The presentation looks at the consulting business in India, and how it would be by 2020

2. India has been globally recognized for its fast

paced development. The service sector has
been growing at a fast pace and now
contributes more than 50% to the GDP.
Propelled by the increasing demand for

consultancy services, both for domestic and
foreign firms, a study by Assocham pegs the
consulting sector in India to grow at an annual
rate of 30 per cent, progressing rapidly towards
becoming a Rs17,000-crore industry by 2010..
Presently (2008), the consulting industry in India

reportedly stands at Rs13,000 crore.

3. According to Assocham (The Associated

Chambers of Commerce and Industry of
India) president Venugopal Dhoot, the
US, the UK, Japan, China, Saudi Arabia
and Gulf nations acknowledge the
competence of Indian consultancy
firms, with demand growing in the EU as
well.

4. He cited the competitive edge of these

firms over their counterparts in the ASEAN
countries as the reason for their preferred
status.
 Indian consulting companies have strong
capabilities in areas like civil
engineering, telecom, power, metallurgy
, chemical and computer software.

5. Largest concentration of consultancy
organisations is in the four metropolitan
cities:
1. Delhi (25.7%) has the highest number of
consultancy organisation among four
metropolitan cities followed by,
2. Mumbai (25.5%),
3. Chennai (12.1%) and
4. Calcutta (9.1%).

6. Well dispersed and wide ranging areas of
•
specialisation to service diverse range of
clientele needs.
Advanced technical talents/ skills at
•
reasonable cost.
Familiarity with local conditions
•

7. After Independence, the Indian

Government had focused on investment in
core industrial sector and infrastructure. The
investment in these sectors attracted
various construction and engineering
companies to explore the business
opportunities and contribute their expertise
in these sectors.
 Domain experts were required who could
provide their core skill and competence in
designing and building the core
industry, dams, roads, buildings etc.

8. Over the years, as the Indian industry

started maturing, the Indian consulting
industry also started expanding, not only in
terms of size, but also in terms of the service
offerings.
 Over the period, specialist consulting
advice was being sought by clients in India
and this opened the opportunity for a
number of specialist organizations to draw
on their specialist knowledge base and
resources to meet the demand for specialist
consulting services.

9. The major strengths of Indian consulting

organizations include professional
competence, low cost structure, diverse
capabilities, high adaptability and quick
learning capability of Indian consultants
 The major weaknesses of Indian consulting
organizations, which has hindered the
export growth of consulting sector in the
country, are low quality assurance, low
local presence overseas, low equity base,
lack of market intelligence, low level of R&D

10. Fast Growth

• The business world is desperate for consulting
help. With excess staff being cut down, most
organizations lack the technical, strategic
and project management skills to handle the
benumbing rate of technological and
market change.
• The consulting industry is trying its best to
accommodate the demand. Big consulting
firms are inhaling new employees, gulping
up smaller firms and merging with peers.

11. One stop for all your solutions

• In addition to a boom in the number of
consulting firms, the size of individual firms is
growing in response to another industry trend:
one-stop shopping.
• Providers that can't compete on size will still try to
offer one-stop shopping by outsourcing a chunk
of a client's project to another firm while
maintaining responsibility for the overall project.
• Knowledge management tools, best practices
databases and the Internet make it possible for
consultants to draw upon the knowledge of
every consultant in the organization—as many
as 27,000 people in a firm like
PriceWaterHouseCoopers, for example.

12. Shortage of people

• The greatest threat to the growth of consulting
firms is their inability to get enough qualified
people.
• Some firms are already devising creative
solutions such as launching their own accredited
MBA programs - geared toward the specific
needs of consultants.
• Smart people are continuing to gravitate toward
the consulting profession, especially with its
heightened demand and visibility, not to
mention inflated salaries.

13. In a down economy, highly successful

companies will invest more in customers,
not less. Companies will compete for
customer share, not market share.
Companies will realize customer satisfaction
doesn't translate to loyalty and will stitch
their customer channels together.
 And finally, companies will shift to a long-
term focus. Only one thing is for sure – the
only thing that is constant in the consulting
industry – like any other industry – is change!

14. Over the decades, the management

consulting industry has responded
creatively to the changing needs of
clients, leading to the growth of a
thriving industry. The insights of history
provide guidance as consultants seek
the innovations to meet the future needs
of clients.

