Detailed introduction
1. Management consulting usually has clear project objectives and must solve specific problems for enterprises; Usually, a consulting project will last for more than three months. 3. Management consulting projects usually need to set up a project team, which is divided into three groups: consulting group, follow-up group and implementation group. Clear division of labor and close cooperation. 4. Three stages of management consulting: current situation investigation, scheme design and implementation. 5. In the process of management consulting, various means such as investigation, discussion, evaluation and training will be used. Training will be included in the process of management consulting, but the role of training is to introduce ideas and reach an understanding and explanation plan. 6. Management consulting not only helps enterprises solve problems, but also cultivates managers' methods and skills to solve problems.
Connotation of management consulting
The so-called management consulting is that experts with rich management theory and practical experience, with the close cooperation of relevant personnel of the enterprise, go to the enterprise to conduct on-the-spot investigation and study, use scientific methods to find out the problems existing in the business strategy and management of the enterprise, analyze the causes of the problems and put forward improvement plans; When the enterprise accepts the improvement plan, the consultant is responsible for training personnel for the enterprise and helping to guide the enterprise to implement the improvement plan.
Types of management consulting
According to the scope, management consulting can be divided into global consulting and unit consulting. 1. Global consultation. Global consultation is to consult the overall situation of the enterprise. 2. Unit consultation. Unit-based consultation is a specific consultation on a certain function of an enterprise. According to the classification of personnel, management consulting can be divided into internal consulting and external consulting. Management consulting can be divided into enterprise management consulting and enterprise management analysis according to its nature.
enterprise management consulting
1. Enterprise management consulting. Enterprise management consulting belongs to strategic consulting and guidance consulting, similar to traditional Chinese medicine. It mainly uses the comprehensive knowledge of experts to analyze, study and solve the problems existing in enterprise management from a qualitative point of view. 2. Enterprise management analysis. Business analysis belongs to strategic consulting. Question consultation. Compared with enterprise management consulting, it is more similar to western medicine. It is based on the management data and financial indicators of enterprises such as "laboratory sheet, electrocardiogram, electroencephalogram and CT". Through the analysis of management data and financial data, we can judge the business situation of the enterprise and find out the problems existing in the enterprise. From the perspective of application, management consulting can be divided into the following businesses: 1. Business strategy consultation. Organizational structure consultation. System consultation. Management process consultation. Marketing tools and marketing form consultation. Production management consulting. Quality management consulting. Business process consultation. Salary performance management consulting 10. Human resource management and development consulting. 1 1. Corporate culture consultation 12, group control 13, operation management 14, merger and reorganization 15, information consultation According to the system, management consultation can be divided into three levels, basic consultation. Functional consulting and industrial consulting. The nature of management consulting Management consulting is an organized intellectual service activity. Consultants provide management consulting services to their clients with their own knowledge and experience.
Edit the development history of this paragraph.
Early history
Fundamentally speaking, the birthplace of management consulting is Britain and America. Consulting industry was founded by American pioneers at the end of 19 and the beginning of the 20th century and British management thinkers and businessmen after the 1920s. The first generation of management consultants was born in America 1870 to 19 14. At that time, their main role was to help manufacturing enterprises improve productivity and efficiency. Their particularly active field is steel engineering companies in the northwest of the United States. At that time, people did not call them management consultants. In fact, no one knows the real meaning of management consulting. On the contrary, people call them "industrial engineers". People regarded them as researchers of time and action, and their dominant views didn't change until the 1960s. Taylor left a special legacy to people. Taylor's research scheme made him known as the father of scientific management by later generations. What Taylor cared about was actually the so-called organization method. His thoughts of simplifying complex manufacturing work, clarifying supervision mode and improving productivity had a far-reaching influence in the United States and Europe at that time, and continued until the 1970s. After World War I, management consultants played a very important role in the development and reorganization of American industry. For example, General Motors hired Arthur_D._Little to set up a research and development center for it, and the US government also purchased the consulting services of Booz Allen Hamilton.
