Business consultant

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Business consultants offer other companies a consultancy as a service to. Often the management of customers (or clients ) is the subject of advice, then management advice is spoken of. Sometimes technical decisions and changes are the focus, for example in the case of special IT or engineering services , personnel issues or auditing .

Definition of terms

There are different names for management consulting:

  • Business consulting is not an official job title with a legal basis.
  • Often the Anglicism Consulting is used for the advice itself and Consultancy or Consultant for the organization or person of the consultant.
  • Management consultant is a protected professional title in Austria under the trade regulations .

history

United States

Consulting firms first emerged in the USA in connection with the establishment of management as the subject of academic study. The first consulting firm, Arthur D. Little , was founded in 1886 by the MIT professor of the same name . Although Arthur D. Little later became a general consultancy, it initially specialized in technological research advice. Management consulting developed in America in the course of Scientific Management , which was developed by Frederick Winslow Taylor . Graphic methods soon found their way into the work of the consultants, for example through Henry Laurence Gantt's development of so-called charting diagrams or through Frank Bunker Gilbreth's photographic movement studies. Booz & Company was founded in 1914 by Edwin G. Booz , a graduate of the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University , and has advised private companies and government agencies. The development of management consultancies in America was accelerated mainly by the global economic crisis. Banks and investment houses had taken control of their debtors. Management consultants supported them in their restructuring. In 1926 James Oscar McKinsey founded McKinsey & Company in Chicago. In the 1930s there was increased growth, as a law forbade banks to carry out advisory and reorganization activities. Internationally, American consulting firms have been cooperating with European consultants since World War I or they have set up their own branches in Europe. European consulting firms such as those of the French Charles Bedaux were also able to gain a foothold in the United States. After the Second World War, a number of other important consulting firms were founded in the USA, in particular Proudfoot Consulting (1946) and the Boston Consulting Group (1963).

Germany

The first consulting firms emerged at the latest in the early 1920s. These were founded by academic students of scientific management in Berlin. The focus was on production-related issues, operational organization, cost accounting and planning. The industry experienced its first growth spurt at the beginning of the 1930s. The professional title “management consultant” was introduced in 1954 in German-speaking countries with the establishment of the industry association, the Federal Association of German Management Consultants (BDU). McKinsey and AT Kearney have been active in Germany since 1964, and Roland Berger founded his management consultancy in 1967 . In the early 1960s there was an expansion of management consulting from the USA to Europe; from the 1960s onwards, American firms dominated the market for consulting services worldwide. While production-related issues were the focus in the early years, sales and marketing problems became increasingly topical in the 1960s. The 1970s were dominated by questions of organizational and personnel development, and since the 1980s IT consultancy has steadily increased. In the economic crisis of 2008/2009, the industry had to accept a slight decline in sales, but the number of employees is still increasing.

Management consultancy market in Germany

The ten management consulting providers with the highest turnover in the years 2013 to 2016 were:

All figures in million euros (as of May 24, 2017)

Lünendonk list "Top 10 German management consultancies"
rank Companies Company headquarters Total sales in 2016 Total sales in 2015 Total sales 2014 Total sales 2013 Number of employees in 2016 Number of employees in 2015 Number of employees in 2014 Number of employees in 2013
1 Roland Berger Holding GmbH *) Munich > 500.0 560.0 560.0 750.0 2400 2,300 2,400 2,700
2 Simon Kucher & Partners GmbH Bonn 240.0 208.0 172.0 152.0 935 820 720 680
3 zeb.rolfes.schierenbeck.associates GmbH Muenster 190.0 180.0 179.0 169.0 860 841 897 844
4th Horváth AG (Horváth & Partners Group) Stuttgart 152.0 132.0 122.0 105.5 634 570 536 483
5 KPS AG Munich 144.9 122.9 111.1 97.0 417 354 317 171
6th Q_Perior AG Munich 131.0 104.0 92.0 90.0 459 438 427 425
7th d-fine GmbH Frankfurt 125.7 115.2 95.5 82.0 669 610 530 471
8th Porsche Consulting Group *) Bietigheim-Bissingen 116.5 103.6 90.0 85.0 407 385 372 360
9 Kienbaum (group of companies) Gummersbach 108.0 110.0 115 112 630 650 670 710
10 goetzpartners Group Munich 100.7 90.0 82.0 77.0 309 280 250 220
  • *) Sales and / or employee numbers are partially estimated

This list contains companies that have their headquarters and the majority of the share capital in Germany.

