Management Consulting Industry

Consulting Industry Trends

So what is the big picture in consulting?

The Croixstone Consulting team dedicated some time last week to dig into the latest research to provide some fresh perspectives in answering this question. Here’s what we found.

Global Consulting Market: Was estimated at $132 billion USD in 2020 (Statista)
North America: Is the largest consulting services market worldwide with annual revenues estimated at $64.4 billion. (Statista)
Regional Analysis: North America and Europe are highly mature markets contributing to 75% of the global consulting market revenue. (Beroe)
Number of Management Consultants in USA: 768,450 (Statista)
Growth Rate: Management consulting is anticipated to grow at a CAGR of more than 6 percent from 2021 to 2026 (Beroe)
Growth Drivers: The demand for operational efficiency, regulatory compliance and technology improvements. (Beroe)
Demand by Industry: Financial Services (25%), Manufacturing (16%), Public Sector (14%), Natural Resources & Power (12%), Wholesale & Retail (10%), Healthcare (7%), Communications & Media (7%), Aerospace & Defense (4%), Other Industries (5%) (Beroe)
Profits: Over the next 5 years, management consulting industry profitability is expected to remain steady as rising global business sentiment and profit drive new businesses. (Beroe)
Disruption: New business models such as crowdsourcing and network-based consulting are evolving in the industry, which can be disruptive in nature. Think of Wikistrat, HourlyNerd, and Business Talent Group as examples. (Beroe)

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What’s the Future of Management Consulting?

Recently, Croixstone Consulting participated in a thought-provoking webinar about the state of the management consulting industry. Hosted by ALM Intelligence, the webinar provided insights into the future of the industry and featured proprietary research and analysis from ALM’s team of analysts. View the webinar (it is an hour-long) to learn answers to the following questions:

What is the size and growth rates for consulting globally and by region?
What’s the future of consulting?
What will the profession look like in the next decade?
How are client expectations changing the game?
What will a successful firm look like in 2020?

HBR Ideacast

Pat Lynes, author of “The Interim Revolution,” isn’t the only one who sees big changes ahead for the management consulting industry. Listen to this Harvard Business School Ideacast that features Clay Christensen (the Kim B. Clark Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School and one of the world’s top experts on innovation and growth) and Dominic Barton (the global managing partner of McKinsey).

Listen here.

When McKinsey Met Uber: The Gig Economy Comes to Consulting

So is the gig economy disrupting the traditional consulting industry?

Yes, according to many experts. Back in 2013, Harvard Business Review published a fascinating article entitled “Consulting on the Cusp of Disruption” which predicted the disruption of established consultants as first smaller, then larger, clients start using alternatives to the big brands for all but “a core of critical work”.

In follow-up to this prediction, the Croixstone Consulting leadership team reviewed this week a newly-published article by Andrew Hill, Management Editor of the Financial Times, entitled “When McKinsey Met Uber: The Gig Economy Comes to Consulting” which spotlights the trend of business consultants setting out on their own as a higher-paid, and growing stratum of “gig consultants”.

We found the following factoids from the Financial Times article to be of particular interest:

31 percent of management consultants in the UK are self-employed.
20 percent of staff at the big consultancies leave every year.
59 percent of consultants made a deliberate choice to become independent (with top triggers including the desire for a career change, wanting more control over time and schedule, and wanting to work with clients in a different way).

Read the full article here (subscription may be required).