Are Independent Consultants Better Than the Big Consulting Firms?
Consulting is a competitive industry with many players. The big names in the industry such as McKinsey, BCG, Bain & Co., and others are often considered to be at the top of their game when it comes to advising large corporations on how to make themselves more profitable. But what about the little guys? What about all those consultants who don’t have massive amounts of capital or prestige backing them up? Can they still provide value for your company and help you build a stronger business that will generate more revenue in less time? The answer: yes!
Independent consultants can offer companies a different perspective from what is offered by the big firms. For one, they tend to be more flexible because of their smaller size and lack of a bureaucratic structure that can bog down progress. They are also able to provide personalized attention due to not having as many clients as the major players in the industry have on their rosters which allows them to spend more time with each client so you get a deeper dive into your specific issues and a more well-rounded solution.
Independent consultants tend to be cheaper because they don’t have all the overhead costs of bigger firms which means you get better value for money spent when employing them to do work on behalf of your company. In this blog post, we’ll break down each benefit in greater detail so you can see why hiring an independent consultant is often the best way to grow your business quickly without having it eat away at your bottom line or straining resources that could otherwise be used elsewhere within the organization.
Now that we’ve covered the top reasons why hiring an independent consultant is a great idea, let’s look at some of their more specific benefits.
Flexibility:
An independent consulting firm can often offer you better flexibility than larger firms such as McKinsey or Bain who have to worry about satisfying hundreds of clients and keeping them happy with projects they’re working on. The smaller size of these companies allows for greater agility since there aren’t as many hoops to jump through in order to get things done which means you’ll be able to work on tasks much faster and make more progress without wasting time getting bogged down by bureaucracy. This means your business will grow quickly because it won’t take nearly as long to reach certain goals compared with if those same goals were to be attempted by a larger business.
Personalized Attention:
Even if you’re just hiring one consultant, not an entire firm or company as is often the case when working with McKinsey and other such companies, your independent consultant will still be able to personally devote time and attention towards helping you solve whatever problem it is that’s plaguing your organization. They won’t have hundreds of clients like those big firms do so they’ll always make sure to provide personalized service for each client which means there aren’t any “low priority” projects – every project gets the full focus and attention of the person who was hired specifically for that task. This also ensures that nothing falls through the cracks since somebody from this smaller team will always be on top of it.
Value for Money:
While you’ll definitely save money hiring an independent consultant compared with one of the major players in the industry, what’s even better is that they can provide more value than those larger consulting firms because their smaller size means there are fewer people to pay which means they can charge less and still remain profitable enough so as not to put them out of business. This gives you a greater ROI on whatever work it is that your consultants do since they won’t be billing you $1000 per hour like McKinsey or Bain would but instead will only bill at half that rate (or maybe even lower) giving your company much better bang-for-your-buck than if you were to hire these big companies who always try to inflate their rates to maximize profits.
Now that we’ve gone over the top reasons why hiring an independent consulting firm is your best bet for quickly generating results, let’s take a look at three specific ways this type of consultant can help improve your organization:
Business Analysis & Strategy:
Hiring consultants to do business analysis and strategy tasks will allow you to not only get better insights into how well your business is operating but also make more informed decisions about future initiatives which means you’ll be able to grow much faster since there won’t be any aspect of operations or decision-making processes holding back progress towards achieving major goals. The nature of these strategies involves looking deep within yourself – inside both the company as a whole and its individual employees – so it requires an expert to pull out these insights. This is where independent consultants truly outperform large consulting firms because their smaller size allows them the agility and flexibility needed to analyze your company much more quickly compared with larger, less nimble organizations which will give you a much faster ROI on whatever work they do for you since they won’t waste time getting bogged down in bureaucracy or other standard operational issues that can slow things down.
Implementation & Execution:
Once the business analysis has been done then it’s time to take action by implementing what was learned through strategy sessions into specific projects designed at improving your organization overall. Implementation tasks are best completed by those who understand the intricacies of how all parts of an organization fit together so as not to disrupt its operations while still achieving the desired results. This is where smaller independent consultants truly excel because even though their size makes them more nimble than bigger firms, they still have enough experience under their belt to know how best to implement these changes without causing any ripples within your organization which will save you time and money in wasted efforts trying out new things that don’t pan out.
Turnaround & Improvement:
After implementing some of the recommendations given by an expert consultant then it’s often necessary for them to come back in with additional consulting services just so that they can provide further feedback on what needs improvement or tweaking along with guidance on specifically how this should be done. Since turnaround tasks revolve around making adjustments based on initial progress towards established goals, only those who’ve already worked with your organization before can provide this guidance which is why it’s best to hire independent consultants for these tasks over large firms. As mentioned earlier, larger consulting companies try to inflate their rates so they can maximize profits while smaller independents do the exact opposite by charging less than half of what bigger organizations would charge in order to remain profitable enough where they won’t go out of business anytime soon – thus allowing them the flexibility needed when working on turnaround projects that will only take a few days or weeks compared with months at most for big consulting firms.
These are just three examples of how hiring an independent consultant instead of one from McKinsey, BCG, Bain, and Co. like you’re probably thinking about doing right now can actually help improve your company. As you can see, independent consultants are much more nimble which means they’re able to provide the same (if not better) services as larger firms but for a fraction of the cost – all while avoiding many common problems that large consulting companies face on almost every project due to their size and structure.
What do you think? Please share your thoughts about this blog post in the comments section below.