity, retention) improvements – supported by the platform’s data. This ticks the box of delivering measurable ROI to mid-market clients, who will be watching every dollar/euro spent.

Speed and Cost-Effectiveness through Technology: VirtlX directly enables the highly supported, tech-driven model needed for lower-margin engagements. The platform’s ease of deployment (cloud-based, no IT setup) means a consulting firm can implement it for a client with minimal fuss – possibly even as part of a trial or pilot. This reduces the cost of serving the client, allowing the firm to maintain decent margins even at mid-market price points. Furthermore, many manual consulting tasks are automated: survey distribution, data analysis, even content creation for training. A process that might have required a team of consultants over months (e.g., conducting interviews, analysing spreadsheets, developing training manuals)can be condensed into a few weeks with VirtlX’s automation. For example, Nemo, the AI bot, can turn survey results into actionable training “just like that!” – something that differentiates the consultancy’s offering as cutting-edge. This efficiency benefits both the client (lower fees, faster results) and the consulting firm (ability to take on more projects or scale to more clients with the same staff). In essence, VirtlX allows consultancies to deliver big impact with a lean approach, crucial for succeeding in the mid-market segment.

Continuous Improvement and Relationship-Building: Because VirtlX operates on a continuous cycle, it naturally lends itself to an ongoing consulting relationship rather than a one-and-done project. Consultants can position themselves not just as implementers of the tool, but as partners in iteratively managing and improving the client’s performance. For instance, after an initial deployment, the consulting team can provide quarterly “engagement excellence reviews,” using the latest VirtlX data to advise the client on new strategic adjustments or to facilitate workshops on emerging issues. This creates recurring revenue and deeper client loyalty. It also addresses the concern of keeping the consultancy’s own knowledge up to date: by seeing real-time feedback from mid-market clients, the firm can continuously adapt its approach and build its competencies in line with client needs (truly “eating its own cooking”). Over time, the consultancy accumulates a benchmark database of mid-market CX/EX metrics (through VirtlX usage across clients), which becomes intellectual property for honing its services further. In other words, VirtlX doesn’t just futureproof the client – it helps futureproof the consulting firm by embedding a feedback-driven improvement process into the service delivery itself.

Clear, Compelling Value Proposition: Perhaps most importantly, the combination of consulting expertise and VirtlX technology creates a crisp, logical value proposition that resonates with mid-sized business leaders. It addresses their worries head-on: “How can I keep my customers happy as trends change? How do I upskill my people without breaking the bank? How do I know if what we’re doing is working?” The answer in the white paper is clear: by using an integrated, AI supported tool to continuously monitor and manage customer experience, employee engagement, and learning. This is not selling fluff or “exciting new fads” – it’s a straightforward solution to a well-defined problem, using proven best practices encoded in software. When presented to amid-market decision-maker, the logic is strong and intuitive: happy employees drive happy customers, and both need constant attention; here’s a platform that connects and manages both, guided by your consultant’s expertise. Such a pitch is far more convincing than a generic consulting offer because it’s concrete (there’s a platform to demo), data-driven(showing real numbers and dashboards), and outcome-oriented (tie improvements to business KPIs).

In a practical sense, all the boxes are ticked: The mid-market client gains a futureproofing tool and process, while the consultancy gains efficiency, a differentiated offering, and a scalable business case. The VirtlX platform was even developed with input from dozens of executives to ensure its functionality meets real needs, giving consulting firms confidence that it aligns with market demand.

Sources

with thanks

Business Insider. “Why AI Threatens to Disrupt the Big Four — EY, Deloitte, KPMG, and PwC.” (May2025) – Discussing AI-driven changes in consulting, the need for specialization and nimbleness.

NatWest Group. “Understanding mid-market businesses – the critical backbone of our economy.” (Jan2025) – Mid-market statistics and sentiment in UK.

BDO UK. “Mid-sized firms to contribute £745 billion to UK economy by 2028.” (News release, 2025) –Forecasts on mid-market GVA and jobs growth.

UK Department for Business & Trade. Business Population Estimates 2024. (Oct 2024) – Official stats on number of medium enterprises, employment and turnover share.

CIMA via SmallBusinessCharter. “79% of SMEs have skills gaps but employees are finding development barriers.” (2025) – Survey on skills gaps, training deficits in SMEs .

PlusOne (Optum). “Employee engagement and customer experience: the ripple effect.” (2023) – CitingGallup on engagement vs. profitability and loyalty.

VirtlX Official Website – Vision and Why VirtlX pages (2024) – Details on the VirtlX platform features and engagement excellence model.

VirtlX Testimonials (virtlx.com) – User quotes from Gear4music, Finnies, BancABC, Nissan Academy on benefits of VirtlX.

Miguel Goede blog. “The Decline of SMEs.” (Nov 2024) – Citing CBS data on Netherlands SME share of GDP.

NatWest Business Growth Tracker methodology (2025) – Confirmation of mid-market definition and outperformance.
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