Consulting business overview

Diversity and changes in consulting business make it difficult to distinguish consulting service types and to understand position of different companies in this business. Technological developments and their expansion through all processes in business is the main driving force of the change.

Types of consulting services

There are different types of consulting services which have similarities but also diversities. This makes it difficult to classify consulting services and to be understood by people out of this business. It is more likely that consultants come across the question "so what do you do in your job?". (Hopefully, I got used to this question thanks to being an industrial engineer :))

Some of the most common types are strategy consulting, management consulting, human resources consulting, IT consulting ... Instead of explaining all types of consulting services in detail, I want to give a grouping of services from an enterprise viewpoint which will also help us to understand the direction of change. 

What makes a firm to get consulting services?

Growth is the main reason why firms apply consulting services. Firms want to:

• define their targets and strategy, design their roadmaps
• plan and manage change activities to implement the strategy and to reach defined targets 
• finally operate functionally in compliance with the main strategy
• and manage risks and make assessments all over these steps

All these demands help us to classify and align different consulting services in four groups.

Types of Consulting Services

• Direction : The first group includes consulting services related to strategy and overall vision which will affect the position of the company in the market. Consultants work with C-level executives. Entering to a foreign market, starting to serve in another sector, start-ups, merger and acquisitions can be given as example activities. Therefore, strategy consulting, management (planning) consulting and transaction (M&A) consulting services can be grouped under this topic. 

• Change : The main focus is performance improvement and developing the overall business according to the result of gap analysis between as-is and target sytems. Consultants work in coordination with C-level executives and medium level managers. Design of new manufacturing processes based on lean principles, development of a new marketing plan, technology selection and designing implementation plan are example services. Types of consulting services under this group are management consulting (performance), marketing consulting, technology consulting, financial consulting and some services of HR consulting.

• Operation : Consulting services that requires specific skill set, knowledge on methodologies, tools, regulations and aims to implement designed solutions in the field. Consultants work with medium level managers. Implementation of a new software, process documentation, integration of a new accounting tool and tax services can be given as example services. 

• Governance-Risk-Assurance : The last group includes governance, risk and assurance services like risk mapping and mitigation plan, IT risk and assurance services, board performance assessment. Consultants can work with C-level executives, different level of managers or practitioners depending on the type of service.

Before moving on changes in consulting business, it is better to mention current understanding of management consulting. It was a term to express strategy and planning consulting services together but when the consulting services separated to lower branches (marketing, technology, HR, finance) and expand in these specific branches, it started to act as a broader term to cover services in direction and change group. Therefore, it is better to introduce a management consultant with his/her specific expertise. 

How consulting business changing?

Firms are looking for more than advices!!! When they come across with new technologies, regulations, difficult market conditions out of globalization and economic volatility; they want to have companion by their consultants throughout the roadmap. This cause big consulting companies to broaden their services while also causing establishment of more sector or skill focused consulting companies. 

Previously, when all functions of firms are managed by executives, consulting was about defining strategies, designing roadmaps and presenting to executive level. When firms start to grow, market conditions are changed and all processes are integrated with IT architectures; enterprise understanding is accepted and firms turned into more granular but integrated structures. Therefore, clients require broader perspectives to understand overall enterprise but also specific expertise for each unit to function better. 

Technology is the main aspect which drives the change and exists in strategy of firms. This makes consulting companies to follow technological developments and diversify their services to grow whole consulting market and get market share. While big consulting companies doing that, boutique type consulting firms are also being established to address specific type of requirements like social media marketing, data management, mobile application development etc.

Consulting companies do not state change in the market or their direction but it is obvious that they are broadening their services. You can come across the description below in one of the leading management and strategy consulting firm McKinsey&Company.

"From strategy to operations, we are committed to helping our clients build their functional skills and boost performance for the long term." http://www.mckinsey.com/client_service

The figure below does not depend on any output from related companies but just what I see about these companies as an example of the change in sector.

Change and direction of change in consulting

Independently of type of services, gray bars shows the level of focus of each firm in three groups of consulting services, while yellow arrows shows the direction and intensity of the change.

EY states its positioning in the market on its website. The dotted lines show the expansion and two way direction of change compared to previous positioning diagram.

   

EY change in focus

Another change is consulting services are turning into complete packages or discrete products. In addition to consulting services as processes, consulting products with defined scope, planning and type of deliverables (that do not change depending on the client) are being sold. 

Although I cannot see concrete evidence about it yet, I think program management and project management services will grow to cover management of all previous groups as the fifth group of consulting services.

to be a successful consultant / advisor

It is very important for a consultant to be an expert on her/his field, but is it enough?

Besides being an expert,

• be a person that can be consulted!!!
• be modest
• trust yourself and make people trust you!!
• take responsibility
• be a good listener!!
• follow what is going around
• be curious about subjects that you need to be but not more!
• be willing to learn
• know how to search and learn by yourself!!!
• create solutions instead of saying what is wrong!!
• ask good questions! 
• never say to your client they are doing wrong but make them aware what they are doing wrong and make them ask help from you!!
• be a good team player!
• be passionate about what you are doing
• be patient!
• be willing to serve your client but within the scope
• get all questions seriously and answer them clearly, even the most stupid ones!!
• make jokes but within the limits!
• learn to say "we" instead of "I & You"...

