The Changing Face of Management Consulting

The management consulting profession is going through a time of dramatic change. Many of the services offered 20 or even 5 years ago are no longer in demand. Seventeen of the world's largest consulting firms have been involved in a major acquisition in the last three years. These changes have resulted in a re-definition of the work consultants do and offers an evermore exciting place for a career. Several consultants from the Gemini Consulting Firm recently held a roundtable discussion about management consulting, offering new definitions and discussing recent trends.

Management consulting has been described by the people who do it as "intellectually challenging", "a continual learning experience", "demanding", and "exciting". What is this career that offers so much? What is it that management consultants do? "I think that consulting is making a difference for clients," responded Joyce Golonka, a consultant in the operations area. "A difference in the way they compete within their industry, the way that they work within their organization, and the way they feel about the organization,." David Bebbington, who works in the strategy practice added, "Consulting is partnering with clients to get results through the use of tools and techniques, including process and content knowledge and also bringing an unbiased view to the table- something many clients struggle with." "I think the value-added that we can provide as consultants is in challenging conventional wisdom," continued Mary Johnsson, a consultant in strategy practice. "Part of the work we are doing these days with our larger clients is identifying paradigm shifts and ideas beyond conventional thinking, either through learning from the marketplace or learning from their understanding of the organization."

Business, as it is practiced today, is far more complex than in the past. Organizations are multi-functional, multi-business, and, increasingly, multi-national. In order to meet the correspondingly more complex demands of clients, the consulting profession is moving towards addressing the needs of clients across multiple functions. According to Bebbington, "the trend for the future is bringing three practice areas together for clients: strategy, operations (business process and organization design, etc.) and information technology. As the issues become more and more ambiguous, the problems we hear are `fix this process or fix that process' but `We are just not doing as well as we need to be doing to compete in this industry; we need some help.'" The consultants who participated in this discussion work in three different practice areas. When working together on a strategic change engagement, each area focuses on a particular problem set for organizations, and each group is distinguished by unique core skills and expertise.

In the past, a strategy engagement would have been pursued quite separately from an operations or information technology (IT) assignment. Today, strategy is an integral part of a successful change management program. In an engagement where these disciplines are working together, strategy work streams involve planning and implementing solutions that will position the client for a leadership position in the marketplace. Johnsson explained, "A strategy work streamtypically has an external bias. We bring ourknowledge of the marketplace to the client anddiscover how to leverage marketplace activitiesand business trends with where the organizationwants to go and their stated and implicitstrategy. During the course of a project, we willanalyze, audit or help clients formulate aparticular business strategy, or align theirline-of-business strategies with corporatestrategy. Assignments include a heavy dose ofcompetitive benchmarking, understanding customerneeds and marketplace segmentation work."

Bebbington added, "We've also done work interms of strategy implementation: what it takes torealize the strategy; what milestones you have topass; how you realize you have passed them; andresources available to you as a result."

The complex strategic change engagements oftoday literally transform an organization from top tobottom. In terms of a project, it involves allthree practice areas on site as part of theproject team, with parallel, interconnecting workstreams which revitalize the organization, theculture, the work process and organizationredesign, which must be, for example, streamliningexisting work processes or developing new ones,usually with the desired goal of increasingeffectiveness or productivity, reducing cost andincreasing revenues in the organization. The tasksinvolve both design and implementation.Implementation is critical-it is at least 75% ofthe effort. More and more teams are usinginformation gained from the strategy component,i.e., knowledge of the customer, to driveimprovements in internal work processes."

Laura Urbanic, who works in both the operationsand information technology areas, continued, "Theprojects we work on today are more than justhelping the client to get its house in order,streamline its basic business processes and becomemore cost-effective in the short-term. It'shelping the client take the next step toward whereit needs to be in the future. That's where thestrategy work comes in as well as IT, looking atpossible new technologies to help the client makethat change, while continuing the cost improvementwork of today. From an IT perspective, I see threekey deliverables: cost-effectiveness, which isstrongly related to operations; streamlining thebusiness process used within the IT arena; andsystems integration. What that means isdiscovering how clients bring all of theirtechnology together and providing the informationthat the business needs to move into the future ina more cost-effective way. Finally, perhaps themost important thing that we do, is address thecultural issues that have historically divided theinformation technology groups from the rest of thebusiness. We begin to look at informationrather than technology, and try to link itinto the business process and the strategy workstreams."

Trevor Ware, who works in informationtechnology, went on, "To do a large organizationalchange project, in my mind, is to optimize thesmaller pieces, or work streams, within a projectto take a holistic approach. This broad-basedapproach is a powerful tool for strategic change."

Because of the increasing complexity of themarketplace, clients must change, oftendramatically, in order to remain competitive.Consulting must change as well to meet newdemands. Urbanic explained, "Historically,projects have been smaller, in one area, or in onedivision of a company. Now our engagements are farmore complex. Also, I see that clients are nowlooking for content and process expertise. Theyare asking consultants to be experts in theirfield and in their industries, as well asproficient in implementing change. Thesechallenges are driving a fundamentaltransformation in the consulting profession."

Johnsson added, "I see an additional trend interms of the international scope of organizations.Not only is it necessary to be global--tophysically be in different countries, but clientsmust manage globally--and that imperative has astrong impact on client organizations. I think ourrole as consultants is to monitor worldwidetrends, to understand different businesspractices, cultures and mindsets, and toeffectively advise and help our clients manageglobally." "I think we are going to see dramaticincreases in the demand overseas for consultingservices from companies that in the past wouldnever have used them," concluded Bebbington.

Management consulting firms must change inresponse to the shifting marketplace. Consultants,too, must change and upgrade how they provideservice, they must hone skills and expertise whileremaining broad-based enough to forge connectionsacross diverse issues. Ware stressed, "At everyturn we have to match and surpass our client'sknowledge. We also have to make change happen.Today, clients demand far more than a writtenreport." Golonka added, "Consulting is a continuallearning experience. We get a chance to work onleading-edge issues; to be one step ahead of therest of the industry." The expectations for anindividual consultant are very high. Clientsrightly expect consultants to make valuablecontributions to their organization from themoment they step in the door.

Management consulting is a truly dynamic,exciting and rewarding place to be right now.Golonka perhaps summed it up best when she said,"It's very fulfilling to watch clients go throughchange successfully. I get a personal thrill outof the whole process of consulting--the process ofmaking a difference to my clients."

Prepared by Gemini Consulting, the managementconsulting firm involved with integrating thetraditionally seperate practice areas of strategy,operations and information technology.

Reprinted from Careers and the MBA,Fall 1992 Edition