Each year management consultants in the United States receive more than $2 billion for their services.1 Much of this money pays for impractical data and poorly implemented recommendations.2 To reduce this waste, clients need a better understanding of what consulting assignments can accomplish. They need to ask more from such advisers, who in turn must learn to satisfy expanded expectations.
What are Top consulting firm practices
Purposes 1 through 5 are generally considered legitimate functions, though some controversy surrounds purpose 5. Management consultants are less likely to address purposes 6 through 8 explicitly, and their clients are not as likely to request them. But leading firms and their clients are beginning to approach lower-numbered purposes in ways that involve the other goals as well. Goals 6 through 8 are best considered by-products of earlier purposes, not additional objectives that become relevant only when the other purposes have been achieved. They are essential to effective consulting even if not recognized as explicit goals when the engagement begins.
Consultants are not crusaders bent on reforming management styles and assumptions. But a professional diagnosis should include assessment of overall organizational effectiveness, and the consulting process should help lower whatever barriers to improvement are discovered. Good advisers are practitioners, not preachers, but their practices are consistent with their beliefs. When the consulting process stimulates experiments with more-effective ways of managing, it can make its most valuable contribution to management practice.
A.T. Kearney is ranked 10th in prestige amongst all consulting firms. The company is known for advocating strongly for female leaders, especially in countries such as India. A.T. Kearney offers several programs focused on diversity and inclusion.
The company employs roughly 2,400 worldwide and in generated roughly $670 million in revenues in 2018. Roland Berger is ranked 36th in terms of prestige amongst all consulting firms. The firm is known for its European culture and roots and for having bonuses contribute to a major portion of compensation for employees.
Yes, MBB firms offer the greatest prestige, but there actually may be other firms that fit your specific career path better. Do you know what you want to do after your time in consulting? Are you just going to pick the consulting firm with the largest reach? If so, you might be surprised to learn that neither McKinsey, BCG or Bain are even in the top 10 in terms of revenue generated.
We also have a General Management and Strategy consulting category for top consulting firms. What these firms do is somewhat similar to MBB. In addition, they have relatively high levels of prestige. These types of firms work on projects focused on setting strategic direction, pricing, organic and M&A growth strategy, sales, and organization. They also spend a lot of time focused on operations, financial engineering, and turnaround consulting. The top firms in this category are: Advancy, EY-Parthenon, Strategy&, Kearney, LEK, OC&C, Oliver Wyman, Roland Berger, and PwC Strategy&.
Economic and litigation consulting is its own beast. Firms in this part of the consulting market use advanced economic theories, tools, principles, and applications to help companies understand the value of assets or develop unique strategies. But they also tend to work alongside law firms to help place a value on the impact of illegal market behavior. Analysis Group and Bates White are the two contenders in this category.
Mercer is the lone member of our HR consulting category. Other HR consulting firms exist of course, such as Hewitt, but in our list of Top Consulting Firms, Mercer is the only HR consulting representative.
We have one more category with only one member. Bridgespan comprises the totality of our Non-profit consulting category. Bridgespan, and firms like it, can work on strategy development, operations, HR, or organizational issues, but focus on non-profit clients only. Oftentimes, strategies for fundraising are a key issue faced by nonprofits.
And finally, our list of top consulting firms contains some Industry or Function-focused players: Altman Solon, ClearView, DeciBio, Guidehouse, and Putnam fall here. These consulting firms focus on particular industries (i.e., healthcare, energy, financial services) or functions (i.e., supply chain, market research).
The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) is known as an innovative thought leader in the consulting industry with a strong focus on strategy. BCG has an intellectual culture that prioritizes creativity and academia. The firm has roughly 25,000 employees across 90 offices around the world. The company generates $11B in revenues annually.
Kearney (formerly known as A.T. Kearney) is an American global management consulting firm that focuses on strategic and operational CEO-agenda issues facing businesses, governments and institutions. Kearney maintains offices in more than 40 countries globally. The company generates roughly $1.4B in consulting revenues every year.
