Casebook Consulting

Overerview of the Consulting Industry

1 What is Consulting?

By the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business Management Consulting Group:[1]

In this section, we will provide an overview of the profession, the types of consulting, projects, and how consulting firms are structured.

Understanding each firm's approach to consulting services is extremely important to landing a job – that is why corporate presentations can be so valuable, provided that you come with specific questions you would like answered.

1 Why Do Companies Hire Consultants?

There are several reasons that firms hire consultants:

1. To obtain an objective viewpoint regarding a given business problem or issue. Consultants are relatively unaffected by a company's politics or the way in which business was conducted in the past, so the consulting firm delivers what is perceived as an objective analysis. This perspective can be important for motivating employees to change.

2. To utilize the specific expertise of the consulting firm. For example, the consulting firm may offer an industry authority to which the client would like access. Additionally, the consulting firm may have done similar projects in the past for comparable companies.

3. To obtain information about where the company stands in an industry. Consulting firms often develop benchmark data on the performance of industry average and best-in-class companies in order to provide expert advice regarding performance improvements.

4. To provide resources to address a specific problem. Often, clients simply do not have enough time or resources to devise solutions to certain problems. Consulting firms can avoid the day-to-day distractions that the clients' managers cannot. Further, consultants may offer labor power to coordinate and execute an implementation.

2 Consulting Project Types

Generally, consulting firms classify their services into of three categories: Strategy, Business Process Reengineering (or... [continues]

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