Consulting is any advisory assistance to you as; sellers, manufacturers, brands and buyers on a number of issues related to financial, legal, technological and other areas. The main goal of consultancy business is to improve the company’s activities as a whole, as well as to increase the efficiency of each employee individually.
The main task is to analyze, anticipate prospects and develop innovative approaches addressing your problem(s). Simply put, consulting is any assistance provided in solving a problem.
The growing role of consulting worldwide cannot be ignored. There is an opinion that only organizations that find themselves in a critical situation turn to consulting companies for services. But this is a common misconception. Helping in critical situations is far from the main task of consulting. So when should you turn to consultants for help?
Firstly, in cases where the organization has decided to rebuild its system in connection with the expansion or change in the field of activity.
Secondly, when an organization wants to create a certain image in the eyes of potential consumers of its services. And, of course, when the company is in a critical situation and they do not have enough resources to get out of this situation.
Challenge in Consultancy Business
The essence of consulting is to help the client improve the effectiveness of their activities through recommendations or advice, as well as the provision of services in achieving the goal.
Consultants have to analyze the current situation, put forward proposals and propose non-standard solutions, as well as convince the customer about the correctness of these decisions and implement them.
Depending on the scope of the customer’s activity, on its size and the nature of the problems, consultants solve a variety of problems, from market research to legal consultancy for the customer’s activities. Consulting people have a flexible mindset, often going beyond standard solutions. They perfectly understand the mechanisms of functioning of their sphere of activity.
The range of problems solved by consulting is very large, which is why the need for consultancy business is so urgent!
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How Consultancy Business is most often seen?
Consulting is most often seen as a type of professional assistance in solving client’s problems with the help of professional external specialists. This applies to any area of consulting. However, the changing nature of the modern economy allows us to consider the new roles and significance of consulting. The main processes and changes that distinguish the modern economy include the following:
- Transformation of knowledge (intellectual) resources into the leading resources of economic development.
- Complication of the activity of all economic agents and economic processes.
- Increasing the speed of all economic processes.
- Increasing the information transparency of a business.
- Separation of the main and secondary functions of the company and expansion of the outsourcing practice.
- Development and transformation of business sectors, development of information business.
These processes are changing the way we understand the role of consulting and how it works. The emphasis in the article is on business development consultancy, which includes both strategic management issues and personnel management, marketing, sales and other economic issues of the firm’s work whether it is a small firm, medium-sized or a large one.
Features of Consultancy Services Business in the New Economy
If earlier intellectual activity was an element of a product or its accompaniment, today the goods themselves are considered as a material shell of services and intangible assets that are exchanged by counter-parties of the information economy. Such intangible assets that play the role of capital are individual and organizational knowledge, skills, attitudes, emotions, and trust.
The most important and most labor-intensive and intellectually intensive branch of intellectual entrepreneurship is consulting.
Consulting means applying the knowledge of a consultant to a specific situation and aiming to change this situation. As such, consulting is a transformational element in the new economy. In consulting, work takes place with the help of knowledge and information over knowledge, which is a revolution in management.
Services of a Consultant
The consultant receives the necessary information about the company; reveals the knowledge of the management and employees of the company, using for this own knowledge about what information and knowledge is needed to assess the situation; what “places” in the firm to look at and what exactly needs to be revealed; how it can be identified and measured.
And then analyzes the information received using its own analytical apparatus, using the information received and their own explicit and implicit knowledge, including intuition, outlook, experience, i.e., a wide range of what can be included in the content of the concept of “knowledge of a consultant,” gives recommendations on how to achieve the desired result, or helps the client to achieve a set goal.
But this is not enough. In order for the invented, developed actions to give the desired result, the consultant must create a technology with the help of which the implementation of the found solution will give the desired result, taking into account the knowledge of psychology and other aspects of communication with the client. Based on this, consulting is an activity that transforms knowledge into technology in the process of interaction with clients.
If this developed technology has a positive effect in one place, then it can have a positive effect in another place, in another organization. Therefore, consulting can develop technologies for solving typical problems, and more broadly — technologies for achieving success in solving typical business problems.
Consultancy with Modern Economy
Thus, consulting is an activity of converting knowledge into technologies for solving management problems. However, each time, despite the emergence of technologies for solving managerial problems, the consultant has to make a specific, and therefore creative decision. Therefore, consulting is a creative work, creative work, with a large element of innovation. This is the intrinsic nature of consulting.
All of this significantly changes the role of consulting in the modern economy. Consulting is becoming one of the main “guides” for the implementation of theoretical knowledge in life, the area of accumulation and application of practical knowledge, as well as the area of the emergence of new creative solutions.
Consulting is a creative scientific and practical activity that lies at the intersection of science and practice, increasingly acquiring an innovative character.
Let us summarize the new characteristics of consulting taking into account the changes taking place in the modern economy. These include:
- Knowledge capacity
- Interdisciplinary
- Innovativeness
- Entrepreneurial character
These features inherent in consulting significantly change its content and role in modern society. With the change in the content of consulting, the role of consulting in the economy is changing.
The traditional view of consulting as a service does not allow determining its prospects, as the range of market services expands and changes.
In our opinion, it is necessary to consider consulting in a wider field of its roles in the modern economy.
The Roles of Consultancy Business in the Modern Economy
New roles of consulting that we need to highlight to understand it:
- Consulting as an institution of market economy.
- As a tool for the formation of a unique intellectual capital of the company.
- An aid for inter-firm interactions and the development of inter-firm partnerships.
- As an element of a networked business organization.
- A transfer mechanism between theoretical knowledge and practice.
The establishment of a consulting institution is a positive development, since the institutions perform the following functions:
- Ensuring predictability of the results of certain actions; adherence to an institution allows one to expect a certain result with a measurable cost to achieve it. Those. the institute of consulting should give positive results.
- Reducing the transaction costs of market exchange, including through the use of consulting services.
- The property of inheritance occurs due to the learning process, which in relation to consulting means the establishment of a system for training consultants.
- Ensuring the freedom and safety of agents using the institution; that is, the status of a consultant must ensure compliance with professional ethics, in particular, non-disclosure of information about the company, non-use of information for personal gain, and the achievement of useful results.