Consulting – définition

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What exactly is Consulting?

The term “con­sult­ing” is derived from the Eng­lish lan­guage and means “con­sul­ta­tion” or “advice”.

Although Que­be­cers pre­fer the term “con­sul­tan­cy”, the expres­sion “busi­ness con­sult­ing” cor­re­sponds more pre­cise­ly to the real­i­ty of this activ­i­ty car­ried out by con­sul­tants or advi­sors.

A provision of intellectual services

It sup­ports the activ­i­ty of an orga­ni­za­tion. The advice is then pro­vid­ed by an exter­nal expert. All modal­i­ties are pos­si­ble with the consulting :

• punc­tu­al or durable mission,
• of pure advice or includ­ing sup­port that can go as far as del­e­gat­ed imple­men­ta­tion, led by an indi­vid­ual or a team, etc.

There are as many con­sult­ing mis­sions as there are con­fig­u­ra­tions of the orga­ni­za­tions that it can accompany.

Consulting or advice, what added value?

The added val­ue brought by the con­sult­ing is the analy­sis and the rec­om­men­da­tion. For a bet­ter impact, assis­tance and sup­port in the imple­men­ta­tion of rec­om­men­da­tions can be part of the con­sult­ing mission.

Levels of intervention in consulting

There are 4 lev­els of con­sult­ing inter­ven­tion, from the most punc­tu­al to the most durable:

• Con­sult­ing: the mis­sion will be lim­it­ed to the analy­sis of the prob­lem (needs/resources/constraints) and to the pro­duc­tion of rec­om­men­da­tions in the form of deliv­er­ables. This is the heart of consulting.

How­ev­er, the service/consulting mis­sion may take dif­fer­ent direc­tions depend­ing on the request of the companies:

• To enlight­en the man­ag­er and his teams to help them in their deci­sion making
• Sup­port and jus­ti­fy a deci­sion through its analy­sis, espe­cial­ly by help­ing to pre­pare its implementation.

• Sup­port: in addi­tion to con­sult­ing, the sup­port mis­sion includes mon­i­tor­ing the imple­men­ta­tion of rec­om­men­da­tions. There will then be an inter­ven­tion with the teams con­cerned and the assump­tion of respon­si­bil­i­ty for cer­tain spe­cif­ic tasks (data pro­cess­ing, draft­ing of ref­er­ence doc­u­ments, design). This phase is desir­able to secure the project.

• Train­ing: this is a mat­ter of sup­port­ing the teams. The mis­sion con­sists in help­ing them to increase their skills on a giv­en issue or expertise.

• Pro­vi­sion of ser­vices: the mis­sion con­sists in tak­ing charge of the activ­i­ty con­cerned. This is sim­i­lar to spe­cial­ized tem­po­rary work. This “inter­im” is most often aimed at man­age­ment or super­vi­so­ry posi­tions. It is then a ques­tion of inter­im management.

Consulting assignments by field of expertise

There are as many areas of con­sult­ing as there are areas of exper­tise in an orga­ni­za­tion. The list is there­fore poten­tial­ly endless.

General specialties:

• Gen­er­al strat­e­gy: it is the advice to the gen­er­al man­age­ment of a company
• Orga­ni­za­tion: Orga­ni­za­tion con­sult­ing deals with process reengi­neer­ing (BPR) which aims at rethink­ing the com­pa­ny’s busi­ness process­es and mak­ing them more effi­cient. He also pro­vides sup­port for change man­age­ment and dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion (agile organization).
• Cre­ation or takeover of a com­pa­ny: from the accom­pa­ni­ment of the founder of a small com­pa­ny to the prob­lems of merg­er and acquisition.
• Audit: this is con­sult­ing in finance, account­ing and man­age­ment con­trol. It there­fore includes pub­lic account­ing and audit­ing mis­sions. This is the most impor­tant and most wide­spread aspect of consulting.
• Infor­ma­tion sys­tems: anoth­er impor­tant aspect of con­sult­ing, IT deals with com­put­er sys­tems (servers, hard­ware, soft­ware), indus­tri­al man­age­ment software 

ERP — Enter­prise Resource Planning  (indus­tri­al man­age­ment soft­ware pack­ages) and knowl­edge man­age­ment. IT con­sult­ing some­times goes as far as out­sourc­ing the func­tion, outsourcing.

Marketing consulting:

• Mar­ket­ing: this branch of con­sult­ing is divid­ed into 2 parts: 

• first of all, cus­tomer rela­tions, with the imple­men­ta­tion of CRM tools and data pro­cess­ing (big data)
• then dig­i­tal around web exper­tise (tech­nolo­gies, UX or user expe­ri­ence, SEO, web­site, social networks…)
• Com­mu­ni­ca­tion: com­mu­ni­ca­tion con­sult­ing cov­ers 3 spe­cif­ic aspects: 

• the brand­ing strat­e­gy, dri­ven by the com­pa­ny’s gen­er­al strategy
• adver­tis­ing: from cre­ation to opti­miza­tion of its dis­tri­b­u­tion (media plan)
• pub­lic rela­tions or publicity

• Mar­ket research, eco­nom­ic intel­li­gence: this type of con­sult­ing feeds strat­e­gy con­sult­ing as well as mar­ket­ing con­sult­ing. This is the essen­tial under­ly­ing part of the business.

Supply Chain and Commerce consulting :

• Pro­duc­tion man­age­ment: it is a ques­tion of con­sult­ing in pro­duc­tion processand orga­ni­za­tion, qual­i­ty, safe­ty and hygiene. Thus, this com­po­nent aims at indus­tri­al per­for­mance but also com­pli­ance with legal obligations.
• Sup­ply chain: this con­sult­ing exper­tise inte­grates and plans the com­pa­ny’s activ­i­ty (pur­chas­ing, pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion), syn­chro­niz­ing the var­i­ous process­es in order to meet cus­tomer demand.
• Sales: this con­cerns the orga­ni­za­tion and remu­ner­a­tion of the sales force, their per­for­mance and their training.
• Export: export con­sult­ing is main­ly oper­a­tional sup­port, which can go as far as the pro­vi­sion of com­mer­cial relays.

Human Ressources specialty:

• Human Resources: deals with per­son­nel man­age­ment issues (com­pen­sa­tion, work­ing hours, HRIS) and labor relations.
• Recruit­ment: this is main­ly an out­sourc­ing of the first steps before hir­ing (writ­ing and pub­lish­ing the ad, receiv­ing appli­ca­tions, first sort­ing, but also direct approach of poten­tial can­di­dates). For high-lev­el posi­tions, we talk about “head­hunt­ing”. It can also involve sup­port­ing a per­son­’s mobil­i­ty: this is called “out­place­ment”.
• Risk man­age­ment: this ranges from risk audits (finan­cial, legal, social, indus­tri­al, IT, 

RGPD ) to the devel­op­ment of the com­pa­ny’s social respon­si­bil­i­ty, includ­ing com­pli­ance with the legal oblig­a­tions spe­cif­ic to each business.

 

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