The consulting activities of both international and German consulting providers on behalf of large or globally operating customers have been increasingly cross-border and from different branches around the world. A ranking based solely on consulting sales in Germany can therefore no longer be mapped in a meaningful and sufficiently detailed manner for the international provider category. For this reason, the classic Lünendonk ranking of management consultancies in Germany will in future only take into account companies that have their founding history and capital majority in Germany.

The list "International Management Consulting in Germany" includes international consulting providers with their global total or consulting sales and takes into account all companies that are active in Germany, do not have their headquarters, the majority of the share capital and share capital in Germany and have significant sales with management consulting services achieve. This is not a ranking, but an alphabetically ordered market sample.

Lünendonk List 2014 - "International Management Consulting in Germany"
Companies Global consulting sales in 2013 in billions of euros Global number of employees in 2013
AT Kearney *) 0.8 3,500
Accenture *) 11.6 64,000
AlixPartners 1) k. A. 1,200
Aon Hewitt 3.1 27,000
Bain & Company *) 1.6 5,700
BearingPoint 0.6 3,055
Capgemini *) 2.3 9,150
Deloitte *) 2) 9.9 62,000
Ernst & Young 3) 4.4 29,747
KPMG 3) 6.2 40,000
McKinsey & Company *) 5.3 19,000
Mercer 3.1 20,535
Oliver Wyman 1.1 3,500
PricewaterhouseCoopers 3) 6.9 42,200
Strategy & (formerly Booz & Company) *) 4) 0.9 3,300
The Boston Consulting Group *) 3.0 9,700
Capco - The Capital Markets Company 1) k. A. 2,200
Towers Watson 3) 2.7 14,000

k. A. = not specified

  • *) Sales and / or employee numbers are partially estimated
  • 1) No international figures are available for AlixPartners and The Capital Markets Company. However, both companies generate significant sales in Germany.
  • 2) According to Deloitte, in 2013 integrated Consulting, Advisory & Implementation Services generated US $ 21.6 billion.
  • 3) This concerns the international advisory sales of the auditing companies.
  • 4) Strategy & has officially been part of the PwC network since April 3, 2014.

Exchange rate: Euro reference rate of the European Central Bank 1 € = 1.3281 US $ (annual average)

Inclusion in both lists above is subject to precisely defined criteria. More than 60 percent of sales or significantly high segment sales are achieved with classic management consulting such as strategy, organization and process consulting as well as HR consulting.

The Lünendonk GmbH , Kaufbeuren, considered continuously the management consulting market in Germany since the mid-1990s. The market research company does not claim to represent the entire market. Rather, it focuses on looking at the leading providers in a given market segment. In addition, some medium-sized and small management consulting firms are included in the analyzes for comparison purposes. Taken together, these companies represent the basic structure of the German management consulting market and have such a high share of sales in the market that it is possible to draw conclusions for the overall situation and development. The 2013 analysis included 63 companies including the top 25.

The Federal Association of German Management Consultants BDU e. V. (BDU) estimated market volume for management and business consulting with the entire spectrum of topics from strategy, organization, information technology, leadership, business administration, logistics and marketing was around 33.8 billion euros in 2018 (2017: 31.8 billion euros). This was the ninth time in a row that the management consultants achieved a significant increase in sales. For 2019, the estimates of the market participants result in a growth forecast for the overall market of 7.1%.

According to BDU estimates, almost 15,400 companies with 110,000 consultants compete for this billion-dollar market in Germany. A total of around 134,000 people were employed in the consulting industry in Germany. Almost one percent of the consulting firms alone cover 42% of the market volume; on the other hand, almost 70% of the around 15,400 companies each generate less than 0.5 million euros in annual sales and together only a good 13% of the market volume. As a result, they are often individual advisers.

Overall, it can be seen in the consulting market that the formerly clear delimitations of the individual consulting fields have noticeably disappeared over the past few years. The boundaries have become more fluid. For example, many “classic” strategy projects without IT consulting components - and vice versa - are no longer conceivable. Rapid technological change in particular often requires a holistic approach in projects.

For 2019, 65% of the study participants indicated a positive change in the German management consulting market. Management consultancies in the 2.5 to 5.0 million euro category expect average growth of 7.9%. The forecast of the large market participants with sales of more than 10 million euros is 7.1%. The consulting firms with sales of less than one million euros are the least optimistic: The share of market participants with a positive sales forecast is only 60% and an average growth of 6.2%.

