Consulting services saw a tremendous growth in the 1980s
and 1990s. By the late 1990s, the industry was worth $62
bn with about 140,000 consultants involved in the industry.
Consulting became popular because of the expertise it provided
which was not available inside the firm and was considered
as a means to address different needs of different organizations
to improve their performance through business analysis.
Actions included development of future plans, identification
of best practices, technology implementation, analysis,
change management and training skills, etc. Various methodologies
for problem identification and strategy planning were used
by these companies. Consulting companies used a variety
of tools and techniques like Market Strategy Matrix to solve
business problems.
The broad segments in consulting are management consulting,
strategy consulting, information technology consulting and
industry-specific consulting. While some consulting firms
like IBM Global Services and Deloitte Consulting offered
various specialized services that covered management, strategy,
IT and industry-specific consulting, there are other consulting
companies like McKinsey that offers only management consulting
and small consulting firms like First Manhattan that focuses
on a particular industry and offers only services in banking.
As knowledge is the core aspect of any consulting company,
these companies invests millions of dollars to improve knowledge
sharing among their employees throughout the world. The
objective of any Knowledge Management (KM) initiative in
a consultancy firm is to capture the valuable experiences
and knowledge of an employee. In the 1990s, many consulting
companies started implementing KM initiatives like portals,
communities, networks, etc. Consultants used their company's
knowledge centers extensively to assess previous presentations
given to other clients, to assess best practices and other
information related to projects like problems incurred,
and what is done to solve the problem. This not only saved
time and effort, but affected the revenues and the quality
of the projects.
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