Business environment of consulting firms and industry

Thèmes abordés

Consulting firms, consulting industry, strategy, management, operations Human resources, financial advisory, technology, McKinsey, The Boston Consulting Group, Bain, Booz, Deloitte, Monitor Group, Roland Berger, marketing consulting, management consulting, IT consulting, HR consulting

Résumé du document

The rich and powerful have always needed advice on how better to manage their affairs and make effective decisions. Yet formal organisations that specialised in management advice didn't emerge until relatively late in the industrial age.

Defined by the Management Consultancies Association (MCA) in the UK as "...the creation of value for organisations, through the application of knowledge, techniques and assets, to improve business performance. This is achieved through the rendering of objective advice and/or the implementation of business solutions", the terms consultancy and consulting can actually refer to many different advisory disciplines, from architecture and engineering to management consulting or financial advisory, so that over 200 different types of consulting areas could be distinguished.

Management consulting, early on focusing on engineering and finance, gained a lot of weight from the turn of the 19th century. However, it was not until the 1930s that consulting firms actually began to grow their size.

Extraits

[...] Lots of HR consulting firms have developed their own software and support tools for evaluate jobs and find problems that the company may have. These tools can assist companies on long-term basis with managing their human resources functions. In another point of view, companies should usually educate themselves on what types of tools are available and how they can enhance their human resources way of work. If a company is wise and a minimum clear in its goal, before calling a HR consulting firm the company should start with defining its objectives of the project she wants to accomplish. [...]

[...] The striving of consulting firms relies on the tendency those past decades of businesses to externalize. - Consulting firms don't sell workforce or capital, they neither sell goods, they sell a service and a very particular one. The 2 major leverages businesses have to grow are: hire more or buy more capital and machines to ultimately produce more. It's traditional extensive growth. What consulting firms offer is an intensive growth promise: an increase in productivity, growth without an increase in workforce or capital. [...]

[...] This means the consultancy firms can expect a constant leakage of their best people into senior jobs in the corporate sector. As a result, turnover in consulting is between 15 and 20 percent a year, with people staying on average five to six years. If up or Out policies are pretty controversial, one cannot deny the existence of several rationales behind it. First of all, keeping only employers with the highest potential of becoming partners is a way to maintain a stronger and more productive workforce in the firm. [...]

[...] As a consequence, this unique situation can lead to a conflict if both parties don't find an alternative solution that satisfy both opinions Employement policies The first requirement for the job is outstanding analytics. That is why consulting firms recruit extremely bright students with outstanding academic records. Recruiters thoroughly test their analytical and interpersonal skills (as the job involves a lot of teamwork and external contacts) during real life "case interviews"). In a hierarchical organization, « Up or Out » is the policy of requiring employees of the organization to race up the promotion ladder within a certain period of time, otherwise they must leave the organization. [...]

[...] IT architecture projects are longer and last between six and twelve months and it precedes any IT implementation or systems integration efforts. IT architecture consultants provide for instance the definition of an enterprise landscape. The systems integration domain aims at knowing how different computing systems and software applications can link together in order to ensure systems acts as a coordinated whole. It often involves more tailored applications that run in the IT landscape. IT security focuses on risk, security and compliance responsibilities in the IT landscape. [...]