Management consulting is useful for businesses to acquire valuable services in finding solutions to a variety of organizational challenges to achieve optimal performance. Consultants analyze company data, then create strategies and suggestions that can improve a specific aspect of the business, such as productivity or profit.
Why do companies hire management consultants?
There are several reasons why a company decides they should hire management consultants. These reasons are extremely varied and include:
- Wanting an objective point of view: When a company needs to make a difficult decision, it may be helpful to have the opinion of an experienced outsider that is not a stakeholder to ensure they get the best possible outcome. Management consultants have experience with the many problems that businesses face. They will be able to provide an expert perspective on which solutions work best for a particular industry or offer an alternative decision that the client had not considered.
- Needing additional manpower: Management consultants can help a company with a single issue temporarily. Using their expertise, they could be more economical than hiring a new employee. Consultants are accustomed to learning everything they need to know very quickly, which makes onboarding rapid and uncomplicated.
- Requiring specific skills: A commonly cited reason for engaging management consultants is to use their expert skills that a company may not have in the current workforce. A company can hire a productivity expert, financial problem solver or process designer that would be expensive to hire full time. Management consultancy can bring the necessary skill set on demand.
What do management consultants do?
Because a management consultant can be employed by a company in any industry to offer assistance in various scenarios, their duties and responsibilities are diverse. The role generally includes the following:
- Conducting interviews and consultations with the client’s workforce, including employees, management team and other stakeholders in the business
- Facilitating focus group employee discussions and workshops
- Working closely with employees to monitor their work and behaviors that could affect company successes or profitability
- Using the information gathered, along with other material like case studies or research, to build an understanding of the business and characterize the problem
- Reviewing company data and performing further research as necessary to interpret the problem and form hypotheses
- Analyzing financial data to identify areas of waste and excess spending, and finding improvements that could increase business revenue
- Creating action plans and recommendations for changes that work toward solving the issues identified
- Presenting the findings, plans and recommendations to management or shareholders
- Assisting the client with any resources they need to carry out the plans and recommendations
- Managing and overseeing members of the management consultancy team
- Updating and liaising with the client to inform them of progress and successes