From the point of view of the consulting firms, the following sectors will be key drivers for business development in 2019: Healthcare (forecast 2019: +8.9%), TIMES (forecast 2019: +8.5%) and professional services (forecast 2019: +8, 0%). One reason for the development, especially in the healthcare sector, may be the speed and extent with which digital innovations penetrate this client industry in particular.

Lünendonk examines the companies that mainly offer IT consulting in the service area "IT consulting and system integration ". Therefore, in the ranking of the leading management consultants in Germany, the share of sales from IT consulting is relatively low at 8.1 percent. There is a separate ranking for IT consultants and system integrators in Germany.

2018 was a successful year for German management consultancies. The turnover of the consulting firms reached a new record in 2018 with 33.8 billion euros. Total sales thus grew by 7.3 percent.

Student management consultancies

In addition to the large consulting firms, numerous student management consultancies have established themselves in the vicinity of universities and technical colleges . In addition to the actual consulting service, these pursue the primary purpose of enabling students to apply the knowledge they have acquired in a practical manner. A large part of the consulting areas listed above is now also covered by student management consultancies, although consulting projects tend to be less extensive. Most student management consultancies are organized in one of the two nationwide umbrella organizations ( BDSU e.V. and JCNetwork e.V.). Many student management consultancies get support for their work through umbrella organizations or through professional advice.

job profile

qualification

Germany

In Germany, the activity of the management consultant is not subject to professional protection . Anyone working in management consultancy can call themselves management consultants. In practice, this leads to undesirable phenomena, especially in the area of ​​business consultancy: Disguised as business consultancy, services (e.g. insurance or software ) are offered by selected contractual partners, which has little to do with an independent and objective consultancy process. In Germany, self-employed and qualified management consultants are generally not subject to the trade regulations, but rather work as a freelancer . In accordance with the catalog professions listed in Section 18 (1) of the Income Tax Act (in addition to the work of doctors, lawyers, engineers, architects or tax consultants), this also includes the independent professional activity of advisory economists and business economists. The image of the consulting industrial engineer or business economist usually corresponds to that of the management consultant. The prerequisite for a freelance activity is his / her qualification, here usually a (technical) university degree and thus that the self-employed person concerned "is responsible for managing and acting on the basis of his own specialist knowledge" (§ 18 EStG). An exception is the state-certified business economist , which, according to the established case law of the Federal Fiscal Court, reflects the minimum level of qualification for a consulting business economist. This makes it possible to define the occupational profile. From an academic perspective, the qualification for management consultancy is usually achieved by those who have at least three years of professional experience after completing a degree in economics or an additional business degree or who worked as a junior consultant in a management consultancy during this period. Even newcomers are active in the consulting firm, if they can demonstrate sufficient professional experience; or in order to provide appropriate advice to companies, they are often even necessary - like doctors and chemists for the pharmaceutical industry. In the opinion of the professional associations, a full-time consultant is someone who can provide evidence of 150 consultation days per year. In addition, there are further training courses that should comprise at least 30 hours a year.

Austria

In Austria the profession of management consultancy is defined by law. The management consultants (approx. 12,000) are subject to the trade regulations and are members of the UBIT (management consultancy and information technology) association in the Austrian Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber of Commerce defines the trade as follows: "According to GewO § 29, the specific work processes required for the exercise, the historical development and the views and agreements existing in the commercial circles involved are decisive for the scope of the trade license." In terms of taxation, however, corporate consultants are independent Professions treated. UBIT offers management consultants (voluntary) professional liability insurance and special professional rules (proEthik).

Advisory principles

Associations of management consultants often rewrite principles for consultations in a code of conduct (ger .: Code of Ethics), for example. B. the Association of Management Consulting Firms (AMCF), the Bundesverband Deutscher Unternehmensberater e. V. (BDU) or the specialist group of advisory economists and business economists in the bdvb e. V. and the association “The SME Consultants - Federal Association of Independent Consultants e. V. ". These usually contain the following elements:

  • Independence of the management consultant from third parties, especially when decisions about suppliers or other market partners of the client are pending.
  • Objectivity of the advice taking into account all opportunities and risks.
  • Competence : Advice is only given in areas in which the management consultant has proven competence.
  • Confidentiality : None of the knowledge and information acquired in the consultation process is passed on to third parties.

In Austria, the professional principles of the proEthik working group are a voluntary component of qualified management consultancy.

education

Management consultancies generally employ university graduates from almost all fields. In the large companies in particular, “only” about 50% of the graduates are business administration graduates. In addition, the courses in physics, mathematics, education, psychology and medicine are particularly well represented. A small number of people with professional experience are also employed.

