You are in business school and evaluating different career paths. One of them that interests you is consulting. But you realize there are many sub fields in consulting. There is for instance technology consulting, operations consulting, healthcare, the list goes on.
Among the most popular and well known consulting fields is management consulting. You hear of big firm names like McKinsey, BCG, and Bain and Company. What do these companies do?
The Role of Management Consulting
Management consulting heavily focuses on the strategy of the management of a company. The purpose is to improve the company’s performance through business strategy and strategic management. What does this mean in actual terms? It means management consulting is about aligning people and processes. Company’s have strategic goals that need to be met and in order to do this, they need to constantly adapt their approach given changes to the market.
Management consultants provide guidance to the leadership of companies by conducting research on different strategies that can be taken. For instance, they might suggest entering a new market to expand sales, acquiring a smaller company to expand capabilities, or to relocate operations for cost competitiveness. All of these require a skillset that is very adept at market research, problem solving, and stakeholder management.
While this skillset may seem very general, there are actually repeatable methodologies to accomplish this. These methodologies are called frameworks. One example of a framework popularly taught in business school is for instance Porter’s 5 Forces. This framework is used to determine the attractiveness of a given market for a business. It looks at for example how easy is the market to penetrate by new participants, the competitiveness of the industry, supplier and buyer power, as well as threat of potential substitutes.
Frameworks in Consulting
Frameworks like Porter’s 5 Forces are used. For instance assessing the viability of entering a new market for a business. Another framework could be for example, SWOT analysis, which is used in determining the strengths and weaknesses of a company in order to seize upon opportunities or manage potential risks.
In the end, management consulting focuses on adapting frameworks to given circumstances of a company. Frequently hypothesizing solutions and providing guidance to the leadership of the business.
About PrepareConsult:
PrepareConsult is a platform to practice the consulting case interview with AI and peers. PrepareConsult is founded by Milad Mohammadi and Sahhas Nathella.
Milad Mohammadi – 7+ years of experience in consulting and professional services with experience across North America and Europe.
Sahhas Nathella – 5+ years of experience in consulting and professional services with strong experience in complex digital transformations.
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