What does a typical corporate consulting assignment entail?
What does
a typical corporate consulting assignment entail
Understanding the roles and
responsibilities of consultants working for management consulting firms will
let you know if this career is proper for you.
As a management consultant, your main
role is to provide direction to your clients. If the company has plans of rationalizing
performance, your recommendations will determine whose contracts should be
terminated and whose should be kept. If your
client is looking to launch a new product, your market research will either
confirm or negate their decision. If
they’re threatened by developments in their competitor’s performance, your
analysis will hint them if, or not they should institute counter measures and
how, if they should.
To be able to perform this critical
role, you must fulfill the following responsibilities:
Definition
of the problem
The project usually starts with a
definition meeting with your client. They
will explain the business scenario you will work on and what they expect from
you at the end of the project. This is an
extremely crucial stage since it serves as the foundation of your strategies to
get things done. It objectively defines
your next steps, the amount of time you need, the essential documents to go
through, the people you will work with and other prerequisites.
Research
and data collection
To have valid bases for your
recommendation, you must conduct extensive research to gather the information
you need. If you need to study the
current financial status of the company, you might spend a few days reviewing
accounting documents and facilitating focused group discussions with finance
staff. If the concern is market-related,
you can delve on researched industry trends and best practices.
To organize the data, you would spend
many hours making consulting presentations. Presenting the research properly and
communicating the findings is a key consulting skill.
Analysis of information
Once you have the needed information
at hand, you will be able to deduce your qualitative analysis from it. Consultants often use precise management
consulting frameworks, principles and methodologies to draw inferences from the collected
data. These tools suggest the elements
to be examined, and areas to be evaluated. The good news is, analysis is something you
don’t have to do on your own. You can
discuss and brainstorm ideas with other consultants to arrive at
recommendations.
Presentation
of recommendations
You are also responsible for
presenting your recommendations in a clear and concise manner. Consultants usually use Microsoft PowerPoint
to make the presentations, though there are many progressive applications on which you are able to design engaging presentation slides. As a
consultant, you are only obliged to pose several options and recommendations,
but the final say must come from your client. Your client may invite your opinion on what
the best option in a particular situation may be, but the final call rests with
them.
This is why it is vital for you as a
consultant to be widely informed and abreast with various developments across
the world. The more informed and abreast
you are with social, political economic, legal and technological issues and
developments across the world, the more readily you will be able to engage with
your client and to provide useful insights into their circumstances. This, of course, presupposes that you will
have taken time to understand your client’s business adequately to be able to
engage with them at the same level. Most
times, the client will agree with your recommendations since they have high
regard for your competencies. However,
if you find yourself in a different situation, you must always respect the
client’s decision.
What makes a management consulting
job challenging is the amount of time consumed by each responsibility. Averagely, management consultants easily work
60 hours a week which makes it a very involving job.