With constantly evolving and changing technologies, customer needs and markets, each manufacturer tries to be competitive and stay afloat through the continuous restructuring of corporate strategy and tactics. Sometimes, due to many reasons, enterprises do not always have enough internal resources to timely and correctly respond to certain changes in the business environment, which is why they resort to the services of qualified consultants or companies that specialize in consulting.
What it is
Consulting is professional services, consultations that are provided to clients who want to optimize their business. Consulting involves a complete analysis of existing business processes, consideration of development prospects, taking into account the use of existing scientific, technical, economic, organizational innovations, features of the client’s business and the subject area used by him.
Consulting is a highly qualified assistance of professionals specializing in the analysis of management problems, providing recommendations and rendering services for their implementation at a specific facility. This is a paid transfer of concentrated knowledge and experience owned by a consultant. The latter are involved with the aim of creating new or realizing existing business ideas of heads of state structures, entrepreneurs, as well as to perform tasks that are defined by him in accordance with the law.
The main goals of consulting include improving, improving the quality of management, the effectiveness of the enterprise and the growth of labor productivity of each employee.
Types of Consulting
In the modern economic world there is a wide variety of such services. There are several main groups:
- Financial consulting - is a set of services aimed at building an effective, reliable financial management system. With its help, a calculation, explanation, assessment of a group of financial indicators that comprehensively characterize the activities of the enterprise occur.
- Management Consulting - allows you to timely identify and make the organization’s weaknesses strong, and adjust the focus of the enterprise. Consulting firms or consultants help identify vulnerabilities, the possibility, rationality of adjusting the structural composition of the organization, set new goals and objectives.
- Accounting - consultations on new methods of accounting and work in the latest computer programs, informing employees and managers about innovations in accounting. Also, accounting consulting includes revising the workflow system as necessary and introducing modern developments, for example, the 1C program.
- Legal - timely, economically feasible enterprise support with constantly changing legislation.
- Tax - fulfills the systematic tax payments, does not allow violations in the field of taxation, eliminates existing errors and their negative impact.
There are also other types: IT, marketing and manufacturing.
Services of consulting companies depending on their field of activity
If with accounting, tax and legal services it is more or less clear, then what is management and financial consulting is difficult to imagine. Management services include:
- business process management;
- "restructuring" of the business, ranging from strategic planning to reorganization;
- business recovery (insolvency of the company), crisis consulting;
- merger services, advice on the acquisition of property;
- HR management: retraining, the formation of a rational leadership style, the creation of a corporate culture.
Financial advisory:
- investment analysis projects, economic, financial activities enterprises;
- assistance in the preparation of financial forecasts;
- financial management;
- money supply management;
- formation of business plans, budgeting.
List of structures with which a consulting company can collaborate
Consulting is a professional assistance provided by external consultants to enterprises. They solve problems of an economic, financial, managerial, investment, organizational nature, form strategic planning, optimize the overall work of an enterprise, conduct business, research, forecast possible markets, price movements.
Consulting firms may provide the services of such a plan to the following counterparties:
- state and private enterprises providing services or producing products;
- foreign companies operating in the domestic market;
- government organizations, government.
When resorting to similar services
Consulting is an ambulance for enterprises. Conventionally, there are several cases where it is advisable for companies to resort to the services of consulting firms:
- If the enterprise has the status of reliable, but decided to carry out a restructuring of the system (change of ownership, expansion, reorientation).
- When an organization having the status of reliable conducts an audit of its activities (audit services) to approve its own market positions and the subsequent publication of the results to the public.
- The enterprise is in a deplorable state and is no longer able to cope with problems on its own due to a lack of internal resources, experience, and knowledge. In this case, both financial and management consulting will be appropriate.
What are the requirements
- Consultants must be qualified specialists, professionals in their field, know the technology of solving problems, have reliable and complete information, must have appropriate working skills.
- The specialist must be independent, objective, not take sides (suppliers, competitors).
- Consulting firms should be independent structural units that are not specifically related to their clients.