Consulting service

definition

The advisory services are individualized to meet the needs of third parties

  • interactive processes
  • with material and immaterial effects,
  • the implementation and utilization of which requires synchronous contact between the service provider and the service recipient.

Consulting services are also highly integrative, as the demanders participate in the creation of the service, and therefore a high degree of interactivity between the consultant and customer is necessary.

Further characteristics of the business consulting service are:

  • Skills difference : Experts have knowledge that the recipient of the service has little or no knowledge of
  • Singularity : Services cannot be reproduced identically, nor can they be determined ex-ante due to interactivity and the difference in their initial situation.
  • Indeterminability : Service develops over time, also beyond the advisory relationship. It is also personally indeterminable because the interactions of the people to be advised with others can result in unforeseeable consequences.

A type of product liability exists for consulting services only insofar as it can be proven that incorrect information leads to damage. Since the management consultant is usually not or only partially involved in the implementation of the solutions developed, he cannot be held liable for execution errors in the implementation, as well as for advice or concepts based on incorrect or incorrect information from the customer (or client). based.

Advisory process

The advisory process is characterized by recurring elements. A situation analysis ( actual recording ) is followed by the formulation of the target ( target state ) for the consulting project. From this point in time, it is possible to calculate the probable consulting effort. This is followed by the concept development, the concept presentations, if necessary assistance ( coaching ) with the implementation as well as a measure controlling (i.e. a constant review of whether and to what extent the desired goal has already been achieved).

The consultation process requires the assistance of the customer (or client). Management consulting thus represents a service that takes the external factor into account.

Advice directions

Business consultants usually focus on one of several consulting topics, such as B .:

Consulting content

Essentially, very different consulting topics can be distinguished:

  • Mergers / acquisitions (companies, divisions, departments)
  • Outsourcing
  • Global sourcing
  • Restructuring / Change Management
  • Cost cutting ("Cost Cutting")
  • Introduction of new technologies, working methods and systems
  • Security advice
  • Strategy development, planning and implementation
  • Interim management
  • Organizational diagnosis
  • Financing advice
  • PR advice
  • Procurement optimization / purchasing optimization

Consulting approaches

In the consulting literature, a distinction is made between types of consulting that are based on the actual consulting business of consulting firms:

According to a study by Walger and Scheller, at the end of the 1990s, 1.7% of the companies they examined provided expert advice, 84.7% expert advice, 11.4% organizational and personnel development advice and 2.2% systemic advice. However, only a part of these activities can also be understood as advice in the narrower sense , if a scientific definition is used. As soon as the 'consultant' is involved in the implementation of proposed solutions and he appears as a co-manager (based on his function - not: for the duration of his presence in the company), social scientists would no longer speak of advice. However, according to Walger and Scheller, this was the case for 41% of expert advice. Therefore, parts of the expert advice (34.7%) and the entire expert advice, a total of 36.4% of all types of advice examined , cannot be declared as advice in the narrower sense. Systemic consulting as well as organizational development and personnel development consulting, on the other hand, by definition correspond to a narrower consulting understanding.

compensation

The fee is agreed between the customer and the management consultant. It is often agreed as a daily rate and occasionally as a flat fee. In addition, a success fee is also possible in the management consultancy.

criticism

The main criticisms of the work of management consultants are:

  • Questionability of the concepts or standard recipes
  • Overpricing of fee models
  • Unfounded promises
  • Fixation on follow-up orders
  • Creation of dependencies
  • Exploitation of knowledge
  • difficult verifiability of the quality of the advisory products
  • Alibi creation for unpleasant management decisions.

Professional organizations and professional associations

Germany

  • Federal Association of German Management Consultants BDU e. V., head office in Bonn, branches in Berlin and Brussels, member of the European Confederation of Search and Selection Associations ( ECSSA ) with headquarters in Brussels and of the International Council of Management Consulting Institutes ( ICMCI )
  • IBWF Institute for Business Consulting, Economic Development and Research e. V., network of consultants for medium-sized businesses
  • Federal Association of Economic Consultants BVW e. V., Federal Association of Business Advisory Professions, professional and professional organization of advisory economists and business economists
  • The SME consultants - Federal Association of Independent Consultants e. V.
  • Federal Association of German Student consultancies e. V.
  • JCNetwork e. V. - umbrella association of student management consultancies
  • Federal Association of German Economists and Business Economists - Section Advisory Economists and Business Economists - (professional organization of business consultants who have completed business-academic training)

Austria

  • Professional association for management consulting and information technology of the Austrian Chamber of Commerce

