What is consulting?
Consulting is becoming an increasingly broader industry incorporating roles such as management consultants, recruitment consultants and business advisors, to name just a few.
But whichever way you look at it consultancy is a varied profession, with projects and clients changing constantly. This can be the beauty but also the challenge of this profession.
The origins of the consulting industry in the UK and the US firms extended their reach across the Atlantic, and the Professional Consultants Club was set up shortly after as a membership body for the growing market.
Definition of consulting
Consulting is the business of giving expert advice to other professionals. It engaged in the business of giving expert advice to people working in a professional or technical field such as "a consulting engineer". Consulting is providing of expert knowledge to a third party for a fee. Consulting is most often used when a company needs an outside, expert opinion regarding a business decision. For example, a company seeking to sell its products abroad may look for a consultant familiar with the business practices of the target country. The consultant will tell the company what best practices should be followed, what to expect from customers, and how to deal with foreign regulations.
Business consulting refers to both the industry, and the practice of, helping organizations improve their performance, primarily through the thorough analysis of existing business problems and development of plans for improvement. Organizations hire the services of management consultants for a number of reasons, including, for example, to gain external, and presumably more objective advice and recommendations, to gain access the consultants' specialized expertise, or simply as temporary help during a one-time project, where the hiring of permanent employees is not required. Because of their exposure to and relationships with numerous organizations, consultancies are also said to be aware of industry 'best practices,' although the transferability of such practices from one organization to another is the subject of debate. Consultancies may also provide organizational change management assistance, development of coaching skills, technology implementation, strategy development, or operational improvement services. Business consultants generally bring their own, proprietary methodologies or frameworks to guide the identification of problems, and to serve as the basis for recommendations for more effective or efficient ways of performing business tasks.
Business consulting refers generally to the provision of business consulting services, but there are numerous specializations, such as information technology consulting, human resource consulting, and others, many of which overlap, and most of which are offered by the large diversified consultancies listed below. So-called 'boutique' consultancies, however, are smaller organizations specializing in one or a few of such specializations.
Business Consulting is becoming more prevalent in non-business related fields as well. As the need for professional and specialized advice grows, other industries such as government, quasi-government and not-for-profit agencies are turning to the same managerial principles that have helped the private sector for years.
One important and recent change in the industry has been the spin-off or separation of the consulting and the accounting units of the large diversified firms. For these firms, which began business as accounting firms, management consulting was a new extension to their business. But precipitated by a number of highly publicized scandals over accounting practices, such as the Enron scandal, accountancies began divestiture of their management consulting units, to more easily comply with tighter regulatory scrutiny that arose in the wake of the scandals.
