What is a management consultant and how can I use him/her?

Hello Elena, there are Management Consultants to help with any and every aspect of business management.

In your case, do you have a clear strategy or are you just running the business on an ongong basis?

Do you have a clear end goal (both personal and for the business)?

Research suggests that business owner/managers who work with a Mentor are more resilient and achieve higher profits.

In my opinion it is important for every business owner to have clearly defined succession plans and exit strategies. The use of the plural here is important as the future is unpredictable. Having several potential strands to your exit strategy will prepare you for every eventuality and help to guide your routine decision-making.

Talk to a few consultants who are local to you, ask about their previous experience in the same field. You do not need to make a long-term committment, especially initially.

I wish you the best of luck for the future, Colin 

Hi Elena,

As Alex already mentioned, a management consultant can provide an AS-IS analysis of your business (maybe a SWOT analysis) and challenge you to take that step back and find the areas that can be improved (e.g. how to decrease cost, how to increase revenue, how to better use your time, how to increase your real estate portfolio, etc). 

For your specific case, I would recommend to liaise with a freelance consultant rather than a big consulting company, because the cost will be much lower and manageable.

Increasingly, management consultancy firms are being challenged by disruptive technologies which facilitate work for ex-management consulting freelancers. Freelancer consultants take a higher share of project-based work.

In a research commissioned by Odgers Connect, 40% of organisations revealed they now use a fairly even split of traditional management consulting firms and independent consultants. Also that study showed that independent consultants supplied 20% of all consultancy work purchased by companies (£2 billion of the £9.75 billion total).

Luckily, nowadays you can easily find freelance consultants (me being one of them) through sites like consulthon.com. If you want, we can liaise and discuss more about how I could help your business grow.

Kind regards,

Andrew

Hello Elena,

Management consulting is a branch of the business industry that deals with company analysis, weaknesses and strengths and provides advice on how an entrepreneur can develop his business in optimal conditions.

There are different branches of management consulting:

- strategic management: it deals with the analysis of the main objectives of the company, with the main revenue generating activities and the efficient allocation of resources according to the internal and external factors to which the company is exposed;

- information technology: is a form of consulting mainly used in the IT industry and who is helping business evolve from a technological point of view;

- Human resources management: is dealing with the organization of human resources and their tasks;

- Financial management: this type of management deals with the company’s financial plans including cash flow management, retirement planning, investment planning, financial risk management, insurance planning, tax planning and estate planning;

- Virtual management: it is dealing with virtual team management;

- Operations management: this type of management deals with the provision of services, execution of works, the production of goods and with all the operations that occur in a business;

- Engineering management: this type of management can be applied in the process of streamlining the industry;

- etc… there are many types of business consulting, almost any sector of activity can benefit from consulting services.

So, a consultant can give you great tips about what needs to be changed or added to a company and he (the consultant) would be a great „investment” for your business :). 

Hi Elena:

Being a management consultant is all about having a "Swiss Army knife of solutions you can use to work with a client," says Brad. Most consultants work on only a few projects at a time (and sometimes only a single project, depending on how large the client is) so they can really focus on their client's needs.

At the beginning of a project, much of the time is spent getting to know the client's business, which includes employee interviews and data collection. Consultants (depending on their level) are often responsible for the data analysis as well, taking the data they gather and turning it into digestible information to share with the company. (Otherwise known as using Excel to pull together spreadsheets and PowerPoint to develop presentations.)

And as you probably guessed, a big part of being a consultant is traveling to the client site. For some consultants, this is as-needed, for others this means adopting a Monday-through-Thursday on-the-road lifestyle. However, it's worth noting that, in general, larger firms require weekly travel, while smaller ones tend to offer more balance. Andrew Conrad, an independent consultant, really enjoyed that part of the job. "It was nice to have a group of peers that you could both work with and spend time with socially," he says.

But it can make for a long day. While you may have time for meals with your team or the client, there isn't ample downtime when on the road. "The hours are long, you often get in before the client arrives, and stay after the client leaves," says Rob. "After dinner out you often spend a portion of your night continuing to work on deliverables," he adds.

What Skills Do You Need?

Being a consultant takes a unique skill set that balances analytical abilities and stellar communication. Much of your time as a consultant will involve analyzing data and pulling together a story, and ultimately recommendations, for the client. However, a huge chunk of the project will involve interviewing employees, presenting information to a group of executives, and convincing the key players that your recommendations are sound.

"Much of it is like the basics of organizational psychology," says Brad. "It's taking the time to listen and understand elements of the situation and breaking that down to make it understandable to a group who is making a consensus-based agreement to move their business forward."

This means having excellent facilitator and listening skills. And relationship building is important as well—it's a lot easier to convince a senior executive of your recommendations if they like you and trust what you are saying.

I hope this helps you.....