Switzerland

  • Association of Management Consultants Switzerland ASCO

literature

  • Peter Block: Successful consulting. The consultant manual , Heyne, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-453-15556-4
  • Timothy Clark and Robin Finchan: Critical Consulting: New Perspectives on the Management Advice Industry , Blackwell Publishers, 2001, ISBN 0-631-21820-3
  • Konrad Schwan and Kurt Seipel: Successful Advice - Basics of Management Consulting , Munich 2002, ISBN 3-8006-2757-4
  • Barry Curnow and Johnatan Reuvid: The International Guide to Management Consultancy , Kogan Page, London 2003, ISBN 0-7494-4079-1
  • Werner Rügemer: The consultants. transcript, Bielefeld 2004, ISBN 3-89942-259-7
  • Winfried Abele and Stefan Scheurer: I eat bread, I sing the song. Management consulting - art, craft or business with fear , Orell Füssli Verlag, Zurich 2006, ISBN 3-280-05200-9
  • Markus Pohlmann and Thorsten Zillmann (eds.): Advice and training. Case studies, tasks and solutions , Munich and Vienna 2006, ISBN 3-486-57996-7
  • Christopher McKenna: The world's newest profession: management consulting in the twentieth century. , Cambridge University Press, New York 2006.
  • K. Bredl: Expertise of consultants. Analysis of the acquisition of skills by management consultants in the context of expertise research , vdm, Saarbrücken 2008 ISBN 3-8364-5760-1
  • Hubert Eichmann and Ines Hofbauer: You need a very high level of energy. On the everyday work of business consultants , Edition Sigma , Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-8360-6703-4
  • Thomas Leif : Advising & selling. McKinsey & Co. - the big bluff of management consultants , Goldmann, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-442-15485-2
  • Florian Hoof: Angel of Efficiency: A Media History of Management Consulting , Konstanz University Press, Göttingen, 2018.

Filmography

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Schwan / Seipel 2002: Successful Advice - Basics of Management Consulting
  2. ↑ Florian Hoof: Angel of Efficiency: A Media History of Management Consulting. Konstanz University Press, Göttingen 2018.
  3. ↑ a b c d e G. Walger and C. Scheller: The range of management consultancies in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. An empirical analysis. Working group for qualification development management. QUEM-report, issue 54. Berlin, 1998.
  4. ^ Christopher D. McKenna: The world's newest profession: management consulting in the twentieth century. Cambridge University Press, New York 2006.
  5. ↑ Lünendonk List 2017: Leading Management Consulting Companies in Germany (luenendonk-shop.de, accessed on January 24, 2017)
  6. ↑ Lünendonk list 2016 "Top 10 German management consultancies" (PDF; 527 kB)
  7. ↑ Lünendonk Management Consulting Study 2015 (luenendonk-shop.de, accessed on June 16, 2016)
  8. ↑ https://www.bdu.de/mediathek/publikationen/marktstudien/
  9. ↑ https://www.bdu.de/mediathek/publikationen/marktstudien/
  10. ↑ Lünendonk list 2014 "Leading IT consulting and system integration companies in Germany" (PDF; 333 kB)
  11. ↑ https://www.bdu.de/mediathek/publikationen/marktstudien/
  12. ↑ cf. Code of Ethics AMCF ( Memento of the original from January 31, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.amcf.org
  13. ↑ quality Mittelstandsberatung - Association of SME consultants - SMEs. Retrieved October 16, 2017 .
  14. ↑ cf. Elfgen / Klaile 1987: Management consulting: supply, demand, cooperation.
  15. ↑ a b cf. Kieser: Management Consultant - Dealers in Problems, Practices and Sense, in Glaser / Schröder / Werder (Hrsg.): Organization im Wandel der Markt, 1998
  16. ↑ See Markus Pohlmann: Consulting as a form of interaction - perspectives, trends and challenges , in: Markus Pohlmann and Thorsten Zillmann (eds.): Consulting and further education. Case studies, tasks and solutions. Munich and Vienna 2006, p. 37
  17. ↑ Success fee in management consulting , accessed on March 17, 2019
  18. ↑ Dilk / Littger: 'Management Consultants in the Crisis - Rescuers or Rattenfänger', in managerSeminare, Issue 105, Dec. 2006
    Jochen Bittner and Elisabeth Niejahr: The Consultant Republic , Zeit online , February 5, 2004
  19. ^ Bundesverband Die KMU-Beratung - Management Consulting for SMEs - SMEs. Retrieved October 16, 2017 .