What is Consulting?
Consultancy roles are available in almost every industry around the world; they are incredibly valuable within specific fields of business for the unique and highly in-depth insights they can provide.
Traditionally consultants are hired by businesses to provide an outside perspective and expert advice; they take an independent and unbiased approach to a situation, often hired to help with specific projects or areas where a business needs help. Occasionally, however, in-house consultants are hired to really tackle ongoing complex issues within a single business.
A consultant can often be confused with an advisor, as the two roles contain a number of overlapping features. The meat and potatoes of a consultancy role is exactly that: consulting. It is the practice of providing a third party company or business with expertise on a particular subject or in a particular field.
The role of a consultant can incorporate much more than just advising a business, however; it can also involve strategising, management and the implementation of a new project or processes. This requires carrying out research and collecting data, analysing such data, preparing business proposals, identifying and solving problems within a business’ processes, implementing solutions and managing entire projects and teams.
As well as the above, there are three main characteristics to a consultancy role:
- They provide support in the form of expert advice to a company in a specific field or on a specific subject.
- They work independently from the client so as to ensure the advice given is unbiased (unless employed as an in-house consultant – more on this later).
- They work in a professional manner, ensuring they have the right qualifications and expertise to provide a high-quality and valuable service