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.