Insight success The 30 Most Valuable Consulting Companies

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their ability to churn huge amounts of data and make logical
sense out of it. But things have changed over the last two
decades. While problem identification is very well known,
Consulting nowadays is about working with the client and
implementing solutions. The revenues lie in implementing
whatever strategies are planned in the board rooms.
Expectations from Consultants
There are huge expectations of clients from consultants.
Out of which there are three to four important ones, and that
is what most of the clients usually look for. The first is a
better understanding of consumers and customers, which
goes far beyond the standard market research of perceptions
and the churning numbers. In today’s age of the social
media, clients are looking for insight into how the
customers are going to behave in near future. The second
zone is innovation. In the Indian context of the growing
economy you need to innovate on products and processes.
The next phase of growth and development for most Indian
consumer goods companies is coming from the rural areas.
Companies are focused on stepping into rural (and other)
markets faster, cheaper and healthier and they want
management consultants to help them get there.
There should be a robust system based on which
management consultants could structure themselves to
make up to the expectations of clients. Broadly, it could be
done through strategy, operations, and technology practices.
Simply put, strategy practices are concerned with the
“faster” aspect- growth, new product initiatives, top line,
launching new lines of businesses, and so on. The
operations practices are mainly concerned with cost
reduction, while technology enables “better”, which is
about fashioning a USP for the brand. Today, technology is
enabling and reforming businesses and a case in point is the
banking and financial industry where these technological
changes have played a disruptive role. For instance, there
was a time when banks kept opening new branches to serve
customers. Then banks diverted customers to ATMs to save
on the expenses of manpower, logistics and efficiency. Then
they realized that ATMs need to be serviced regularly, and
there were a lot of cash management, transportation and
logistics issues involved with it, so they diverted them to
the Internet. So clients are watching out for technology as
an enabler in driving serious transformation of their
businesses.
Considerations for a Consultant
The chief principal of consulting is that it is about respect
and trust. As a consultant you might receive an invitation
by the client on account of your credentials, that's when you
have to start working on to win the trust of your client so
that he could invest in your firm undoubtedly. How you do
that is by showing respect for what they have done and why
they have faced the query. If you do not understand the
question that they are facing, you will never be able to
answer them; and don’t ever believe that the question that
you hear verbally from them is exactly the question that’s
on their mind-that’s the very first fallacy of consulting.
Their problem description might be totally wrong! You
have to first investigate, to understand what’s going on
beneath the surface, the job that they have done so far, and
the likelihoods that will take them to the next level.
Sometimes what seems to be most beneficial for your
consulting organization may not be in client’s favor. But
giving the client the advice that will benefit his business is
what makes him a repeat customer.
Second, learning is the soul of consulting-it smears across
all levels of a consulting organization. Learning, but
particularly learning under pressure. It is not easy but if you
succeed to thrive under pressure, you will learn a variety of
things. For instance, you will learn how different
automotive engineering is in a Mahindra in comparison
with Tata Motors or Toyota.
The third aspect of consulting is uncertainty. To best
understand this aspect, have a look onto the US and
European markets over the last five years. The depths of
recession will then be very well defined to you. So every
year you would find something unexpected and new; you
just cannot predict the kind of work you will be doing in
future, the kind of client you might be working with or the
geography you will be in. There is a lot of dynamic churn in
the market and it is getting faster.
Insights on Indian Industry
In the last three years the Indian environment has started
responding to the dynamics; there has been a regulatory
churn, people have started to adapt and they constantly try
to find the new normal and this process is probably just
about to reach the equilibrium. Consider the Indian
financial services sector, there is a lot of churn in the
banking and insurance companies while they try to define
who is in the industry, and whether they are going to
succeed and make money. Several insurance companies
have stepped in and out of the insurance business. Under
such circumstances, the success for the banking and
insurance industry is achievable only if they understand that
their customers can reach out to them with the most
effective channel. In this context, consultants in the
financial services sector have a lot of opportunities to
flourish by counseling the clients about available business
opportunities and how to exploit them, the best way to
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