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Concept
Consulting firm
Summary
A consulting firm or simply consultancy is a professional service firm that provides expertise and specialised labour for a fee, through the use of consultants. Consulting firms may have one employee or thousands; they may consult in a broad range of domains, for example, management, engineering, and so on.
Management consultants, in particular, typically work with company executives and provide them with generalists and industry-specific specialists, known as subject-matter experts, usually trained in management or in business schools. The deliverable of a management consultant is usually recommendations for achieving a company objective, leading to a company project.
Many consulting firms complement the recommendations with implementation support, either by the consultants or by technicians and other experts.
Consulting services are part of the professional services and account for several hundred billion dollars in annual revenues. Between 2010 and 2015, the 10 largest consulting firms alone made 170 billion dollars growth revenue and the average annual growth rate is around 4%.
The segmentation of advisory services varies widely across organizations and countries. Categorization is unclear, in part because of the upheavals that have occurred in this industry in recent years.
One approach is to separate services into five broad service delivery families, considering the managers they are targeting:
Services related to the company's overall strategy, which are addressed to the CEO,
Services related to marketing, communication, sales and public relations, which are addressed to the CMO,
Services related to management, financial management, taxation, accounting, compliance with regulations, for the CFO,
Services related to the company's operations, intended for operational management, which may be different depending on the industrial sector (technology director, plant managers, operations directors, Research and Development managers), for instance COO and CTO,
Service related to information technology (see IT consulting) intended for information management, which are addressed to the CIO.
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Ontological neighbourhood
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Consultant
A consultant (from consultare "to deliberate") is a professional (also known as expert, specialist, see variations of meaning below) who provides advice or services in an area of specialization (generally to medium or large-size corporations). Consulting services generally fall under the domain of professional services, as contingent work. The Harvard Business School defines a consultant as someone who advises on "how to modify, proceed in, or streamline a given process within a specialized field".
Professional services
Professional services are occupations in the service sector requiring special training in liberal arts and pure sciences education or professional development education. Some professional services, such as architects, accountants, engineers, doctors, and lawyers require the practitioner to hold professional degrees or licenses and possess specific skills. Other professional services involve providing specialist business support to businesses of all sizes and in all sectors; this can include tax advice, supporting a company with accounting, IT services, public relations services or providing management services.
Management consulting
Management consulting is the practice of providing consulting services to organizations to improve their performance or in any way to assist in achieving organizational objectives. Organizations may draw upon the services of management consultants for a number of reasons, including gaining external (and presumably objective) advice and accessing consultants' specialized expertise regarding concerns that call for additional oversight. As a result of their exposure to and relationships with numerous organizations, consulting firms are typically aware of industry "best practices".