Consultancy is all about using the knowledge, expertise and experience to guide others to achieve their goals. Management consulting is about guiding the management of an organization on the current and future problems and opportunities related to its structural and functional aspects. From the routine processes to strategic decisions, consultancy has wide area of operations.
Some Of The Key Functional Areas That It Deals With Are:
a)Managing The Change: Business environments are dynamic, based on a number of internal and external factors. Any change in these environments affects the business requiring corrections at lower, middle and/or top level. Managing the change is about its quick anticipation and developing the capabilities of organization to accept the change. It prevents the losses and the element of risk that the change may bring.
b)Business Transformation Outsourcing (BTO): Professional organizations know what their core competencies are. With increasing wave of globalization, many corporations felt the need to focus only on their core competencies and outsource their other activities. Thereby, they reduced the costs and became more competitive. Consulting identifies what shall be outsourced, to which location and how can this be beneficial for organization.
c)Human Resource: It encompasses the domain of usual activities like recruitment, staffing, compensation and benefits, health and safety, social welfare, labor relations, compliance with the labor laws of the land, etc and also concerning the growth and development of the employees.
d)Executive Coaching: It is important for the executives at all levels to be educated and trained in new processes, technologies and knowledge areas to improve their efficiency and effectiveness. The consultancy can help in designing the suitable on-going and need-based ad-hoc programs for each level.
e)Customer Relationship (CRM): CRM is not just about having an executive at the phone to answer the queries. In reality, there is a need to integrate the marketing plans, sales efforts, manufacturing and/or services with the consumer feedback and queries. Apart from this, the customer needs to have the facility of communicating via multiple media and receiving appropriate solutions as soon as possible. Further, the consulting companies can also outline the suitable PR exercises for different types of customers.
f)Advertising: There are many media of advertising. The online media refers to the internet-based advertising. It is done by way of pay per click (PPC), Search engine Optimization (SEO), Email advertisements, etc. There are also offline channels like TV, Radio, Newspapers, Billboards, etc. Not surprisingly, therefore, an organization may not know which channels to use and when to use these for advertising. Management consulting develops effective advertisement plans in accordance with the short and long term objectives of the organization and guides it on the timings to launch these. It can also develop measures to evaluate the efficacy of these programs.
g)Finance: It is a step ahead of usual accountancy. Consultancy in this field is about interpretation of financial statements, how to raise the debt or equity from appropriate mediums, planning of the investments and covering the losses that may happen due to fluctuations in exchange rates, interest rates, etc.
Management consulting is a magic wand to make a substantial turnaround in an organization.
Management consulting is about guiding the management of an organization on the current and future problems and opportunities related to its structural and functional aspects.