15. Milan Kubr, an authority on the

management consulting
industry, reminds us that ―Consultants are
inventors and creators of their own
markets and their future.‖ In the early
years of the industry, consultants built
highly flexible businesses on two market
realities: the rise of management as a
science, and evolving economic
conditions.

16. As inventors and creators of our own

markets and future, management
consultants will continue to rely on the
delivery of knowledge and general
economic conditions. We can benefit
from examining our past to understand
the types of expertise our clients need
from us. This is our source of value, and
as history indicates, this changes as our
client’s needs change.

17. According to a Czerniawska (an author

and recognized authority on the consulting
industry), in an interview by Management
Consultancy News
 The consulting industry could begin to look
more like the film industry, with different
firms and individuals collaborating on a
specific project, and then going their
separate ways, will be because of the
client pressure.
 Clients want greater specialization and a
clearer view of what consultants do.

18. According to Czerniawska one among

many consultancy services is about change
management, organizational change.
 Clients are looking for more than just
completed consulting engagements; they
are looking for help with organization-wide
change.
 There are people working on change but
for the most part, they are niche
consultants, independent
consultants, coaches or mentors. It's small
scale and fragmented.

19. It's an industry in which differentiation is very

difficult because of its inherent
homogeneity.
 The reputation commons problem for
consulting is that there is a reputation for
the industry in total, and the survival of all
firms depends on it. Is consulting a good or
bad thing in the public's mind? No firm has
a mandate to protect that reputation
because it's a collective resource.

20. It has been learned from Andersen's part

in Enron that, when one firm is severely
damaged, it affects everybody. One
way in which consulting firms can
protect themselves from being
damaged by future scandals is through
differentiation.

21. A firm can differentiate itself from others in two

ways, one has to do with the value of
consulting input.
So, the firms that differentiate themselves will

be the ones that find a way of articulating and
perhaps even quantifying the value that
people talk so much about. It is a commonly
talked about concern among the clients that
what they would really like for the consulting
industry is some kind of rating system to help
them make more informed decisions, to allow
them to compare different consultants in a
meaningful way.

22. According to Dr.Jack Phillips (A recognized expert on

measurement and evaluation, Dr. Jack Phillips is the
author or editor of more than fifty books, including
The Consultant's Scorecard: Tracking Results and
Bottom-Line Impact of Consulting Projects) there is a
tremendous interest in return on investment (ROI)
these days and will surely be in the future.
Many clients want to know the payoff of a consulting

project. The Consultant's Scorecard is a systematic
way to develop a balanced perspective on the
success of consulting projects. Clients can use the
Scorecard to see the monetary payoff of a project
and to examine cost versus benefit.

23. The score card captures satisfaction with

the consulting intervention, the learning
that has taken place, and the success of
application as the new process or system is
implemented. Then it assess the business
impact of the project and evaluate
intangibles, such as employee and
customer satisfaction. Finally, using the
business impact assessment and the cost of
the project, it calculates the ROI for the
project.

24. These six quantitative and qualitative

measures track the chain of impact for a
consulting project and provide a
balanced profile of success up to and
including ROI, always trying to isolate the
effects of the project. From the client's
perspective, the Scorecard adds up to
ultimate accountability for a project.

25. There is a concern related to measurement.

The clients are becoming more willing to
make the extra investment in time and
money to study the ROI of projects but the
most important issues is that the evaluation
needs to be as objective as possible.
Ideally, neither the people on the
consulting team nor on the client team
should facilitate the study. An external
person or group is better for objectivity.

26. The management consulting field is highly

developed in only a few key
geographies, including the United States.
Thus, the US-based firms face relatively little
foreign competition. However, with the very
fast rates of economic development in
countries such as China and India, this
situation would change over time. The large
firms who have globalized proactively
could find themselves in a favorable
position should demand for consulting
services in these markets increase.

27. Firms consider or use a variety of means

when establishing an international
presence. All methods have advantages
and disadvantages (for example, the
partner-led model can be time
consuming, while the acquisition or
contract models can result in a
heterogeneous firm culture).

28. http://www.timesascent.co.in/index.aspx?page=article&sectid=2&cont

entid=20080707200807071229031867dc432a7
http://www.managementconsultingnews.com/interviews/czerniawska_i

nterview.php
http://www.managementconsultingnews.com/interviews/phillips_intervi

ew.php
http://www.managementconsultingnews.com/articles/thorp_article.ph

p
http://www.domain-

b.com/management/consulting/20071003_assocham.html
Consulting Club’s article, IIM Calcutta


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