Consulting firm

A consulting firm or simply consultancy is a professional service firm that provides expert advice for a fee. Consulting firms may have one employee or thousands; they may consult in a broad range of domains, for example, management, engineering, and so on.

Management consultants, in particular, typically work with company executives and provide them with generalists and industry-specific specialists, known as subject-matter experts, usually trained in management or in business schools. The deliverable of a management consultant is usually recommendations for achieving a company objective, leading to a company project.

Many consulting firms complement the recommendations with implementation support, either by the consultants or by technicians and other experts. This is called outsourcing.

Consulting services are part of the tertiary sector and account for several hundred billion dollars in annual revenues. Between 2010 and 2015, the 10 largest consulting firms alone made 170 billion dollars growth revenue and the average annual growth rate is around 4%.

Segments[]

The segmentation of advisory services varies widely across organizations and countries. Categorization is unclear, in part because of the upheavals that have occurred in this industry in recent years.^[1]

One approach is to separate services into four broad service delivery families, considering the managers they are targeting:

Services related to the company's overall strategy, which are addressed to the CEO,
Services related to marketing, communication, sales and public relations, which are addressed to the CMO,
Services related to management, financial management, taxation, accounting, compliance with regulations, for the CFO,
Services related to the company's operations, including information technology, intended for operational management, which may be different depending on the industrial sector (technology director, plant managers, operations directors, Research and Development managers), for instance COO and CTO.

Types[]

There are different types of Consulting Firms serving different sectors. They mainly fall under the following fields:

Some consulting firms also serve niche sectors such as

advertising/marketing/public relations consulting
environmental consulting
entertainment/media consulting
energy consulting
logistics consulting
consulting in politics and the public sector
real estate consulting
recycling consulting
commodities consulting

Many larger consulting firms will offer pooling as a business model, across time as well as space, where the distributed commodity is the specialized labour of its consultants. Consulting firms may also take on a coordinating role.^[3]

Successful consulting firm cases[]

Mexico[]

In 2013, there was a randomized trial in Mexico where 432 small and medium enterprises were allowed access to management consulting services for one year.^[4] As a result of this trial, there were many positive impacts. Such positive impacts include: increase in entrepreneurial spirit, increases in employment and higher wages for employees. Even after 5 years after the trial, positive impacts are still active. These results were achieved by advertising a consulting program to 432 enterprises and recorded data on the positive effects.

Money laundering in consulting firms[]

A consulting firm is a suitable instrument for money laundering.^[5] Illegally obtained money is laundered by the employment of consulting companies. The reason consulting firms are so effective at laundering money is because consulting services are immaterial, therefore, pricing is non-transparent.

Another reason consulting firms are effective at laundering money is because sometimes consultants regularly leverage their clients into charging higher prices.^[6] When a client of the consulting firm is satisfied, the consultant can charger higher fees through more leverage while setting prices through the contracting prices. Therefore, when auditors inspect financial statements provided by the consulting firm, the consulting firm can state that a certain consulting project costed an 'x' amount of money and auditors are unable to detect fraud, thus allowing money laundering to occur.

Impact of consulting firms in emerging economies[]

Negative impacts[]

The impact of consulting firms on local businesses in emerging economies do not always have positive effects.^[7] One reason for this is that firms in emerging economies suffer from the inferiority of their technologies and innovation capabilities, thus although they have access to consulting firms, they cannot make the most of the advice given. Advice given by consulting firms to clients may not be used efficiently as clients firms in emerging markets tend to suffer due to a lack of infrastructure, organisation, and education. Another reason firms in emerging economies struggle to effectively use consulting services is that innovation is very costly and risky.

Positive impacts[]

As noted above (Add link to Mexico CASE), consulting firms in emerging economies do also have positive impacts. Positive impacts include: increases in employment, increase in entrepreneurial spirit and higher wages for employees.

Impact of consulting firms in developed economies[]

One study shows that there is a significant difference between efficiency between consulting firms in America (Developed Economy) and consulting firms in Asia Pacific regions (Emerging Economy).^[8] Efficiency scores of consulting firms in America were significantly higher than consulting firms in Asia Pacific regions. This is because firms in developed economies have better infrastructure, organisation and education, thus advice given by consulting firms is used efficiently.

References[]

^ "Consulting on the Cusp of Disruption". Harvard Business Review. 2013-10-01. Retrieved 2017-12-30.
^ "Business plan examples". Monday, 25 November 2019
^ https://www.consultancy.uk/news/23120/three-new-business-models-in-the-consulting-industry
^ Bruhn, Miriam; Karlan, Dean; Schoar, Antoinette (April 2018). "The Impact of Consulting Services on Small and Medium Enterprises: Evidence from a Randomized Trial in Mexico". Journal of Political Economy. 126 (2): 635–687. doi:10.1086/696154. hdl:1721.1/121090. ISSN 0022-3808. S2CID 5814460.
^ Teichmann, Fabian Maximilian Johannes (2019-01-01). "Money laundering and terrorism financing through consulting companies". Journal of Money Laundering Control. 22 (1): 32–37. doi:10.1108/JMLC-10-2017-0056. ISSN 1368-5201. S2CID 159328510.
^ Momparler, Alexandre; Carmona, Pedro; Lassala, Carlos (2015-07-01). "Quality of consulting services and consulting fees". Journal of Business Research. Special issue on The Spirit of Strategy. 68 (7): 1458–1462. doi:10.1016/j.jbusres.2015.01.033. ISSN 0148-2963.
^ Back, Yujin; Praveen Parboteeah, K.; Nam, Dae-il (2014-12-01). "Innovation in Emerging Markets: The Role of Management Consulting Firms". Journal of International Management. 20 (4): 390–405. doi:10.1016/j.intman.2014.07.001. ISSN 1075-4253.
^ Park, Gowangwoo; Lee, Seok-Kee; Choi, Kanghwa (January 2021). "Evaluating the Service Operating Efficiency and Its Determinants in Global Consulting Firms: A Metafrontier Analysis". Sustainability. 13 (18): 10352. doi:10.3390/su131810352.