Generally speaking, management consulting companies are institutions that serve enterprises. It is an effective tool for analyzing and planning enterprises. Its consulting scope involves all aspects of the enterprise. This is a service industry, and it is an intelligence-intensive service industry engaged by people who have a solid foundation of management knowledge, rich practical management experience and mastered consulting skills. On the basis of the requirements put forward by the enterprise, the consultant goes deep into the enterprise, makes quantitative or qualitative analysis with clear arguments, finds out the causes of existing problems, puts forward feasible improvement plans, and then assists in implementation, thus improving the operating mechanism of the enterprise and ultimately improving the management level and economic benefits of the enterprise.
Its main tasks are: first, to help enterprises find out the main problems existing in production and operation management, find out the reasons and formulate feasible improvement plans; The second is to guide the implementation of the improvement plan; Third, teach management theory and scientific methods, train management cadres at all levels in enterprises, and fundamentally improve quality of enterprise. There are more than 40,000 consulting companies in China, most of which are small workshops with irregular operation. The only way is to unite with the strong, cultivate internal strength and cultivate the ability of scientific rigor and standardization. This is the way out for local consulting companies. 1, find the problem, so as to achieve the diagnosis purpose of management consultation.
Finding problems is to clarify the problems existing in enterprise management. Having a clear definition of the problem is equivalent to solving half of the problem, which means that there will be more opportunities to find the correct solution to the problem. But sometimes it is more difficult to define a problem than to solve it. In the practice of management consulting, many wrangling consulting projects are caused by rushing to launch because they don't know the real reasons of enterprise problems in advance. Leading enterprises to think that their own problems have not been really solved and they are not satisfied with the project results; However, the consulting company thinks that it has done a lot of work and should be paid accordingly, which eventually leads to disagreement and even disputes between the two sides.
The enterprise problem has been found and the content of the problem has been clarified, and the scope of the problem needs to be further clarified. The determination of the scope of the problem in the consulting project is simply that the consulting company determines from what aspects it can solve the problems existing in the customer enterprise with its own ability. The scope of the problem needs to be confirmed with the customer. Define the final problem to be solved and set the boundary to solve the problem, so as to determine the time of the project. For a business problem, the reason is often not single, and its solutions are usually varied. For example, when the sales of a manufacturing enterprise show a downward trend, the reasons for this phenomenon may be brand, product quality, marketing team, after-sales service and other issues. Due to the limitation of its own strength, consulting companies may not be able to put forward improvement suggestions for various reasons. Some consulting companies may be good at brand services, and some may change the downward trend of sales by improving the quality of marketing teams. But no matter how to determine the scope of the problem, the ultimate goal is to let customers reach their desired target position.
2. Solve problems to achieve the governance goal of management consulting.
1) generate ideas. At the beginning of any consulting project, the consultant needs to generate as many ideas as possible. All kinds of ideas are possible. At this time, don't start analyzing existing ideas at once, but collect and enrich ideas as much as possible and record them. Dialogue with customers, discussion with industry experts, past work experience and discussion among project team members all contribute to the generation of ideas. There are two points to pay attention to in the process of generating ideas: first, the generation of ideas is not endless imagination, it must be based on facts, that is to say, we should consider problems objectively; Second, there are several solutions to most problems, and what consultants need to do is to find them. When solving problems, the more ideas, the better. Once the consultant knows that what he has done is enough, he should stop, even if it is possible to produce more creative ideas, otherwise he will spend a lot of time and energy with little effect.
2) organize your thoughts. In the first step mentioned above, the consultant produced many ideas, which may be chaotic. Then the second step is to systematically sort out and sort out all kinds of ideas by using structural thinking. At this stage, the consultant's task is to sort out the confused ideas generated in the previous stage, eliminate those ideas that cannot be further proved or falsified, and screen out the opinions that can solve the customer's problems.
3) Make a plan. When the problem to be solved is clear and all kinds of ideas about the problem are organized, the next thing the consultant has to do is to make a research plan and make clear what analysis needs to be done, the process and steps of the research. According to the train of thought, determine what information and data need to be collected, and how to arrange the corresponding time, personnel and expenses.
4) Analyze information. In the process of solving problems, analysis plays a vital role, and the analytical ability of consultants determines whether the solution to the problem can be found smoothly. Of course, consultation is not only analysis, but also insight. If you can't get insightful suggestions from analysis and investigation, it's a waste of time. Therefore, the ultimate goal of analysis is to prove or falsify the original idea according to the analysis results, and propose a set of action plans for customers.
5) Keep in touch at any time. The success of consulting projects depends on the joint efforts of consultants and customers. Modern consulting emphasizes that customers actively participate in all stages of consulting projects and provide information and materials related to consulting tasks at any time. Consultants always keep in touch with customers in the whole process of solving problems, from which they can learn how customers feel about their own production and operation, what are their goals, technologies and human capabilities, and where are the potential reform areas. In short, maintaining effective communication with customers is the guarantee for solving problems smoothly. Specifically, it contains five meanings:
1, management consultant must have the basic conditions:
Knowledge of management theory;
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.
2. 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", with fierce competition, uncoordinated production, supply and marketing, low profit rate and even losses. However, business leaders are struggling to figure out a 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, which has the mentality of "treating the right medicine" in time. Only in this way can the consultation work be successful.
3. Ways and procedures of consultation
Consultants go deep into the close cooperation between enterprises and 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.
After the implementation of the improvement scheme, the operation mechanism of the enterprise has been improved, and the ability of the enterprise to adapt to the environment has been improved, especially the market competitiveness of the enterprise, thus improving the management level and economic benefits of the enterprise. Is to fundamentally improve the quality of enterprise, improve the operating mechanism of enterprises, and enhance the dynamic adaptability of enterprises to the environment.
5, the nature of management consulting
Management consulting is an organized intellectual service activity. Consultants provide management consulting services to customers with their own knowledge and experience.