Management buyout
In the 1920s, management consulting still developed under the inspiration of American thought. Management consulting in this period began to be influenced by early motivational industrial psychologists, such as Elton Mayo and Mary Parker Follette. These thinkers look at efficiency from a broader organizational perspective. Among them, people began to pay more attention to human factors. In 1960s, great changes have taken place in the industrial structure and economic structure, so consulting activities have also flourished. Also in the 1960s, in the real market, widely distributed consumer groups have also formed, and the importance of advertising and marketing has begun to get people's attention. American consulting companies have also contributed to this. Many of their consulting companies are trained in companies like Procter & Gamble, among which Procter & Gamble has always been regarded as a marketing business school. In this way, management consultants help large companies learn and use brand-new marketing skills. The 1960s was also the era when "management by objectives" prevailed. The framework of "management by objectives" was put forward by John Humble of Ahlvik Orr Partners. In short, Hambler's main point is that the secret of excellent management lies in establishing a clear enterprise goal system, setting measurable goals, and forming a * * * understanding of the ways to achieve the established results. Later, he said: "I think the future of consulting, the completely foreseeable future, is to be able to understand the relationship between the various components (in the management process), not the components themselves." This management view is very consistent with the management culture at that time, because the management culture at that time placed great emphasis on long-term planning and manpower planning. However, this management view quickly withdrew from the dominant position, and people began to tend to the following management views: the business world has entered an unpredictable stage, which is difficult to predict.
Oil price crisis
What broke all the classical assumptions of enterprise management was the oil price crisis in the 1970s. Between 1973 and 1978, the global oil price tripled and rose to an unprecedented sky-high price. The soaring oil prices during the two Great Depression dramatically changed people's business priorities. Financial performance has become the most concerned issue for enterprises, and various accounting consulting companies have also begun to pay attention to the consulting market. By the end of 1970s, accounting consulting companies had occupied a considerable market share in the consulting market. In the 1980s, a series of advances in management thought also had a corresponding impact on the consulting industry. First, as Japanese companies gain more and more market share in the global automobile products market, household appliances market, semiconductor products market and computer market, one of the responses of other companies is to imitate Japanese management methods. Therefore, Japan's flexible manufacturing system, especially quality management and other production methods, has had a great impact. For a time, manufacturing system/technology and total quality management became the fastest growing piece of the British management consulting market. Secondly, the liberalization of financial market, the reduction of international tariff barriers and the internationalization of enterprises have created the demand for global enterprise strategy and global marketing strategy. The development of international operation of enterprises has also promoted the emergence of a brand-new consulting market, that is, cultural change management. Facts have proved that it is extremely complicated to manage international companies with different systems, cultures and products. The cultural changes of these large international companies are both endogenous and exogenous. Cultural change transcends different functions, and its influence is subtle but powerful. This new consulting field has been influenced by many experts engaged in management culture research. At the same time, the demand for human resource management consulting is growing. The development of human resource management consulting activities is driven by the following factors: the rise of the wave of mergers and acquisitions, the increasing demand for personal training and career development, and ensuring that human resource management practices can reflect the changes in corporate culture. Porter believes that enterprises must "create value", and he puts forward the concept of "value chain": every activity carried out by enterprises can be analyzed to find out the mutual influence between them. He explained: "For these strategically important activities, if an enterprise can pay lower costs or do better than its competitors, then it can gain a competitive advantage." Porter's works encourage companies to examine not only the internal activities of all companies, but also the external relations, especially the relationship between enterprises and suppliers.
Porter's point of view
The development after Porter's view is business process reengineering, which is more logical. Mike Hamm and James Champi (Mike Hamm &; James Champy's book Enterprise Reengineering warns people's managers that they should pay attention to the process rather than the management function. Therefore, many companies carry out comprehensive and systematic reorganization of their business processes. In fact, almost every business process reengineering is carried out with the help of consultants. The emphasis on organizational self-evaluation by the concepts of value chain analysis and business process reengineering has also led to other development trends in management practice, that is, focusing on the "core" business that enterprises are most suitable for or "best at managing", and accordingly outsourcing or "outsourcing" those activities that do not play a core role in business. What a management consulting company does in IT is to give suggestions to the company on what to outsource, how to outsource and how to continuously improve the management of outsourcing activities under the circumstances related to IT (information technology). The appearance of information technology has brought people to another main development direction of consulting industry. If there is one factor that has changed management consulting activities to the greatest extent, it is it. In 1980s, IT projects of consulting companies accounted for less than 10% of the consulting business market. Today, IT projects account for more than 25% of the market. For some large consulting companies, IT projects generate 50% of their income. With more and more IT consulting companies occupying a dominant position in the consulting industry, the structure of the consulting industry is also undergoing tremendous changes. Since the late 1990s, the Internet has begun to exert a strong influence on the field of management consulting. The rise of e-commerce has provided a lot of opportunities for management consulting activities, so their customers have begun to try to use this emerging commercial media. At the same time, it also promotes the development of network consultation, especially for network enterprises. McKinsey & Company estimates that in 2000, half of customer projects included a considerable part of e-commerce. The development of online consultation will further promote people's demand for another service that people have not been exposed to so far-knowledge management consultation and service. In the future, knowledge management will play an unprecedented important role, and not only for consulting customers. As far as management consulting itself is concerned, knowledge management has become a key issue. From 65438 to 0999, MCA published a report entitled "Globalization and Knowledge Society", written by William White and Michael Sedgley, explaining how the use of knowledge and information technology accompanying knowledge dissemination will change enterprises. Connection will become the driving force of knowledge management, connecting enterprises and communities in ways unimaginable 20 or 30 years ago.