Roland Berger is a strategy consulting firm headquartered in Munich, with 52 offices in 35 countries. Roland Berger operates as a generalist strategy consultancy and advises clients on management issues ranging from strategy development to performance improvement. Roland Berger also advises in the fields of restructuring and marketing, with a focus on the Automobile Industry and the capital goods sector.
Booz Allen Hamilton offers management and technology consulting services, with an emphasis on technology and services to the U.S. Federal Government. The firm previously spun off Booz & Co., which was acquired by PwC. The firm generates roughly $8B in revenue on an annual basis.
Guidehouse is headquartered in Washington, DC and is a specialized, global professional services firm. The firm employs over 8,000 consultants across almost 40 countries and generates over $1B in annual consulting revenue. The firm focuses on three key business segments: healthcare, energy, and financial services advisory and compliance, serving clients in both the private and public sectors.
We trust this list of top consulting firms has been helpful for you in your search for your perfect fit. If you are looking to break into one of these firms (or ones not on the list), make sure your resume is optimized! If you have questions as to which consultancy might be best for your desired career path, book a 1hr session with a former MBB consultant today.
With questions like this facing the evolving higher education market, there are plenty of opportunities for education consulting firms to provide support. If the idea of working to better the education space excites you, education consulting might be right fit for you!
While there is no strict definition of what constitutes a boutique, the term generally refers to firms that are narrower in focus and smaller in size than the larger, generalist firms that consult on a wide range of topics across practice areas and industries. While the Top 50 ranking represents the highest scores of all firms that participate in our annual survey, only those that have fewer than 750 employees are eligible to be considered for the boutique ranking.
Jay Agnew, Chuck Bryan, Brian Hamilton, Laura Moss, Erin Mullinax, and Matt Sargent have all worked for multiple consulting firms, and currently work for Marathon Consulting. Their combined consulting experience spans over a century; and their expertise covers everything from cutting-edge apps, user experience design, legacy system support, project management, and data warehouse design.
Disruptive technologies, as well as new market competitors leveraging them to challenge the long-term economic hegemony of major corporations, will likely continue to drive investment in consulting. In order to avoid becoming bystanders in the race for digitalisation, companies of all sizes are engaging consulting firms in order to assist them with technological and business transformations. Meanwhile, a sustained period of geo-political uncertainty arising from the unknown quantity of Brexit, and the decreasingly consistent Presidential stylings of the Donald Trump administration, mean businesses are keen to examine their international operations, in order to plan for worst case scenarios relating to new crises that may arise from such unpredictable variables.
The top 200, meanwhile, are estimated to have a 80% hold on the market, again up on previous years, which illustrates a trend for consolidation at the pinnacle of the industry. Despite an influx of rapidly growing start-ups into the consulting world, experts at leading analyst firms, including ALM, IDC and Gartner, predict that this consolidation is set to continue.
PwC, which has also notably expanded its practices across Ireland lately, is followed by Deloitte, who saw 8% revenue growth, bringing in a total of $15.3 billion last year. With revenues of $14.5 billion, EY booked the highest growth of the Big Four. As the firm continues to invest heavily in its strategy outfit Parthenon-EY, a boost of 11% to total revenues saw the consultancy make significant ground on its competitors. Meanwhile, KPMG, the smallest of the four players in advisory and other services, grew its consulting fee income by 6% to reach revenues of $11.5 billion.
One similarity among the top 10 is that they are all strong in digital and technology due to the growth in the field in terms of client demands. With digital transformation consulting now worth $23 billion globally, the top seven providers of consulting services have had to adapt from traditional business and management work in order to maintain their market dominance. The last of the seven, Accenture, is a prime example of this, having pledged $1.8 billion over the course of 2017, chiefly in order to grow its digital offering by way of acquisitions. The firm booked strong growth of 7% to book revenues of $4.6 billion in 2016. 2ff7e9595c
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