Industry Profile
Consulting is the career that draws more students from Kellogg than any other. In past years approximately 40% of the Kellogg class has chosen to enter consulting as a career. This profile serves to give new students some basic information on the consulting industry to guide them on their future career path.
Consulting is the business of providing advice to firms pursuing a turnaround, on the move, or trying to do what they do better, faster, and more cheaply. It is one of the fastest growing industries in today's corporate world and one of the most popular career choices for new MBA's. It is also an industry that is complicated to define because the term consulting is so broad and has different meanings to different people.
Work of a Consultant
A consultant may be a noted researcher contracted by a corporation help solve a problem using the most advanced techniques. This is certainly true for many of the Kellogg faculty. A consultant may be a young professional who helps develop intricate computer systems for a corporate client. In regards to most MBA students, a consultant is a professional analyst who assists major corporations in understanding complex business issues and developing and implementing an action plan to address them.
Types of Consulting
There are a wide range of services that consulting firms provide. It is difficult to clearly categorize consulting firms since nearly all of them engage in a wide range of work, and change frequently to capture shifting client needs. Some of the most prevalent areas currently are:
- Strategy
Aims to help a client's senior executives (for instance, the CEO and board of directors) understand and face the strategic challenges of running their company or organization. Strategy consultants work with the client's most senior management, since senior management sets a company's strategy and long-term plans.
Historically, strategy consulting firms made their recommendations, presented a "deck" (a report detailing the issues and recommendations), and walked away. Increasingly, however, clients expect the strategists to stick around and implement their suggestions. Consequently, more consulting firms now tout their "implementation" capabilities. This implementation often involves Internet applications or what consultants tenderly call "e-consulting."
- Operations/Process
examine a client's internal workings, such as production processes, distribution, order fulfillment, and customer service. While strategy consultants set the firm's goals, operations consultants ensure that clients reach these goals. Operations consultants investigate customer service response times, cut operating or inventory backlog costs, or investigate resource allocation. They improve distribution, heighten product quality, or restructure departments and organizations (a specialty of the "re-engineering" craze of the early 1990s).
- IT Strategy
consultants help clients achieve their business goals. IT consultants (also called "systems consultants") work with corporations and other clients to understand how they can best leverage technology for the organization. They design custom software or networking solutions, test for system and program compatibility, and ensure that the new system is properly implemented.
Most IT consultants, by definition, boast sharply honed technical skills. But no one says you absolutely need to know how to rewire a router for maximum communications efficiency. IT solutions must be implemented as an overall part of a business solution. Otherwise, clients are sure to scream for cost-justification and/or fire their IT department heads for wasting money when solutions start to fail. Commonly referred to as "business analysts," IT consultants also includes those who know how to maximize technology solutions to support business needs.
Consulting companies, who once courted Y2K and ERP (enterprise resource planning) specialists, now confidently turn to these consultants for "the next big thing": solving problems connected with electronic business (or e-business) and electronic commerce (e-commerce) on a widespread basis. E-business refers to any kind of business conducted online, whereas e-commerce involves a transfer of monetary funds over the Internet.
Traditionally, e-consulting began as web consulting, which involved mostly front-end design work: programming, graphic designs, and prototypes. With the proliferation of dot-coms, almost all consulting companies now offer a wider range of services: e-commerce, B2B, valuations, branding, marketing, and so on. The best e-consulting firms, however, understand their clients want more. They want an e-commerce operation created from scratch. This means lots of work all around.
If you want to participate in this great new wave but prefer to leave behind the risk, consider the larger, more traditional firms. Everyone is vying for an e-consulting market position, including the blue chips. Many of these firms are enhancing their trademark specialties: strategy for building e-commerce, conducting B2B, and positioning the dot-com. Unfortunately, clients prefer to continue hiring the big guns for industry rather than for dot-com expertise. This is legitimate, though, considering the big players (as usual) have joined the dot-com game in the later innings.
- Human Resources
- Financial Marketing
When evaluating consulting firms, here are some key issues to keep in mind.
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