Okay so what is business consulting
and why is it important that you know
that and what are some of the more
well-known or prestigious uh consulting
firms.
Okay to start with what is consulting?
Well generally
think of it in this way that there are
companies that
do what they do right they provide a
value proposition to a customer client
or end user and return they receive
whatever value they're looking for
hopefully if they stay in business and
generally their objective is to expand
to receive
more value enter in the new areas etc.
Okay.
So they have expertise in what they do
and they have professionals in the
organization that are able to
add the resources necessary to the
business to
uh carry out that value proposition to
deliver that value and to receive the
value back right and that's the role of
the marketers the sales people
uh the accountants the finance people
all of those people are in support of
whatever value proposition is being
delivered whether selling product,
selling service,
licensing software, whatever okay.
But oftentimes these organizations
as part of their growth as part of their
expansion as part of their contraction
right they undertake activities with
which
they are not terribly familiar with with
which they do not have the level of
expertise that they have in their core
area right. So for that reason these
companies hire
outside professionals individuals who
in theory hopefully in reality have some
level of knowledge and expertise in this
area or function.
So they bring in these individuals as
part of a group these are consultants
right and they bring them in
generally as a team and they undertake
research they learn about the
organization they make proposals
for how to carry out whatever task
objective or function
is um on the plate right. And sometimes
there is no specific task or function
it's just trying to
make some level of improvement to
something that's existing and they
the company wants a third party or
outside perspective to provide
guidance advice information on how they
could improve the process how they could
do it differently things like that right.
So those are the overall purposes behind
why companies bring in consulting firms
and I can tell you of the fortune 500
companies nearly all of them
have consultants within the organization
on staff
at all times. Sometimes a substantial
portion of the workforce present at a
large corporation
are outside consultants who are again
with another
organization a consulting firm and they
come in and
oftentimes they don't come in as teams
they work as individuals
within functional areas within the
organization but
that's more common with specific skill
areas of consulting like
technology consulting and thing. Things
when you have
teams come in it's more for a project
right like a merger and acquisition,
a spin-off, a combination, something like
that
where the team comes in and again does
the research necessary
makes the recommendations on how to
proceed or how to carry out that
activity better.
Okay so the actual structure of
how the company relates to the
consulting firm will vary a little bit
simply based upon
what type of consulting is being done,
and there are lots of areas of
consulting
right probably the most common um
particularly among smaller firms is
technology
consulting. Okay you have there are
thousands of consulting firms across the
United States
the larger firms the more well-known
ones which we'll talk about in a few
minutes
they'll engage in a variety of different
types of consulting whether it's
strictly strategy whether it's general
management consulting
hr field consulting mergers and
acquisition or funding process like
going public that type of thing the
consulting firms that will
generally work with the law firms and
the investment banks along
within the company to carry that process out.
So there will be different
functional areas or teams of consultants
that
work in specific fields or areas right.
Now, now that I tell you all that uh why
is it important that you
know about consulting it may not be the
career field that you want to pursue.
Well for number one I would say for
business acumen right a large
number of business professionals work in
consulting or they work in industry
having previously come from or worked in
consulting
of the top 25 business schools in the
united states uh
nearly 50 more than 40 percent of the
graduates go
into uh consulting after
graduating from their MBA programs.
That is
a phenomenal number and what that should
tell you is that these are individuals
who are
highly knowledgeable highly skilled that
are going into these
uh these very prestigious lucrative
positions very exciting
uh positions oftentimes based upon the
projects or type of work that they get
to do
and these individuals end up in very
important places and oftentimes when
they leave consulting and go back to
industry
they end up very high in organizations
right assuming
uh you know higher level roles in the
organization.
So if you're going to network
effectively
um with these individuals it's good to
know once again
the path their career path what they
undertook um
so general business acumen right. Also
for yourself you may want to pursue
a career in this field and if you do
understanding how it works what the
job or life looks like most of the time
consulting firms
these larger management consulting firms
you're required to live in a city with a
major airport because
uh from your home consulting office you
fly out every monday morning at o'dark
30 to
arrive at the company's uh location and
you work there all week usually through
thursday and then thursday night you fly
back home spend
friday working or sometimes saturday too
from the home office
and then monday you do it all over again
so you spend a lot of time traveling a
lot of time
a lot of frequent flyer miles uh add up
over that time
that type of thing. So that's what the
consulting life often times looks like
and uh
so if you're interested in pursuing that
career one you need to understand what
it entails what they do
that type of thing so you're
knowledgeable uh going into it,
and um two it's um
well well I I would say those are the
primary
uh benefits if you want to do it or if
you want to
to network uh with others right
and then again it's just part of
your general business knowledge and
acumen
uh as a business professional that you
should know about. And uh so
the most prestigious of the uh
consulting firms pretty much that
stand alone are
mckenzie and company bain and company
and boston consulting group or bcg.
Mckenzie is primarily just strategy
consulting where
bain and bcg does a little bit broader
set of
consulting. And the next tier of large
prestigious firms start with the big
four your
deloitte, accenture, povc, ernst young, that
type of thing but tons of
major companies um are included right in
that area as well
ibm booz allen hamilton
there's a there's a whole list and we
provide a long list of major
and minor consulting firms on uh in our
article on thebusinessprofessor.com.
So check that out
and um hopefully you get something out
of the information we provide about
consulting firms.