Consulting Trends – Croixstone

Management Consulting and 5 Trends Shaping Its Future

The first management consulting firm was launched in 1886 by Arthur Dehon Little in Boston, MA. More than 135 years later, there are megatrends (like any other industry) disrupting and shaping the future of the industry where Croixstone practices as a a boutique firm.

Rick Eager, Partner Emeritus at Arthur D. Little, recently shared five trends that he believes are key for consulting firms to embrace in order to successfully navigate the rapidly changing landscape.

These five trends include:

Success demands great senior-level involvement
Open consulting is key
More skin in the game
Connectors and navigators
Embracing new technology is vital

Learn more here via Consultancy.uk.

Consulting Industry Factoids

How is the consulting industry faring amidst the global pandemic?

Thanks to the hard work of our talented consultants, Croixstone Consulting celebrated a record revenue year in 2020 (and 2021 is proving to be even better)! In light of our firm’s success, we decided to dive into Statista’s latest published consulting industry research over the weekend to see how the rest of the industry is faring.

Here are 5 fast facts about the management consulting industry.

Industry Size: The global consulting market delivers $132B in annual revenues while the USA market produces $64.4B. The USA is the world’s largest management consulting market.

COVID Impact: After experiencing continuous growth between 2015 and 2019, the consulting industry saw a significant revenue loss (-12.5%) across all markets and segments in 2020.

Number of Businesses: In 2020, the number of consulting businesses in the USA reached 831,621, a slight increase over 2019. It is estimated that this number will increase by 30,000 units in 2021.

Number of Consultants: Since 2012, the number of management consultants in the USA has increased every year, reaching 734,000 consultants in 2020.

Revenue Per Consultant: The average annual revenue per consultant of management consultancies worldwide decreased overall between 2015 and 2020. During a 2020 survey, respondents reported an average annual revenue per consultant of $208K.

Click here to read more highlights from Statista’s latest research on the consulting services industry.

5 Major Challenges Facing the Global Consulting Industry

The consulting industry is growing robustly, however, the industry is not immune from disruptive forces. Learn about five challenges that consulting firms face in today’s fast-changing world.

Disruption in Big Consulting

As a boutique consulting firm, Croixstone provides clients across the greater Charlotte region with on-demand expertise from project consultants who deliver improved focus and deeper expertise at a lower cost than the “big” guys. Our business model is helping to disrupt the legacy consulting model.

As businesses become more informed, they recognize the inefficiencies that are inherent in the traditional big company consulting model. The drivers for these inefficiencies include:

1. The big consulting business model hasn’t changed with the rest of the world.

2. Partner incentives at big consulting firms do not always put client needs first.

3. Huge overhead costs are built into the rates.

4. Big consulting firms have many hammers, but not every problem is a nail.

Learn more about consulting industry disruption and the rise of boutique firms here.

The Booming US Healthcare Consulting Market

Valued at $45 billion last year, the US management consulting market relating to healthcare is booming. How so? Well, the healthcare consulting sector is expected to break the $60 billion mark by the end of next year.

The main drivers of growth in the US healthcare management consulting market include:

Healthcare IT
Adoption of cloud technology
Digitalization
Value-based care
Compliance
Big data and analytics

Learn more here.

How Data Analytics Are Changing the Consulting Industry

Like other industries, the consulting industry is being disrupted in many ways. With the rise of artificial intelligence, machine learning, blockchain and advanced analytics, consultants may find themselves working closely with artificially intelligent systems that can analyze huge volumes of data that are incomprehensible to the human mind. Learn more about how data analytics are changing the consulting industry – and what is perhaps the most important consulting skill going into the 2020s.

Know Your Profession!

Consulting Magazine is a digital monthly publication known as the “flagship publication of the consulting profession featuring the latest information on consulting, thought leadership, and corporate strategies.” The magazine’s website, Consultingmag.com, offers a rich selection of articles and more. View it here.

Trends Shaping the Consulting Industry

In the 2017 Management Consulting Outlook report prepared by Greentarget, a strategic public relations firm focused exclusively on business-to-business organizations, the global management consulting market has been growing revenue approximately 4 percent annually over the past few years. As the most mature market, the U.S. market grew 7.7 percent in 2015 to reach $54.7 billion, up from $50.8 billion in 2014. The global management consulting industry is now delivering an estimated $150 billion in revenue, and the growth trend is expected to continue, with the U.S. accounting for nearly half (44 percent) of the global market.

We at Croixstone know it is important to keep abreast of the many forces and trends shaping the consulting industry. Demand for change as result of disruptive technologies and competition from new market competitors continues to drive investment in consulting. What else is new in the consulting industry?

Learn more about the who’s who of the consulting world in 2017 here.

What makes a great consultant? Here are 10 attributes required for long term success as a consultant.

Read here about five consulting technology trends in 2017 that are more than buzzwords.

A New Way to Define “Good” Jobs in the USA?

Over the last century, the American culture has held steadfast to a standard on what constitutes a “good” job. A fascinating, new article by Harvard Business Review makes a compelling argument that is it time for America to pivot from that conventional standard.

Read the article here.

Snapshot – U.S. Consulting Industry

So how big is the U.S. consulting industry?

According to data published in June 2016 by Consultancy.uk (an online platform for the advisory and consulting industry), the U.S. consulting industry (the world’s largest and most mature consulting segment), grew strongly last year at a healthy 8% to reach nearly $55 billion.

Given Croixstone Consulting’s home here in Charlotte, the nation’s 2nd largest financial market, it was no surprise to see that, once again, the Financial Services industry remains far and away the U.S. consulting market’s biggest spender. Banks and insurers, among others, spent nearly $14 billion on consultants in 2015, up 9% on last year, although the growth rate was slower than the year previous.

Other industries showed robust growth as well. Retail was the fastest growing sector, expanding 11% to approach $4 billion as retailers bolstered their digital investments in order to tap into the rise of e-commerce and omnichannel demands. Consulting to the public sector remains the poor relation of the industry, according to the researchers, with a 2.6% growth to $6 billion, as public sector investment sunk to the lowest level in over 60 years. The U.S. energy & resources consulting market grew by 5% to $7.3 billion, while pharma grew by a strong 10% to $1.7 billion, despite mounting pressures in the space, including an increasingly intense debate about drug pricing practices.

Learn more here.