Why do companies consult companies when editing this paragraph?
People are sick and need to see a doctor; This is the same reason that enterprises should consult the company when there are problems in the management system. Some enterprises say that I don't go to see a doctor and let it heal itself, but in fact it often worsens, and even Huatuo can't be cured. Some companies say that it may be fine if I buy my own medicine, go to a class and try the medicine that others have taken, but it is still very dangerous. If the medicine is not symptomatic, it may aggravate my condition, delay the treatment opportunity and may have side effects. It is natural to see a doctor when you are sick, so the hospitals in Shenzhen are overcrowded, and the number of operations should be arranged one month or even longer in advance. When there are problems in enterprises, especially in management system, it is wise to let the outside brain intervene: 1. Enterprise reform needs a strong driving force, and it is difficult to achieve it only by the internal strength of enterprises. 2. "Foreign monks like chanting", and the neutrality of the outer brain is more convincing. 3. The external brain is more professional and scientific, and the reform efficiency is higher. 4. People inside the enterprise are busy with daily affairs. There is an excuse not to do something to improve the system. Even if it is done, the effectiveness of the reform will be discounted or even failed because of the avoidance of personal hobbies or the entanglement of interests.
Please consult the company to edit this paragraph. Is it expensive?
Hiring an external brain will definitely involve costs, and some enterprises will be discouraged. But it turns out that consulting is expensive, and not consulting is more expensive! In order to reduce the cost of the consulting company, it is written that it officially passed the qualification certification of Shenzhen SME Service Center in the spring and autumn of 2008! For small and medium-sized enterprises that provide consulting services through the writing of Spring and Autumn Annals, the government provides 50% of consulting fees, and enterprises accept applications from SME service centers.
What if the consulting company doesn't know our company?
Business owners often ask: Do consulting companies know my business better than I do? Can they solve problems that I can't? You are in the enterprise every day, and you know the enterprise very well, but you often lose your judgment. This is a fact. At the same time, business owners are usually proficient in and familiar with the business of the enterprise, but not proficient in management. And this is precisely the strength of consulting companies. Management must be combined with business, so how can management consulting companies quickly understand the enterprise? Through research! The methods and skills of investigation are very important! For example, the Great Wall strategic consulting is an interventional consulting method, which goes deep into customers. A powerful consulting company can find out the key problems of the enterprise within one week and thoroughly understand the management status of the enterprise within one month, while an ordinary professional manager needs about three months to enter the working state, which is the role of professional research. A Taiwan-funded business owner said after a month of cooperation with the writer Spring and Autumn Annals: "I have been worried that these outsiders don't understand business and will make a mess of business. Who would have thought that in less than a month, the consultant would know my business better than me! If I had known this, I should have done it long ago! "
Edit the mentality that enterprises should avoid in management consulting.
