Did you know there are roughly 982,187 consulting firms in the US?
Most consulting firms fall into one of five categories, depending on what they do. If you need a consultant, you’ll need to figure out which category is suited to your situation, or else you may hire the wrong firm and lose money.
This post will cover the five types of management consulting services you’ll generally run into. Once you’ve finished this post, you’ll know exactly which kind of management consultant you should contact.
Let’s begin!
1. Strategy Consultants
Strategy consultants help businesses plan for the long term.
So, if you work with a strategy consultant, they’ll sit down with you and ask you where you want your company to be in 3-5 years. In some cases, they might pick an even longer time horizon than this, such as 10 or 20 years.
Anyhow, if you work with a strategy consultant, they’ll try to figure out what is going to change in your industry. They’ll also try to figure out how the world is going to change, as a whole, over this timeline.
They will then come up with some suggestions in regards to how your company can remain profitable and competitive in light of these changes.
For instance, suppose a clothing company in the 90s spoke to a strategy consultant. In a situation like this, a consultant might suggest that the firm focuses on eCommerce due to the rise of the internet.
The consultant would then try to formulate a plan that explains exactly how the clothing company can make money using the internet.
A lot of strategy consulting companies publish case studies based on their work. You can find relevant case studies like this by Googling the name of your industry, alongside the term ‘strategy consulting case study.’
If you do this, you’ll see some real-life examples of how strategy consulting works and how businesses have benefited from this sort of thing.
2. Financial Consultants
Financial consulting, also known as CFO management consulting, can help you with the financial side of your firm.
Now, this help can come in many forms, and it often depends on how complicated your business is.
For example, in some cases, the consultant might just offer cash flow management advice so that the company always has money on hand.
However, if the company in question has a large amount of cash in the bank, the financial consultant might offer investment advice.
This advice might suggest how the company can invest their money so that it earns a return for them.
Some financial consultants also offer training sessions. These sessions can help your staff get their heads around complex financial concepts such as ‘deferred revenue.’
By the way, if you have no idea what this concept is and you’d like to read about it, you can learn more here.
3. Operations Consultants
Operations consultants will look at the way your company operates, and they will then help you figure out how you can make things more efficient.
Essentially, they’re going to treat your business as a machine that delivers a certain result. They’re then going to figure out how you can deliver this result for less.
To complete this task, operations consultants will look at every aspect of your business. So, they might review the money you’re spending on employees, contractors, suppliers, licenses, and so on.
They will then consider how you can optimize these costs so that you’re not spending as much money.
Sometimes, operations consultants will suggest innovative strategies that’ll improve production.
For instance, suppose you run a manufacturing company, and you have a factory. In a situation like this, the operations consultant might suggest something known as ‘just in time’ production.
This is a factory workflow concept developed by Toyota, and it can reduce production times and waste. If your factory doesn’t use this approach or something like it, the consultant might suggest it.
If you agree to this method, the operations consultant will help you implement it. They’ll also keep a close eye on the data to see if there’s a positive uptick in results.
4. IT Consultants
As the name suggests, IT consultants will help you improve the IT side of your business.
This kind of management consulting service is helpful if you need to make complicated changes to the way your business uses IT.
For instance, if you’re going to migrate your servers to the cloud, you will probably need to bring in an IT consultant. Alternatively, if you need to reduce AWS costs, you’ll likely need to hire a consultant.
It’s worth noting that IT consultants tend to be quite specialized. After all, cloud migration often demands a completely different skill set when compared to ERP installation.
This skill set can take many years to develop, and so most IT consultants only focus on a specific thing.
As a result, if you’re looking to hire an IT consultant, try to find someone that is an expert in the task you need help with.
5. HR Consultants
HR business management consultants help you with hiring and just the general way you deal with people in your firm.
For instance, if you work with an HR consultant, they might suggest some ideas that’ll help you improve employee wellbeing. They might even suggest how you can improve employee retention.
In many cases, HR consultants will also ask you what you’d like your company culture to be. They will then help you figure out how you can make changes to your company so that the culture aligns with what you want.
Will You Invest in Management Consulting Services?
Now that you’ve read this post, you should know more about the different kinds of management consulting services.
As mentioned, some management consultants tend to be highly specialized. Following this, if you need help with a very specific task, you should reach out to a specialist within the relevant category.
In doing so, you can ensure that you get a good return on your money when investing in consulting.
Did you like this post? If you’d like to read another article like this, visit our blog to see some of our latest posts!
