What are the types of consulting?

Career insights by GGI is a new series by GGI sharing hacks and tips around management consulting, MBA, product management and public policy.

In this GGI career insight, we will be sharing insights into: the diverse of consulting and its various types.

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Are you a consulting enthusiast? Do you wonder what are the different types of consulting? In this career insight, we will primarily be discussing the 6 major types of management consulting.

What is Management Consulting

The role of a management consultant requires a lot of data, benchmarking, analysis, thinking, problem-solving and structuring to give advice to a client.

If you are curious to know more about management consulting, then find my end to end guide here.

Now, we will dive deeper into the various types of consulting.

1. Management/Strategy Consulting

This is the most covetous type, done by many premium institutions like McKinsey, BCG, Bain, Kearney and akin.

You solve strategy problems such as increasing profits, reducing costs, restructuring or increasing share holder value.

2. Tech Consultants

They are responsible for designing, implementing and proposing various types of tech solutions.

The most prominent firms in this field are Accenture and Deloitte.

3. HR Consulting

They answer questions like- What kind of talent do you want to hire or what kind of performance improvement measures do you want to intake?

Everything involving HR, from improving performance to increasing productivity, attracting the right talent pool and letting go of employees comes under their domain.

Mercer and AON Hewitt are the leading firms here.

4. Governance/Policy Consulting

I have worked as a lateral advisor to the government of India and Tony Blair Institute, an international affairs firm.

In both these organisations, I was proposing policy measures and doing some field work. Everything involving policy and governance comes under this category.

5. Political Consulting

You are involved in a lot of research, building action plans and making recommendations. For example, your job may entail finding and solving for swing states.

This prevalent not only at a national level, but also at a state level.

6. Implementation Consulting

One of the situations here could be that a strategy has already been initiated, but it is not bearing any fruit.

Another situation is that you have thought of a strategy, but you want to focus on the rigour with which it is implemented.

You will set up monitoring systems, project management unit and increasing efficiencies within the system.

The big 4, EY, KPMG, PWC and Deloitte, are mainly involved in this category.

7. Miscellaneous niches

The world of consulting is expanding.

Thus new fields such as marketing consulting, design consulting and legal consultants have emerged.

If you need more help getting into management consulting and product management, feel free to check out my education venture- Global Governance Initiative. We invite industry leaders to host Masterclasses and teach our students the hard and soft skills required to excel in their careers.

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Author: Shatakshi Sharma, Co-CEO Global Governance Initiative, Ex-BCG Management Consultant, Former Policy Advisor, Tony Blair Institute for Global Change

If you are interested in learning about GGI's MBA Scholar program, you can learn here.