MANAGEMENT CONSULTANcy - AN OVERVIEW

What is Management Consultancy?

Management Consultancy is a line of consultancy firm which advises companies on the best way to manage and operate the business. The consultancy firm will give advises on strategies and operational techniques, also on time management skills.

The consultancy work mainly aims at helping improve businesses by finding novel and better way of doing things and solving the problems of the organisation. The consultants are trained experts who can solve the most complex problems.

IMPORTANCE OF MANAGEMENT CONSULTANCY:

Any organization's primary problem is to fight the problem of attrition and also to deal with upskilling of the existing employees to make them up-to-date with the developments in the industry. While it may sound easy, upskilling is no joke when there are many employees in an organization, working in various departments, and playing various different roles. This is where management consultancy comes into existence where their primary role is to understand the current role played by all the employees, look for areas of improvement, strategize, and implement the improvement plan.

For instance, an organization, which has an unit of electricians, may have too much downtime due to failure of machinery or even with a minor issue of the machinery. This would turn to be a complex problem for the organization if not resolved with "out-of-box" problem solving skills. A management consultant's role here would be to understand the issue, which in this case is downtime; diagnose the problem; and then come up with a solution. The solution might vary from providing an idea of hiring an in-house handyman who can take care of the welfare of the machineries to providing training to the existing electricians to tackle any minor problems arising without hindering the day's work.

Often time, organizations seek management consultant's assistance to obtain information. The reason to seek help might be the consultant's expertise or the organization might not have time and resource to obtain the data internally.

Also, consultants are sought to solve complex problems such as problem in compensation, morale, efficiency, or as such. In such case, the underlying problems, might be something different than posed. So, to understand that, the management consultant should understand if any solution was attempted in the past for the same problem, if any future solution is there in their mind, if the problem quoted affects any other department of the client's, etc.

Another important role a consultant plays in a client's organization is they make the client's team members do the detailed work. This way, the diagnosing of issues are quite easy since the people involved in the team are the ones facing the issues most of the times. Also, when there is involvement, it is easier for them to acknowledge their roles in the problem and also effectively apply the solutions provided by the consultant.

Most importantly, the consultant's work would be to provide solutions to the problems diagnosed and analyzed. This has to be presented as a well-designed report where the information and analysis are clearly presented and the solution is convincingly related to the initial diagnosis made by the consultant.

Some may argue that the implementation of solution provided by the consultant is entirely over the client, but generally speaking, it would be a great professional attitude if the implementation is taken care by the consultant as well. If the solution is not implemented or implemented badly, it would be waste of expertise, time and money to the client. So, a thoroughly studied solution would be a total success only if it is implemented properly.

CONCLUSION:

The Management Consultant plays a huge role, if hired by any organization to resolve their complex problems. Many projects undertaken by the consultants change the functioning of the organization, more often a better and smooth functioning and sometimes friction in the organization due to the implementation. So, the huge responsibility of looking at any problem not only as it is presented, but also to relate it to other departments of the organization, predicting the future impact, lies on the shoulder of the consultant.

We, at Infimind Institute, provide consultancy service to organizations. We offer ISO consultancy and training, upskilling training, and safety training to the employees of any organization. Do visit our webpage to understand more about what we offer.