First, the value of consulting services is exaggerated or expected too much. It is the mentality of many enterprises to expect too much from the results of consulting services. It is believed that the excellent performance of enterprises should be the natural result of consulting services. Many enterprises even bet their fate on a consulting project, often hoping that consultants will turn Gan Kun around and completely change the face of the enterprise. Second, quick success and instant benefit, only numerical results theory. It is believed that performance speaks for itself, only looking at performance indicators, and the value of other services is not affirmed, and the requirements are quite short. Some customers think that the consulting service should be effective within a few months, otherwise they will be impatient. Complex enterprise reality, industry reality and many objective reasons are unpredictable. Different clients and consulting projects have different short-term and long-term results. Therefore, it is not advisable to talk about success or failure by short-term performance. In fact, it is difficult for any consulting company to have the final say with the enterprise. Third, too self-centered, unable to listen to severe advice, arrogant. Although many enterprises are looking for consulting services, they still have a very self-centered mentality. Such enterprises only look for consultants to verify their ideas, just to let consultants implement their ideas. The greatest value of consultants is to look at problems from their own relatively objective perspective and help enterprises find problems. If you lose your own position and only help enterprises implement each other's ideas, the success rate of such consulting projects is also difficult to guarantee. Fourth, I don't have my own opinion, just listen. Due to the superstition of consultants, there is another kind of enterprise that goes to the other extreme, that is, all the good suggestions that are listened to by consultants are closed, and some enterprises even hand over the implementation to consultants to solve. In the short run, it seems to solve the temporary problems of enterprises, but in the long run, it is also unfavorable for enterprises not to cultivate their own teams, not to exercise their own teams, and not to build their own management capabilities. Fifth, over-reliance on large companies and brands ignores who is involved in the project. Many enterprises rely too much on big consulting brands or well-known companies in the industry: from a certain point of view, it is undeniable that well-known consulting companies have talent advantages and experience advantages. However, because each consulting company has different consulting projects, different needs and different professional knowledge, it is not necessarily a good thing to rely too much on a big consulting company. Enterprises should look for suitable consulting companies according to their actual needs, and should not rush to the hospital.
In this section, edit the overview of management consulting industry.
Basic introduction
Management consulting is a highly intelligent service undertaking by people with rich management knowledge and experience and mastering consulting technology. On the basis of the requirements put forward by the enterprise, the consultant goes deep into the enterprise, closely combines with the enterprise managers, finds out the main problems existing in the enterprise by using scientific methods, makes quantitative and qualitative analysis with exact arguments, finds out the causes of the problems, and puts forward feasible improvement plans, so as to guide the implementation plan, improve the operation mechanism of the enterprise and improve the management level and economic benefits of the enterprise.
Five aspects of meaning
Specifically, it contains five meanings: 1. The basic conditions that a management consultant must have: theoretical knowledge of management; Practical experience in management; Mastering the skills of consulting requires special consulting training. Because consulting undertakes the task of improving enterprise management and is engaged in high-intelligence and high-intensity mental work, it determines that consultants must have high quality, management knowledge and consulting experience.
The object of management consulting
That is, the enterprises to be consulted must be established on a voluntary basis. Because consulting itself is a kind of service, it is different from the previous inspection team, acceptance team and working group. For the work of these groups, enterprises are in a passive position of being investigated, afraid of finding out the problems and affecting their "image", and enterprises have the mentality of "avoiding diseases and doctors"; Consulting service makes enterprises feel "uncomfortable"-hard competition, uncoordinated production and supply, low profit rate or even loss, but enterprise leaders are struggling to figure out the clue, so they take the initiative to hire consulting experts to provide consulting services for enterprises. Enterprise managers are willing to actively cooperate with consultants and ask them to diagnose the enterprise, so they have the mentality of "treating the right medicine" in time. Only in this way can the consultation work be successful. 3. Consulting methods and procedures Consultants go deep into the enterprise and closely cooperate with enterprise managers, use scientific methods, make quantitative and qualitative analysis with clear arguments, find out the main problems, find out the causes of the problems, put forward practical improvement plans, and then guide the implementation of the improvement plans. 4. The purpose of consultation is to improve the management mechanism of enterprises, improve the ability of enterprises to adapt to the environment, especially the market competitiveness of enterprises, so as to improve the management level and economic benefits of enterprises. Is to fundamentally improve the quality of enterprise, improve the operating mechanism of enterprises, and enhance the dynamic adaptability of enterprises to the environment. It is not only to directly improve the economic benefits and management level, but more importantly, for an enterprise, whether it is survival or development, in the final analysis, it depends on whether the enterprise can form a management mechanism with correct objectives and strong adaptability. Therefore, the fundamental purpose of management consulting is to enable this enterprise to find problems directly through the management system, find out the reasons, constantly optimize the enterprise management mechanism, and make the whole enterprise run in a virtuous circle. 5. The essence of management consulting Management consulting is an organized intellectual service activity. Consultants use their knowledge and experience to provide management consulting services to their clients.