Advisory vs Consultancy

There are many consultancy firms in the world, some of them are global and some of them are local. And some global firms, especially the ones in assurance sector (the Big 4) have created/established advisory sub-units and I am working at one of them.

Before I take part in this environment, I wanted to be a consultant. I was thinking that (as almost everyone did) advisory and consultancy are interchangable terms in business. But after I became an advisor (not a good word : )), I claim that they are different terms.

There are varying  point of views about how they are different than each other. The most common understanding is "advisors give advise but not implement" while "consultants act as practitioners and implement solutions". What I see in practice is:

In advisory you have to be more analytical and be aware of the technologies, developments, standards, ... etc in the world. You have to know the sector itself that you are serving and have an idea about every tool, standard, methodology, process, structure, regulation ...etc in the sector and even the relations and dependencies with other sectors. Your role as an advisor, is to analyze the system of your client, define the aspects that needs to be improved, suggest possible solutions by a study of benchmarking and customize these solutions for the specific requirements of your client.

In consultancy you have to be more open-minded and innovative/creative. You have to know the world(!) and the market(!) itself. Your role as a consultant, is to draw general view of how the world is changing, help your client to define development goals and design a roadmap to reach these goals. Consultancy is much more about designing strategies, developing new or really modified processes and increasing the ability of making decisions. 

I do not include IT consultants working in IT companies while defining consultancy. If you are working in IBM and implementing DB2 to your client, it sounds more like selling rather than consulting...

Advisory force you to learn many tools and methodologies and makes you a perfect follower of developments in the world. The thing what makes you a successful advisor is improving your client's existing business understanding and processes more than the other users of these tools or methodologies.

I believe that, consecutive use of consultancy and advisory will reveal more exhaustive solutions which lead the client to success.

Is urgency enough for planning?

Everything is urgent but urgent is subjective so make it objective!

Planning is very important to have things done on time but it is not always easy to do and to maintain. You might plan your day or week and start to work based on your plan but there is always unexpected tasks that will cause you to change your plan. Unfortunately almost all new tasks come as "urgent". What should be the methodology if everything is urgent? Should you plan them in order as they arrived, according to the level of person who ask you to do or based on something else? 

All people subjectively consider their own jobs as urgent and important. If you are working together with more than one person, it is more likely that you will have urgent tasks on your desk being followed by many people. In such a case you need to find a way to prioritize them with an objective urgency level. Otherwise, you will end up having some tasks that are not finished on time and some are ready before they are required.

My methodology is making use of "due date" and "time required". If these are not enough to include everything in my plan to finish on time, I consider my "responsibility level" as the third criterion.

Always be aware about due dates of your tasks. If it is not told you in advance, do not hesitate to ask! Then calculate time required based on your previous experiences. If you are not experienced on this task you might ask further questions about required length of document and detail level or spend a few minutes to search through knowledge databases of your firm, through the Internet or by asking people who worked on this subject  to understand what exactly should be done.

Start placing the tasks on a time line base on their due dates. You might develop different strategies for that but if you do not have any strategy that fits you best or does not have any idea, "Urgency/Importance Matrix" is a useful tool. 

List all tasks on your to-do-list and first give them an importance level. You can use different scales as low-medium-high or give numbers from 1 to 5. Then draw four quadrants as left. In addition to importance, consider urgency level of your tasks and place them in related quadrants. Then you are ready to fill your timeline. Start placing the tasks in 1st quadrant, continue with 2 and 4 and finally place tasks in 3rd quadrant. If you are not able to include all tasks based on their due dates and time required, you are almost done to eliminate tasks with low importance and low urgency. However, you should be careful not to eliminate all tasks in 3rd quadrant for a long period because most probably these will be activities that you want to do to enjoy, gain energy, refresh which are also very important for your overall performance. If the tasks that you could not fit your timeline are required by someone else, do not lose time to inform people about you do not have time to do this task. It is obviously better to be honest than not to keep promises. This will also make people let you know about tasks earlier.

All these might seem so structural and time consuming but when you get used to, it will start to be automatically in your brain and will help you to use your time efficiently. I am absolutely sure that if you do not have any plan, you spend time on thinking what to do next! And if your immediate decision does not work well, you switch tasks and spend additional time to focus on each. When you are becoming expert on planning, you will develop your own strategies, tools, balancers etc.

As an example, I usually do not plan short tasks. 

If someone asks me for a small thing that will take less than 10 minutes, although it is not urgent, I do it immediately. Because I know that if I do not do it now, I will delay it till due date and maybe I will not have even 10 minutes at that time. It will also keep place in my mind and create additional stress. Moreover, when I do it directly after the person asks, s/he will be happy and have more tolerance towards me in future. 

Another thing that I do different than the tool suggests, I do not always do importance tasks first. If they fit in my timeline, I try to finish as more tasks as possible before starting the most important one. Of course leaving some more time than required for unexpected problems. By doing that, I do not let other tasks to disturb me while working on the important one and can focus better. Another thing is people work more efficiently when close to due. This method also helps me to ensure quality in less important tasks. When  I start from the most important, I always want to spend more time to make it perfect which cause less time to others. However, by this way, the waiting important task make me work efficient on the others and close due date make me work efficiently on the important one. 

Learn about planning tools that will help you to develop your own methods that will fit you most.