Management consulting is a service provided by professionals who are paid to provide advice and assistance to organizations in order to help them perform better and create additional value for owners and shareholders. The primary task of any management consultant is to identify the problem and put it in its context. Management consultants are often presented with challenging scenarios when solving problems on behalf of a client, and they can offer their experience and advice in the sector based on similar projects they have worked on for other clients. Management consulting firms are hired as objective external analyzers of an organization, including businesses, government institutions, nonprofit organizations, and more. They are expected to provide more value to customers than the cost of their services.
Clients may ask them to advise an executive director on whether to abandon a line of business, acquire new business interests, or redefine a marketing strategy. At first glance, the sector may seem glamorous: you have to travel a lot by plane, work on complex business problems and be exposed to senior managers. However, management consultants rarely see the results of all their hard work because, as soon as one project ends, they need to move on to the next. Management consulting firms gain experience in specific areas over time, because they tend to concentrate their efforts on specific areas of interest. This suggests that management consultants are presumably adding more value to customers than the cost of their services. In other words, management consulting firms are often hired specifically as outsiders to help them make decisions.