Edit the contents of this management consulting service.
In the fierce market competition, in order to make customers win competitive advantage, management consulting services must be able to provide customers with solutions to key problems with higher value. 1, "suit the right medicine" and "tailor-made", and adopt appropriate consultation methods according to the specific needs of customers. 2. Only by clearly defining the issues and determining the key issues can the consultation be carried out on the right track. 3. Identify opportunities that may bring huge benefits to enterprises and provide effective help to solve the most urgent problems faced by enterprises. 4. Creative problem-solving methods and close cooperation with customer management. 5, based on the best experience of industry practice, a wide range of industry and professional competitiveness. 6. According to the clear market positioning, adopt an action plan suitable for enterprise development. 7, coherent project report, put forward the conditions for the successful implementation of the project proposal and the implementation objectives, and the consultation proposal is operable.
In this section, the international development of editorial management consulting.
The Development Course of the World Management Consulting Industry
Fundamentally speaking, the birthplace of management consulting is Britain and America. Consulting industry was founded by American pioneers at the end of 19 and the beginning of the 20th century and British management thinkers and businessmen after the 1920s. The first generation of management consultants was born in America 1870 to 19 14. At that time, their main role was to help manufacturing enterprises improve productivity and efficiency. Taylor's research scheme made him known as the father of scientific management by later generations. After World War I, management consultants played a very important role in the development and reorganization of American industry. The U.S. government also acquired Booz, Allen &; Hamilton consulting service. In 1960s, great changes have taken place in the industrial structure and economic structure, so consulting activities have also flourished. At the same time, it is also the era of "management by objectives". The framework of "management by objectives" was put forward by John Hambler. "I think the future of consulting, a completely foreseeable future, is to be able to understand the relationship between various components (in the management process), not the components themselves." By the end of 1970s, accounting consulting companies had occupied a considerable market share in the consulting market. In the 1980s, a series of advances in management thought also had a corresponding impact on the consulting industry. Manufacturing system/technology and total quality management have become the fastest growing parts of the British management consulting market. The liberalization of financial market, the reduction of international tariff barriers and the internationalization of enterprises have created the demand for global enterprise strategy and global marketing strategy. The development of international operation of enterprises has also promoted the emergence of a brand-new consulting market, that is, cultural change management. At the same time, the demand for human resource management consulting is growing. If there is one factor that has changed management consulting activities to the greatest extent, it is it. In 1980s, IT projects of consulting companies accounted for less than 10% of the consulting business market. Today, IT projects account for more than 25% of the market. Since the late 1990s, the Internet has begun to exert a strong influence on the field of management consulting. The rise of e-commerce provides a lot of opportunities for management consulting activities. McKinsey & Company estimated that half of the customer projects in 2000 included a considerable part of e-commerce. The development of online consultation will further promote people's demand for another service that we haven't touched yet-knowledge management consultation and service. From 65438 to 0999, MCA published a report "Globalization and Knowledge Society", expounding how the use of knowledge and information technology accompanying the spread of knowledge will change enterprises. Connection will become the driving force of knowledge management, connecting enterprises and communities in ways unimaginable 20 or 30 years ago.
International management consulting organization
Management Consulting [1] The most influential institutions in the industry are British Consulting Association and American Consulting Association. In the 1920s, the first batch of management consulting companies appeared in the world. These companies established the consulting professional organization "Association of Consulting Management Engineers" (ACME), which is the oldest organization in the world at present, and the membership condition is unit membership. The most influential individual membership consulting professional organization (individual qualification of management consultant) was established in 1968. Later, another professional organization "International Consulting Association" was established, which combined individual qualifications with unit group qualifications as membership conditions. At that time, the original intention was to improve the quality of management consulting practice, and to establish and fully implement a professional self-discipline system called "visa management consultant", which is now called "CMC". In addition, another influential professional organization in the world is the European Federation of Management Consulting Countries (FEACO), which was founded in Paris on 1960 by famous management consulting companies from six countries: Britain, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland. 1989, the European Federation of European Management Consulting Countries Association has 15 member associations, among which there are more than 20,000 management consultants. In 1990s, the members of the Federation of Management Consulting Organizations have reached 50,000 management consultants, accounting for 62% of the total number of 8 1 0,000 management consultants in the United States.